One day after he pleaded guilty to federal charges arising from an $8 million investment scam, Fair Haven resident Maxwell Smith was in state court Wednesday, owning up to more allegations.
The 69-year-old former financial adviser at Cantone Research in Tinton Falls faces up to 15 years on the state charges when he’s sentenced on March 5, according to an announcement from the office of Attorney General AnnE Milgram.
He faces a 20-year sentence on related federal charges, to which he pleaded guilty on Tuesday, and is scheduled for sentencing in that case on February 26. Under a “global resolution” worked out between prosecutors and Smith’s lawer, the sentences will be served concurrently.
Appearing in state Superior Court in Morris County, Smith pleaded guilty to a charge of first-degree money laundering.
From the AG’s office:
Smith admitted that he defrauded investors and used their money for his personal expenses, laundering the stolen investor funds through bank accounts he controlled.
An investigation by the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice Major Crimes Bureau revealed that Smith defrauded at least a dozen mostly elderly investors of approximately $9.8 million between 1992 and 2009. Smith used investor funds for personal expenses that included fine dining, entertainment, about $400,000 in mortgage payments on his home and a relative’s home, $120,000 in home renovations, $78,000 for luxury furnishings for his home, and rental payments for a villa in Gordes, France, for several weeks each summer for almost 15 years.
Smith was ordered to repay his victims $7,847,823, “which represents the amount taken from investors less amounts he returned to the investors as purported interest,” the AG’s announcement said.
“This investment broker stole millions of dollars from elderly clients, callously betraying the trust they placed in him as their longtime financial advisor,” said Milgram.
