Financial adviser given 5 years in prison as victims recall betrayal: ‘I don’t know what’s happened to our world.’

March 19-- Mar. 19--Lovadore Bode thought she was in sound financial hands after her husband died.

The financial adviser used by the Skokie couple for more than two decades promised to protect her nest egg as Bode grew older. He seemed like an honest person, took her out to lunch and asked how she was doing now that she was alone.

But it was all a fraud. In the span of a few years, the trusted adviser, Richard Booy, had stolen more than $250,000 from Bode's savings -- virtually all the money she and her husband had put away for their retirement, she said.

"He took just about everything I had," the 92-year-old Bode, who is partially deaf and blind, said from a wheelchair Monday in federal court. "All of a sudden I'm down to almost poverty level. ... I don't even have money to hire people to come into my house and help me. I'm in bad shape."

After listening to wrenching testimony from more than a half-dozen of Booy's victims, U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman sentenced Booy to five years in prison Monday, saying his fraud scheme was particularly egregious because it targeted mostly elderly, middle-class clientele who had placed their trust in him.

"The fact that it went on for four years, stealing money from elderly people who could not afford to lose (it), that's extremely serious," Feinerman said at the end of the emotional three-hour hearing.

Booy, 50, pleaded guilty last year to mail fraud, admitting to bilking two dozen victims out of a total of more than $2.3 million from 2012 to 2016. Some of the money he stole was used to pay earlier investors, bringing the total loss about $1.4 million, according to court records.

Prosecutors said Booy, who called his company Safe Financial Strategies LLC, targeted many of his victims at a Northwest Side evangelical church, advertising his services in the church bulletin. A business card he handed to parishioners -- displayed in court Monday by one of his victims -- contained the slogan "Not low risk, NO risk."

To bolster confidence with his victims, Booy falsely claimed to be affiliated with a well-known investment firm, creating phony receipts with the company's logo.

Instead of investing the funds as promised, Booy used the money to cover personal expenses -- including credit card debt and purchases at Best Buy and DirecTV -- and to pay earlier investors through Ponzi-type payments, according to prosecutors.

Booy's attorney, Nishay Sanan, asked Feinerman to sentence Booy to probation so he could continue working toward paying back the $1.4 million in restitution he owes to his victims. Sanan said it's been difficult for Booy to get work, but recently he'd found two job opportunities that could bring in tens of thousands of dollars for victims in the next six months.

"If he goes to jail now, those two jobs will be gone," Sanan said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Ebert, however, called that idea just another fraudulent sales pitch. In asking for a prison sentence of about eight years, Ebert said that if Booy received no prison time "there would be a line out the door of this building" of other defendants seeking the same deal.

Before he was sentenced, Booy, dressed in a dark suit and gray tie, apologized to the victims, saying that he was battling depression at the time he committed the fraud and that something "wasn't right in my head."

"It somehow didn't register even though I knew it was wrong," he said. "I will regret it no matter how long I live."

According to prosecutors, Booy's victims included a Chicago pastor, a retired painter, a retired government worker and an individual who has Parkinson's disease.

Many of the victims who spoke in court wondered aloud how Booy could sleep at night. Others turned directly to him as they spoke. One woman paused while recounting the false promises made by Booy to her, looking at him as he sat at the defense table with his eyes downcast.

"Is that right, Mr. Booy?" she said? "Is that what you told me?"

Bode, who read from a victim-impact statement printed in large type so she could see, said Booy convinced her to close several of the couple's accounts in order to cut him checks that he promised to put into higher-yielding investments.

"I'm just beside myself," she said. "I don't know what's happened to our world. It used to be you could trust everybody and do things with a handshake."

One woman, Lorel McDonald, told the judge that her mother, Patricia Watson, invested with Booy after seeing his name in the church bulletin.

"My mom was so proud of herself for finding him," McDonald said, her voice shaking with emotion. "She trusted him, and we trusted her."

After her mother had a series of medical setbacks and was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, McDonald said, her children sought to liquidate some of her holdings to pay for the care she needed. They grew suspicious when Booy put them off, but it was too late. When he was arrested, they learned that most of the $191,000 invested by Watson with Booy was gone.

Now McDonald said the only silver lining is that her mother's dementia has kept her from the awful truth.

"She doesn't remember him, and she doesn't know he stole her money," McDonald said.

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