Chicago woman charged with defrauding elderly out of $2.5 million
By Bill Dwyer For Chronicle Media — October 22, 2018
John R. Lausch, Jr., the U. S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois
A Niles-based financial adviser has been charged with swindling “at least a dozen” elderly clients out of a total of more than $2.5 million over the past nine years.
Lucita Zamoras, 55, of Chicago, a Filipino immigrant, reportedly portrayed herself as a financial adviser specializing in retirement planning. But federal prosecutors say she ruthlessly targeted elderly individuals, particularly other Filipino immigrants.
Those people, prosecutors say, felt a “sense of shared experience” with Zamoras’ background, and “were confused about how their funds would be and were spent.”
“Her grasp of the Filipino language and culture allowed her to win the trust of numerous clients,” the civil complaint against her read.
In all, Zamoras received approximately $3.5 million from investors, who lost $2.5 million. She was charged with one count of mail fraud and will be arraigned sometime in the near future.
Zamoras owned several businesses in Niles, including First Fidelity Financial Group LLC, JQH Ventures LLC, and Cornerstone Home Solutions. The criminal charge stemmed from an April, 2017 civil lawsuit filed against Zamoras by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
That suit was settled in September when Zamoras signed a consent judgment requiring her to pay $1,069,479.70 in restitution and interest.
She allegedly told her victims their money would be invested in “safe, low risk investments.” They were, in fact, “unsecured, unsafe, and involved substantial risk,” authorities say.
Zamoras spent “some or all of the money” on personal and business expenses, including gambling losses, credit card payments, airline tickets and car payments. She reportedly attempted to conceal the scheme by using money from new investors to make Ponzi-type payments to earlier investors, hiding the structure from all her investors.
A five-page criminal complaint also accused Zamoras of “convinc(ing) certain investors to allow her to use their credit cards and to open joint bank accounts with her.”
Zamoras subsequently allegedly used those funds to repay certain credit card charges that she made using those investors’ credit cards.
In announcing the criminal complaint against Zamoras, John R. Lausch, Jr., the U. S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois thanked several federal and state agencies that assisted in the investigation.
They include the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in Chicago, the Chicago office of the U.S. Department of Labor, Employee Benefits Security Administration, the Illinois Securities Department of the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office and the Chicago Regional Office of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
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— Chicago woman charged with defrauding elderly out of $2.5 million —-
