A former financial advisor who admitted forging an elderly client’s name on $1.8 million worth of checks has been sentenced in federal court in San Francisco to one year and eight months in prison.
Adorean Boleancu, 47, of Napa, a former vice president at Morgan Stanley & Co. and Wells Fargo Advisors, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg on Wednesday.
Seeborg also ordered him to pay $360,199 in restitution to the victim, a now-83-year-old widow.
Federal prosecutors said in a sentencing brief that Boleancu previously repaid the widow $873,000, including $712,953 from the sale of a penthouse condominium he owned in San Francisco. The prosecutors said she also received an unspecified amount of additional compensation from Boleancu’s former employers.
Boleancu pleaded guilty before Seeborg in September to one count of wire fraud. He admitted during the plea that he signed his client’s name to more than $1.8 million in checks drawn on her brokerage accounts and home equity lines of credit without her knowledge or authorization.
Prosecutors said the 22 checks were payable to Boleancu’s girlfriend, sister, brother-in-law, another female acquaintance, cash, and companies where he had credit card accounts.
The largest checks were two written to his girlfriend, who transferred $1,025,000 of the misappropriated funds to Boleancu. The advisor in turn withdrew most of the money in cashier’s checks or money orders, prosecutors said in the brief.
Boleancu was indicted by a federal grand jury in July on 14 counts of bank fraud, four counts of wire fraud, five counts of money laundering and four counts of aggravated identity theft.
After he pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and admitted the forgery in a plea agreement, prosecutors dropped the additional counts.
Boleancu worked as a vice president and financial advisor for Morgan Stanley & Co. from 2004 to 2008, and as a vice president for Wells Fargo Advisors, a subsidiary of San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co., from 2008 to 2011, according to the indictment.
The widow was his client at both institutions between 2007 and 2011, the indictment said.
In a separate civil proceeding, a private regulatory agency, the Washington, D.C.,-based Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, in February permanently barred Boleancu from working in the securities industry.
Julia Cheever, Bay City News
