Southampton advisor sentenced for $1M client fraud | Long Island Business News

A Southampton investment advisor was sentenced Thursday in federal court in Central Islip for defrauding more than $1 million from clients, officials said.

Jeffrey Slothower was convicted in May of 2024 of federal wire fraud, investment adviser fraud and money laundering. On Thursday, he was sentenced to prison and ordered to pay restitution, according to the U.S. District Attorney’s Office.

“Jeffrey Slothower used his position as an investment advisor to steal over a million dollars from an unsuspecting couple,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella, Jr., said in a news release about the sentencing. “Today’s sentence sends a message to all those that would use their positions as financial professionals to line their own pockets – our office will prosecute you to the full extent of the law.”

Trial evidence showed that Slothower carried out a scheme to misuse more than $1 million from clients. While operating Battery Private, a New York investment advisory firm, he solicited a California couple whose funds he had previously managed at another firm, officials said. Slothower promised to outperform their existing returns without market risk and, in 2017, offered to invest the first victim’s money in purported bonds backed by homeowners’ association fees paying an 8 percent return.

In January 2017 the victim sent more than $500,000 to Slothower at Battery Private to invest in those bonds. Instead, Slothower transferred the funds to his personal accounts and used them to purchase a $125,000 Mercedes-Benz SUV and for dues at the Long Island National Golf Club. He later made payments to the victim, falsely representing them as quarterly investment distributions, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Slothower later solicited additional investments from the first victim, including funds controlled by the second victim, then a Battery Private client. In December 2017, the second victim sent more than $500,000 to Slothower to invest in the bonds. Yet Slothower  used these funds for personal expenses, including tens of thousands of dollars in credit card charges for a $6,500 Chanel purse, a $13,000 Rolex watch and more than $11,000 in Ralph Lauren clothing. Slothower made payments to the second victim that he falsely represented as quarterly investment distributions, officials said.

The scheme continued through June 2018, when Slothower obtained an additional approximately $84,000 from the first victim. He used those funds to make purported quarterly payments to both victims, which he falsely represented as investment returns, and to pay golf club dues, according to officials.

Slothower also engaged in mortgage fraud while attempting to refinance a mortgage on a residence he owned. He misrepresented to the lender, both orally and through false invoices, that the victims’ funds were proceeds from the sale of wine, stamp and fine art collections. At trial, according to officials, Slothower falsely testified under oath that he had not characterized the victims’ funds as proceeds from asset sales.

On Thursday, he was sentenced to 72 months in prison and ordered to pay more than $1.16 million in restitution and forfeiture, according to the U.S. District Attorney’s Office.