Patrick O’Connor faces prison sentence over investment fraud

Patrick O’Connor has pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering, United States Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin announced on Thursday.

The charges stem from O’Connor’s involvement in a large-scale investment fraud scheme that led to a financial loss to multiple victims in excess of $9 million.

Beginning in 2011 and continuing until 2018, O’Connor solicited funds from several investors for investment in an entity he created entitled “Madison Financial Services.” As part of his solicitations, O’Connor made various material misrepresentations to investors regarding the entity.

For instance, O’Connor represented that Madison Financial Services would invest all of the investors’ funds into a TradeStation online brokerage account. O’Connor also claimed that he would use the TradeStation account to actively trade purchased securities and he projected an average annual return on the investment of 2% a month, or 24% annually.

In reality, however, O’Connor used a large portion of the investors’ funds for his own personal expenses, including expenses related to his real estate development business and to repay other investors. Of the funds that O’Connor actually deposited into his TradeStation accounts and actively traded, he either lost or withdrew the vast majority of the funds and rarely generated any profit.

To further perpetuate the fraud, O’Connor provided investors with purported account statements from their investments with Madison Financial Services. The account statements were fictitious and showed the investors’ supposed year-to-date profits and their supposed current portfolio balance.

The sentencing of O’Connor has been scheduled for July 30, 2019. He faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison on the wire fraud charge and a maximum penalty of 20 years on the money laundering charge.