Ponzi schemer Richard Piccoli gets 20-year term‎

Victims of a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme who wanted the man who robbed them severely punished got their wish Wednesday when a judge sentenced the 83-year-old businessman to a 20-year prison term.

"A hundred-fifty years ago we would have taken him out and hung him," said investor Carl Bell, 64, one of three victims who spoke at the sentencing of Richard Piccoli of Amherst, a suburb of Buffalo. About a dozen others looked on. U.S. District Judge William Skretny rejected a defense request for a sentence that would give Piccoli hope that he would not die in prison, saying he ran a "shameful, disgraceful and rather ruthless Ponzi scheme" that bilked clients recruited largely through ads in Catholic newspapers, using clergy-member investors as references. 

 "You operated without a conscience. You are a wolf in sheep's clothing," the judge told the grandfatherly Piccoli, who walked slowly to the podium and put eyeglasses on before addressing the court. "I know I'm going to jail, and I deserve it," said Piccoli, whose scheme lasted nearly 30 years. "I let so many people down." 

 Assistant U.S. Attorney Gretchen Wylegala said authorities estimate Piccoli and his Gen-See Capital Corp. took in $31 million in investments between 2002 and 2009 and that about $7 million was available to partially reimburse victims, many of whom lost tens of thousands of dollars saved over a lifetime of work. 

 More than 800 people invested with Piccoli, authorities said, and about 500 lost money as he paid earlier investors with money collected from those who came later. At least 100 people said their finances were ruined, Skretny said. 

 Defense attorney Joel Daniels said that while defendants in similar cases, including Bernard Madoff, had been driven by greed, Piccoli "was a saver, not a spender," always in search of a good business deal that would let him straighten things out. "He didn't have any Palm Beach condos. He didn't have any boats," Daniels said. Piccoli, a widower, drove a leased Toyota Camry, which he turned in last week to raise money for restitution, Daniels said, and sold off four parcels of real estate for a total of less than $400,000. "He's broke. He doesn't have two nickels to rub together, literally," Daniels said. 

Investor Lu Tracy of Rochester said she was forced to give up plans to buy a lakeside home in Atlanta after learning the tens of thousands of dollars she had given Piccoli, based on an ad she picked up in a nursing home, were gone. Piccoli, she said, had shaken her faith in mankind. "I can't relocate or travel or enjoy my retirement," the 69-year-old former manufacturing supervisor said. 

 Victim Harold DiMarco, 79, of Buffalo said he suffered a heart attack in January and blamed the stress of losing his own investments and "anguish" over steering others, including three who have died, to Piccoli. Skretny sentenced Piccoli to 20 years for a mail fraud charge and imposed a five-year concurrent sentence for tax evasion. Piccoli pleaded guilty to the charges in June. Investors, who will receive an undetermined percentage of their money back, were told they would not receive anything until after investigators had finalized the amount available, likely sometime next year.