A year after the SEC filed its civil case against a financial advisor, he now faces a federal criminal rap of 31 counts of fraud, identity theft, money laundering and obstruction of justice.
Mark J. Boucher, a former registered representative of Raymond James Financial Services and the founder of a Carlsbad, California-based RIA called Strategic Wealth Advisor Group Services, defrauded three clients for more than $2 million during a 10-year span, according to investigators from the SEC and the Department of Justice. A district judge in San Diego federal court unsealed the criminal indictment against Boucher, 57, on Oct. 7.
The indictment and a separate filing a day earlier by the SEC seeking summary judgment in its case allege that Boucher provided “false, fraudulent and misleading” documents to the regulator while invoking his Fifth Amendment rights. In addition, they offer new details about the moment a widow who was first to suspect anything was amiss confronted her longtime friend and advisor. Boucher also stole $60,000 from a client whose mother was in the hospital on her death bed at the time, used the money to buy a Chevy Camaro ZL1 and sold it to the same victim a year and a half later for $52,000, according to investigators.
“Boucher forged checks and falsified documents as he misappropriated more than $2 million of his clients’ money — money these clients had entrusted Boucher to manage,” SEC investigators wrote in their Oct. 6 memo. “The undisputed material facts further show that Boucher stole funds for his personal benefit, using the money to buy a sports car and pay credit card bills he incurred pursuing an extravagant lifestyle, including lavish travel and other luxuries.”
Boucher pleaded not guilty last week in federal court, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported, and his attorney responded to the SEC’s complaint last year with a denial of any violations of the law and a request that the case be dismissed with prejudice. The lawyer, Marc Nurik, declined to discuss the case when reached by phone.
In January 2020, Raymond James paid a settlement of more than $542,000 to a Boucher client alleging forgery and theft, according to FINRA BrokerCheck. Representatives for the firm, where Boucher was a rep from 2000 to 2016, declined to comment on the case.
Raymond James and another firm where Boucher worked from 2016 to 2019, SCF Investment Advisors, had terminated him prior to the SEC and criminal cases.
“We have already taken steps to enhance our controls and remain focused on effective compliance practices that protect our advisors and their clients,” Alice Regan, a spokeswoman for SCF parent firm Atria Wealth Solutions, said in an emailed statement.
It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the gap between the SEC’s August 2020 case and the federal criminal indictment from a grand jury in July 2021. Representatives for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego declined to comment.
Often there’s a “natural delay” when the SEC has opened an investigation already and refers it to the DOJ for possible criminal prosecution, especially in cases where defendants invoke their Fifth Amendment rights, according to Bill Singer, a securities attorney and the author of the Broke and Broker Blog on Wall Street compliance. Besides those factors, prosecutors seek to avoid tipping off defendants about possible criminal charges due to flight risks, concerns they could dispose of all their assets or to investigate possible obstruction of justice, he said.
“We keep seeing these guys where the money goes to the Rolex, it goes to the Maserati, it goes to the girlfriend,” Singer said. “What happens is that in desperation, they start fabricating documents.”
Federal prosecutors allege Boucher supplied at least four false documents, while SEC investigators have said he spent more than $125,000 on vacations and travel with “numerous female companions.” No one detected anything until the widow noticed in May 2019 that a signature didn’t look like her own on the copy of a check for $14,000 included in a letter from American Express noting problems with her deposit, according to the SEC filing. She showed Boucher the letter and the copy of the check a few days later, the document said.
“When [the victim] showed the copy to Boucher he ‘turned completely white,’ told her ‘I don’t know why I did it,’ and offered to pay her back right there, on the spot,” the SEC memo stated. “Boucher further stated check No. 132 represented the only time he had stolen from [her] and offered to pay her whatever she wanted so long as she did not tell anyone about the theft.”
Instead, she prompted the custodian and SCF to open an investigation into Boucher, which uncovered more checks from her account for his credit card bills, according to investigators. When SCF’s chief compliance officer and its CEO asked him for an explanation, he told them he “wrote the checks out of stupidity. I guess that’s the best thing I can say,” according to the SEC memo, which said he admitted to paying his credit card bills from her trust.
After his arrest earlier this month, Boucher was released on a $500,000 bond under strict restrictions on his travel and a surrender of his passport, court documents show. In the civil case, the SEC is awaiting a ruling on its motion for summary judgment.