Twin Long Island financial advisors swindled dozens of their clients out of more $5 million — including a blind woman duped into taking out a loan she didn’t actually need, the feds charged as their trial opened Monday.
Brothers Adam and Daniel Kaplan, 36, spent years lying to as many as 50 clients about investments and profit margins, forging bank records and checks, and pocketing the ill-gotten proceeds, federal prosecutors said.
“Adam and Daniel Kaplan stole millions and millions of dollars from their clients,” Assistant US Attorney Rebecca Urquiola told jurors in US District Court in Central Islip.
“From 2018 to 2021, Adam and Daniel worked as financial advisors,” Urquiola said.
“You will learn that Adam and Daniel defrauded their clients,” the prosecutor continued. “First by funneling money directly into their [personal] accounts. When funneling money directly to their bank accounts, the client would see on their bank statement that it would say, ‘Kaplan Sale.’”
The siblings were first charged with a 16-count indictment in July 2023, and Adam Kaplan was hit with two more counts in a superseding complaint in February for allegedly trying to intimate witnesses and destroy evidence from April 2023 to last September.
Prosecutors said the Kaplans’ clients were duped into signing agreements that charged a 1% commission — but would instead charge the unsuspecting investors two or three times more.
In one instance, they allegedly forged a client’s $3,000 check, turning it into a $23,000 payment.
And Adam Kaplan later asked investors to chip in on a lucrative flower business and a moving company — which were just more fronts to steal their money, Urquiola alleged.
When customers got wise and the feds started to close in, the pair “went into damage control” — and allegedly tried to bully whistleblowers.
The prosecutor said Adam Kaplan texted co-conspirator Ron Roth — who pleaded guilty in the scam and agreed to testify against the brothers — that he “wanted his victims peeing blood and missing teeth.”
“Even after getting arrested for his fraud, Adam Kaplan continuously texted his victims through Ron to stop them from testifying,” Urquiola added. “Ron Roth has pled guilty and he agreed to testify in hope that the judge would take that into consideration during sentencing.”
Lawyers for the Kaplans, in their own opening statements, disputed the claims, blaming Roth.
“Ron is a liar and when he was caught he skated his way out,” Adam Kaplan’s lawyer, Mark Cohen, told jurors.
“As for the supposed threats, you will learn it was just a matter of Roth’s story,” Cohen said. “You can’t rely on Roth.”
Daniel Kaplan’s lawyer, Claire Blumenthal-Buck, dismissed the government’s claims as just “a story.”
“A story made on assumptions,” she said, adding of her client, “He’s not the main character in this book and that’s what the evidence will show.”
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