Scott Mason, 66, a former Abington High School student and former president and founder of Blue Bell-based Rubicon Wealth Management, was sentenced to more than eight years in prison on Wednesday, June 25 after pleading guilty to using millions of dollars of client investments to “finance his own lavish lifestyle”, the U.S. Attorney’s Office reported.

Mason, of Gladwyne, was also ordered to pay $24,998,596.46 in restitution to his fraud victims and $2,353,355 to the IRS.

In January, he was charged with two counts of wire fraud, securities fraud, investment adviser fraud, and five counts of filing a false tax return. He pleaded guilty to all charges later that month.

Mason “transferred more than $17 million from 13 Rubicon clients to an entity that he owned and controlled, and ultimately used that money to finance his personal expenditures, including international travel, country club membership dues, credit card bill payments, and the purchase of an ownership stake in a Jersey Shore-based miniature golf course,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office wrote.

Their report continues:

Mason targeted clients with whom he had a longstanding relationship and who trusted him implicitly, including longtime friends and family members, and he often liquidated those clients’ securities holdings in order to finance the fraudulent transfers. He either forged client signatures on distribution authorization forms or omitted all pertinent details of the so-called “investments” when seeking client authorization for the transfers and instead falsely represented that he was investing client funds in diversified short-term bonds.

In reality, Mason was converting client funds to his own personal use. He also used a portion of the fraud proceeds to partially repay another Rubicon client from whom Mason gradually misappropriated millions of dollars since 2007, in order to avoid detection by that victim. Even after factoring in the partial repayments, Mason stole a net total of more than $6 million from that additional victim.

Finally, Mason failed to report any of his fraud proceeds on his personal income tax returns, generating a tax loss of approximately $3.225 million.

“Frauds like the one Mr. Mason perpetrated on his clients damage the trust and integrity of our financial systems,” said Wayne A. Jacobs, Special Agent in Charge of FBI Philadelphia. “The FBI and our law enforcement partners continue to strive to protect the honesty of our financial institutions and bring to justice the criminals responsible for deceiving the public through their financial schemes.”

The case was investigated by the FBI and IRS-Criminal Investigation, with assistance from the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Philadelphia Regional Office.

Mason is required to report to begin his sentence on August 11.

In 1975, when Mason was a 16-year-old student at Abington High, his father, Melvyn, was convicted for his part in a Ponzi scheme, according to The Philadelphia Business Journal. In addition to the Justice Department’s criminal charges, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed parallel civil charges against Mason, The Journal said.

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Photos: Hobart and William Smith Colleges, theorg.com