At least 1,000 victims. More than $115 million stolen. A deception that persisted for a decade to support a life of jet-setting, champagne popping and $10,000 suits.
Those staggering figures summarize the rise and eventual fall of a former New York advisor and convicted scam artist known as “King Perry.”
On Friday, 41-year-old Perry Santillo of Rochester was sentenced to 210 months — 17½ years — behind bars by U.S. District Judge Frank P. Geraci Jr. for his role as the mastermind of a Ponzi scheme that operated from January 2008 to June 2018.
Santillo – who pleaded guilty in 2019 to charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, mail fraud and conspiracy to launder money — was also ordered to pay restitution totaling nearly $103 million to the victims.
Those victims included friends, family and an elderly man battling dementia, according to court documents.
“For years, Perry Santillo preyed on investors who placed their trust in him to properly invest their hard-earned money,” U.S. Attorney Trini E. Ross said in a statement. “However, Santillo abused the trust of those investors to finance his own self-interests. Because of the hard work of law enforcement to expose Santillo’s fraudulent scheme, he is facing the consequences of his actions, including going to prison.”
According to Assistant U.S. Attorney John J. Field, Santillo conspired with co-defendant Christopher Parris and others to steal money via a classic Ponzi scheme that was born from their own financial failings.
In 2007, Santillo and Parris formed a business known as Lucian Development in Rochester. Through the business, the two men raised millions of dollars from investors nationwide by soliciting investments for City Capital Corporation, a business operated by a man named Ephren Taylor who was running a Ponzi scheme of his own that defrauded more than 400 people.
Taylor would eventually be sentenced to more than 19 years in federal prison for the $16 million scheme.
In July 2007, Taylor told Santillo and Parris that their investors’ money had been lost. They responded by acquiring the assets and debts of City Capital Corporation, but investigators said the acquisition proved to be “financially ruinous” as the acquired debt far exceeded the value of the acquired assets.
Instead of telling their investors the truth about the lost funds, Santillo and Parris continued to solicit money from new investors in an unsuccessful bid to cover the losses.
In order to find potential investors to solicit and defraud, Santillo and Parris purchased the businesses of at least 15 investment advisors or brokers in Tennessee, Ohio, Minnesota, Nevada, California, Florida, South Carolina, Texas, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Indiana.
To keep the Ponzi scheme from being detected, new investor dollars were drained by making promised interest and other payments to earlier investors. But the rest of the money, court documents said, kept Santillo and his cohorts flush in designer clothes and luxury rides.
Court filings detail an alleged $150,000 birthday party thrown for Santillo at a Las Vegas nightclub. Investigators said Santillo had a song commissioned about himself and played it during the birthday bash.
Called “King Perry the King of Hyde,” the lyrics describe Santillo as an “Italian stallion” wearing “$10,000 dollar suits everywhere he rides,” and boast that he is “popping champagne in L.A., New York to Florida; buy another bottle just to spray it all over ya.”
The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reports that Santillo’s lawyer, James Nobles, disputes the song’s roots in court filings
“While not entirely certain of its origin, we believe this casino host asked an aspiring artist to create this song for Mr. Santillo without compensation,” he wrote. “We are certain Mr. Santillo did not request the production of this song, nor did he pay for it.”
Court documents said Santillo and Parris expanded the scheme by purchasing investment advisor/brokerage businesses to obtain access to fresh investors and to pay operating expenses like staff salaries, office overhead, housing for employees and loan interest.
Between January 2012 and June 2018, Santillo and Parris obtained at least $115.5 million from approximately 1,000 investors, court documents said. As the scheme began to collapse in late 2017 and early 2018, Santillo and Parris had returned approximately $44.8 million to investors.
In a letter to the judge, Santillo expressed remorse for taking advantage of friends he had known for years, the Democrat and Chronicle reports.
“I lay awake at night ashamed, knowing that today could be the day, the day a client can’t go see their grandchildren, afford medication, or God forbid a funeral or vacation as they wish,” he wrote. “… I made terrible choices.”
Despite the restitution order, securities litigation consultant and former regulator Louis Straney said Santillo’s victims will bear the weight of his crimes for years to come.
And with a number of elderly victims being pulled into the scheme, there is little time for them to fully recover what was lost.
“Recovery for the harmed investors is extremely unlikely unless the participating commercial banks are found to have been negligent in their detection, reporting and ultimate prevention of suspicious activity,” Straney said. “Based on the federal investigative findings in this case, the transfer of ownership of investor funds is far from normal activity.”
He added that the presence of significant anti-money laundering failings adds a unique spin to a classic Ponzi case. It likely also contributed to the length of the deception.
“The establishment and implementation of an effective anti-money laundering protocol by financial institutions is required and critical to investor protection,” Straney said. “The nagging question that must be addressed is how did this fraud go on for a decade? The scope and breadth of this criminal activity required a coordinated cadre of enablers.”
Parris was previously convicted on similar charges and is awaiting sentencing. Attempts to reach Santillo’s attorney were unsuccessful.