A former Suntrust and M&T registered representative was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison for stealing more than $1 million from a 17-year-old customer.
Eddy Ray Blizzard originally pleaded guilty in Maryland federal court to bank fraud in late December and faces a harsher maximum sentence of 30 years. FBI Special Agent in Charge William J. DelBagno said Blizzard deserved “every year” he would spend behind bars.
“The victim spent his life working hard, saving for retirement and building a legacy for his loved ones,” he said. “Blizzard not only stole a million dollars, but took away their security and peace of mind.”
According to FINRA dataBlizzard began his career at UBS in 2001 before moving to Allfirst and then M&T in 2003, where he stayed for 11 years before moving to Suntrust in 2014. Suntrust fired him in 2017.
Blizzard's scheme targeted an unnamed elderly investor named “RM” in court documents. RM was a retired air conditioning technician who had worked for a Baltimore-based company for 30 years.
Six months after retirement, RM decided to invest his retirement funds to create a legacy for his grandchildren and went to M&T, where he maintained a deposit account. He soon met Blizzard, who started working at M&T soon after RM started investing and became his advisor.
Blizzard asked RM if he would continue to work with him if he went freelance. He said it would be a while before he had his own office and would continue to work out of the M&T office. But Blizzard never became an independent financial advisor.
Once a month, RM would drive an hour from his home in Chester, Md., to meet Blizzard in his car in the parking lot of his M&T office; these meetings would last 30 to 45 minutes and continued for years, with Blizzard never revealing why they were meeting in his car rather than his office.
Blizzard began asking RM for blank checks, with the client recalling that he had given the advisor about 15-20 signed blank checks. Unbeknownst to RM, Blizzard used these controls for his own purposes. (Evidence uncovered later showed he had used the money for property taxes, construction, boat payments and down payments on a new home.)
At least 12 times, RM went to his local bank to withdraw money, only to be told he didn't have enough money in his account. RM would call Blizzard, who would tell him to wait a day or two, but he didn't ask why his accounts didn't have funds.
Things came to a head in 2019 when RM prepared for a family vacation, only to find insufficient funds in the account. RM tried calling Blizzard for a week with no answer before going to his house and knocking on the front and back doors.
While there, RM received a call from Blizzard, saying neighbors had called complaining about the noise. Blizzard said all of the customer's money was gone, that he had attempted suicide and was hospitalized. (He later admitted that there was no suicide attempt.)
In addition to stealing from RM's retirement funds, Blizzard also stole his Social Security income. RM also believed that Blizzard was dealing with his mortgage payment, but in the fall of 2019, the man's home was placed in foreclosure because the advisor had not made the mortgage payments.
The following March, RM died at the age of 75, according to the Department of Justice.