A former Norwich certified public accountant must spend more than five years in federal prison for cheating clients and U.S. taxpayers out of about $4.8 million, authorities say.
Felix Robert LaSaracina, 60, will serve 63 months, followed by three years of supervised release.
Sentencing was handed out by U.S. District Judge Christopher F. Droney in one of his final cases before Droney takes his seat on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals early next year.
According to court documents and testimony, from November 2001 to September 2010 LaSaracina defrauded more than two dozen clients who had approached him about setting up their childrens’ trusts or handling their real estate escrows, among other things, of approximately $4.1 million. Instead, he lured them to invest in fictitious real estate and other fraudulent investments he touted as “sure things.”
LaSaracina siphoned their funds for his own personal use, even using some of it to pay fictitious investment gains to clients, papers show. In addition, he failed to pay more than $700,000 in federal employment taxes.
