A Staten Island insurance agent is facing hate crime charges after allegedly swindling several of his elderly customers out of their life savings, the Staten Island Advance reports.
Paul Simoneschi faces a 63-count indictment for supposedly stealing a total of $2.5 million from clients while running his Brooklyn-based insurance agency and financial planning operation, Simmons Planning Group & Agency Inc.
According to prosecutors, Simoneschi would gain the trust of his elderly clients and then suggest dubious investment methods, including giving up their insurance policies, before depositing the money into his own bank account.
Other allegations suggest he ended the clients’ insurance policies without their knowledge, forging their names and providing false documents in order to collect the payout for himself.
According to the indictment, Simoneschi targeted the elderly and even spoke Italian with clients who were Italian immigrants in order to appear more trustworthy.
The agent ran the scam from June 2009 to June 2014, before one of his clients declined his investment advice and then discovered $30,000 had disappeared from his bank account. All told, Simoneschi embezzled more than $2.5 million, with victims losing up to $575,000 apiece.
Some, according to Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson, were not even aware they were victims.
“This defendant allegedly took advantage of some of society’s most vulnerable victims whom he targeted because of their age,” Thompson said in a statement. “He held himself out as a savvy investor and trusted advisor, when in fact he was allegedly nothing more than a crook.”
Simoneschi faces charges including first-degree scheme to defraud and third-degree grand larceny as a hate crime. If convicted, he faces up to 25 years in prison.
