He not only used a classic Ponzi scheme to raise more than $115 million from unsuspecting investors. He also, in the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, promised to provide the U.S. government with desperately needed respiratory masks and other personal-protective equipment that he had no way of securing.
Now a 20-year prison sentence for a former Rochester, New York-based broker-dealer is bringing an end to prosecutors’ case against one of the masterminds of what the FBI has deemed the biggest Ponzi scheme ever perpetrated in western New York.
Forty-two-year-old Christopher A. Parris, formerly of Rochester and now of Lawrenceville, Georgia, was given 244 months of prison time — 20 years and four months — earlier this month both for his role in that massive investor fraud and for misrepresenting himself as a seller of respirator masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. His sentencing on Dec. 20 came almost a year after his chief accomplice, Perry Santillo — a colorful figure also known as “King Perry” — got 17 ½ years in prison for his part in the same Ponzi scheme.
Parris and Santillo both stood accused of committing mail fraud to bilk more than 1,000 ordinary investors out of tens of millions of dollars between January 2011 and June 2018. Investigators said the pair would promise to invest clients’ money in companies that were secretly controlled by Parris and Santillo. Few of the companies, including First Nationle Solution, Percipience Global Corporation,…
