'My father never got to enjoy his money': Ex-investment advisor sentenced in $6 million Ponzi scheme that targeted retirees

By Lukas I. Alpert

Thomas Renison admitted fleecing former clients even after being barred from investment work following a previous phony Hungarian casino scheme.

Many of Thomas Renison's clients said they trusted him unequivocally. It turned out to be their biggest mistake.

The former-Connecticut investment advisor was sentenced last week to four years in prison for his role in running a Ponzi scheme that fleeced his mostly-elderly clients out of $6 million in retirement savings.

Renison, 69, of South Glastonbury, Conn., admitted taking many of his former clients into investing, despite having been barred from working in financial services by the Securities and Exchange Commission for his role in a prior scheme involving a bogus Hungarian casino project.

Renison pleaded guilty in 2020 to running the Ponzi scheme with his accomplice, Timothy Allcott, of Peabody, Mass. Alcott was also sentenced last week to 2 1/2 years in prison. Both men have been ordered to pay over $6 million in restitution, according to federal prosecutors.

Between 2015 and 2018, prosecutors accused Renison of convincing 15 clients from his former investment business, where he mostly sold insurance policies and advised on retirement strategies, to empty out their savings and pour it into a fund he and Alcott had launched called ARO Equity LLC.

The fund purportedly invested in small businesses in the Northeast, and promised to pay a guaranteed 8%-12% annual return. Renison argued that this was a better return than his former customers were getting from their other investments.

But prosecutors say that the fund was a fraud, losing large amounts of money on the investments it did make, while paying large commissions to Renison, a big salary to Allcott and payments to their children. The rest was used to pay dividends to earlier investors. In all, about $5 million disappeared, prosecutors said.

Messages left with attorneys for Renison and Allcott weren't immediately returned.

Relatives of those who were duped, several of whom have since passed away, say Renison was little more than a snake-oil salesman, who took advantage of older people who trusted him.

"If my late father had never met Tom Renison, he could have lived the last several years of his life as he had planned -- financially independent and relatively stress-free. Instead, the last several years of his life were filled with nothing but worry, stress and humiliation," the son of one unnamed victim who lost his entire $1.3 million nest egg, wrote in a letter to the judge.

"One of the most infuriating aspects of this whole ordeal is that my father never got to enjoy HIS money," the son wrote. "It's tragic that the only people who got to enjoy my father's money were Tom Renison, Timothy Alcott, and THEIR families."

Prosecutors say Renison and Alcott had purposely structured ARO Equity to hide the fact that Renison was a 50% owner, given that he had previously been barred by the SEC and authorities in Maine from working in financial services due to his role in a prior scam.

In that case, Renison was charged in 2011, along with Pete DiRosa, the former mayor of Manchester, Connecticut, of stealing $600,000 from a retiree purportedly to help build a casino and resort in Hungary.

Prosecutors ultimately dropped the criminal charges against Renison in that case, although the SEC issued a lifetime ban against him. DiRosa pleaded guilty and served four years in prison.

-Lukas I. Alpert

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05-08-23 1122ET

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