Florida Financial Planner Convicted In $1.3M Theft Case

By Daphne Duret, The Palm Beach Post, Fla.

Feb. 13--WEST PALM BEACH -- Standing outside a courtroom, fresh tears welling in her eyes, Belinda Yeatts wrapped her arms around Assistant State Attorney Kathryn Lewis-Perrin on Friday and told the prosecutor she'd just given her the best Valentine's Day gift ever.

Inside, former financial planner Michael Hardman of Lake Worth had just been ordered to jail by Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Stephen Rapp moments after a jury convicted him of first and second degree grand theft for bilking investors to the tune of more than $1.3 million.

Yeatts, who testified against Hardman, told the jurors that the $30,000 she gave Hardman to invest in what he said was a safe growth fund was all she had left from a settlement from a hostage situation she survived years ago -- a situation that killed one of her co-workers and left her with a post-traumatic stress disorder she still suffers from.

"I know it seems weird for me to be smiling about something like that, but I'm happy. That man took everything I had," she said after smiling and clapping her hands when she heard that Hardman, 63, faces a minimum sentence of 34 months in prison but could theoretically face up to 45 years in prison when Rapp sentences him April 7.

Hardman originally faced allegations that he stole more than $1.3 million.

He met some of the victims through the financial planning business he inherited from his father and befriended others, such as Yeatts, in a support group. According to arrest reports, he had investors sign up to invest in a company called "Tech Support Systems" and sign agreements identifying the investments as a "loan" with himself as the personal guarantor. In most cases he made some "interest" payments to the investors but eventually stopped.

Though his arrest report lists more than a dozen alleged victims, prosecutors dropped some of Hardman's charges well before his trial this week. And on Friday Rapp dismissed five securities fraud charges before jurors began deliberating.

The six-member panel convicted Hardman of one count each of first-degree and second-degree grand theft, returing the guilty verdict in less than an hour, something Lewis-Perrin and fellow prosecutor Mike Rachel said showed how overwhelming the evidence was against Hardman.

"He ran this scam for a long time, and it was time he got caught," Lewis-Perrin said.

Hardman had insisted in a recorded interrogation with Sheriff's Detective Erin Giannotti that the monies he'd received were loans that he'd lost in a string of bad investments.

"I'm embarrassed and I feel totally bad," Hardman said in the recording played for jurors. "I feel like [expletive]. I had no intention of doing anything wrong to these people."

Hardman's attorney, Elizabeth Gardner, characterized him as a victim of the public's naivete about the general practices of financiers who operate on Hardman's level.

She noted a part of the recorded interrogation where an investigator was incredulous at Hardman's claims that he'd forgotten what he'd done with Yeatts' $30,000 as well as the more than $100,000 another man gave him.

"I think the mainstream person who has a regular 9-to-5 job and who doesn't see how big money is made wouldn't understand that process," Gardner said, later adding that a series of failed deals created a "perfect storm" that left Hardman unable to repay the loans. "This is like debtors prison."

Yeatts and others who gave Harman money, however, called the conviction just punishment for a man they consider a con artist.

The investment adviser license for Hardman Financial Group Inc., of which Hardman was president, was terminated in 2005, according to the Florida Office of Financial Regulation in Tallahassee. A broker/dealer license for Hardman Financial Services was terminated in 2002 and a mortgage broker license for Hardman Financial Group expired in 2000.

Yet Yeatts said Hardman told her he was fully licensed in 2008, when she gave him the $30,000 from the settlement in the Sept. 19, 1996 hostage situation in West Palm Beach that left her disabled.

Another victim, Alan Thompkins, who along with Yeatts and others eventually sued Hardman, gave Hardman an estimated $190,000 between 2005 and 2007.

Yeatts remembers calling Hardman a year later to get her money back, only to have Hardman stall her for months. One day, she said, she sat in his office for an hour and watched him constantly hit the refresh button on a web page, saying he was waiting for the transfer on her money to be posted to her account "any minute."

Another time, she said, he promised he'd liquidate his own assets if necessary to make sure she got her money. At their last encounter, Yeatts said, Hardman tossed a $20 bill over her fence after she complained that she didn't have enough money for groceries.

"I was so embarrassed," Yeatts said. "But I took the money because I was hungry."

After that, Yeatts said, she began looking for a lawyer. Patrick Quinlan took on her case for free and won a judgment against Hardman just before his August 2012 arrest.

Yeatts, who became a friend of Hardman's family after meeting him in 1999, doesn't believe she'll ever get back her money back.

"He broke my heart," Yeatts said of Hardman. "But I have to believe that something good will come out of this."

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