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Jeffrey Chartier, age 59, of Florida, was sentenced to 10 years behind bars in federal court in Central Islip Thursday, Dec. 1.
It followed his March 2020 jury conviction on multiple charges, including conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and money laundering.
Federal prosecutors said between 2014 and 2016, Chartier and others worked with a Melville-based “boiler room” to artificially inflate the price and trading volume of stock in struggling companies with poor prospects.
They then offloaded the stock onto unsuspecting victims, many of them elderly and vulnerable, according to prosecutors.
Two of the companies, National Waste Management Holdings and CES Synergies, were once profitable and were run by people seeking to retire, prosecutors said.
Chartier persuaded the owners to pay him in large blocks of stock to take their companies public on the promise that doing so would sustain the companies for the future.
Instead, prosecutors said Chartier hired the boiler room, which used high-pressure sales tactics to fraudulently inflate the companies’ share prices, and then dumped his own shares through matched trades, causing the companies’ stock prices to plummet.
A co-defendant, 69-year-old Lawrence Isen, of California, was previously convicted for his role in the scheme, which prosecutors said involved colluding with “crooked” investors to dump large volumes of shares in two other companies on the victims.
Islen assisted the boiler room in its illegal cold call campaigns, and transferred money and stock required by the boiler room for the campaigns, prosecutors said.
He had also been accused of creating fraudulent stock purchase agreements, consulting agreements, and invoices.
Altogether, federal prosecutors said the group’s market manipulation inflated the stock price of five companies by more than $147 million.
“Jeffrey Chartier and his confederates lined their pockets with the lifetime savings of hard-working citizens they victimized all around the country,” US Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement.
“Today’s sentences should serve as a reminder to so-called white-collar criminals that this Office will hold them accountable for their selfish actions and the devastation they inflict upon the lives and families of others.”
In addition to his prison time, Chartier was ordered to pay $1,022,398 in forfeiture and $6,083,603 in restitution.
Islen is still awaiting sentencing.
Sixteen defendants have been charged and convicted in the case.
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