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Hector May, 78, of Orangeburg in Rockland County, the former president of Executive Compensation Planners in Manhattan has been sentenced to 13 years in prison and ordered to pay $8.4 million in restitution to his victims.
May pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in White Plains federal court late last year.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, May admitted that from 1995 through last year, he used a complicated scheme to steal money from 15 of his clients to cover business losses and for personal expenses, as well as to make payments to other victims in order to conceal the fraud.
The Ponzi scheme helped May and his family pay for a luxurious lifestyle with the stolen money he mostly shared with his daughter over the course of more than two decades.
May’s daughter, Vania May Bell has been named as a co-conspirator and faces criminal charges of her own.
“This case has all the makings of a classic Ponzi Scheme with payments made to investors with other investor money, bogus account statements, etc.," Philip Bartlett, inspector-in-charge of the New York Office of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service said in a statement last year. "Mr. May also used investor money to pay personal and business expenses. His day of reckoning has arrived.”
Several of May’s victims reportedly spoke ill of him prior to his sentencing, and May was denied the opportunity to have a conversation directly with those victims. May was remanded directly into federal custody and will begin his sentence in Manhattan. It is unclear which federal prison he will be shipped to.
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