PHILADELPHIA – United States Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero announced that Lee D. Weiss, 51, of Roslyn, NY, and Newton, MA, was sentenced today to five years in prison, three years of supervised release, and was ordered to pay $7.5 million in restitution and a $250,000 fine for his conviction of investment adviser fraud. The charges arose from Weiss’ multi-year investment scam that targeted his own clients and caused investor losses of more than $7 million.
In March 2022, the defendant pleaded guilty to investment adviser fraud in connection with this scheme to defraud his clients. Weiss was the principal of Family Endowment Partners, LP, an investment adviser registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which had an office in West Chester, PA, before it was closed by order of the SEC. The defendant used his position to fleece his own clients of millions of dollars through purported investments in a now-defunct Florida tobacco company and a series of private securities offerings. Weiss told his clients that their money would be used for investment purposes when, in fact, he diverted it to make Ponzi payments and to fund his lifestyle, and further told his clients that they were making money when their funds had already been misappropriated. Weiss continued to lie to them about the value of their investments to prevent them from learning of his thefts and to convince them to continue paying him fees for “managing” their money.
“Honesty,…
