How a Wausau wealth manager defrauded seniors

Anthony Liddle will face eight years after defrauding investors, many seniors; so we dug a little deeper

A couple of years ago I was invited to a seminar. The person inviting me was pretty insistent I go, but it was during my workday and frankly, I’m leery of any type of seminar in general; especially those involving money.

Frankly, investing is pretty easy. I buy low-cost index funds, sit back and let the market and compound interest do its work. The more I study investing, the more I’m convinced the simplest approach is best.

So I probably wouldn’t have been interested in what the seminar was selling anyway, but just as well I never attended (though maybe I would have a better story here): the person leading that seminar is now heading to federal prison.

A Western District Federal Judge sentenced Anthony B. Liddle of Prosper Wealth Management to eight years in federal prison. That’s because Liddle came up just short of running a Ponzi scheme - he took money from investors in the Wausau area but never actually invested anything.

Liddle, according to the DOJ’s report, took the money and used it to pay business expenses, personal expenses and travel for himself and his family. He never actually invested the money.

Moreover, according to the report, Liddle mostly targeted people he knew well, and many of them were seniors. That led Judge James Patterson to call Liddle’s crimes “monstrous.”

Liddle kept a high profile, the report says, portraying himself as a successful family man, holding seminars about wealth management and appearing in leadership conferences.

I dug up an old conference flier for a Launch Leadership Conference in which Liddle spoke at. One of the speakers was a former director at MCDEVCO, as well as a prominent attorney in town.

I also found a bit more about the case, and Liddle’s now shuttered firm, including his website that’t no longer published on the web.