A defrocked stock broker who infiltrated the Windham Mountain ski rescue patrol to steal their $4.7 million in savings probably faked dozens of his own rescues just to win their favor, said patrol members.
Frank S. Marone, 41, a fired Merrill Lynch broker, is behind bars for his Ponzi scheme, which he began running brazenly for three years from offices of a smaller Wall Street brokerage, Carlin Equities, and its affiliated Generic Trading of Philadelphia LLC.
But the 32 members of the celebrated rescue team wiped out by Marone’s fantasy life as a millionaire Iraqi war hero and ski rescuer may have found a happy ending, their lawyers said yesterday.
An arbitration panel ruled that the two affiliated brokerages, where Marone set up his steal-and-spend scam after Merrill Lynch booted him, must fork over as much as $3.7 million to the patrollers, or about 97 cents on the dollar.
The brokerages said they’ll appeal because the crimes involved Marone, not the companies.
Marone held his brokerage license under the brokerages’ names and pretended to his fellow ski team pals that he was trading their millions in sure-fire winners. Each invested from $5,000 to $1 million for Marone’s “funds.”
Marone even sent them e-mails apologizing for posting “just 25 percent annual returns.”
In reality he spent their money solely to support his lavish lifestyle, including European trips and down payments on a $1.5 million home in Fairfield, Conn., a $600,000 ski chalet in Windham, and leasing a fleet of eight cars.
Marone claimed he was an ex-Marine combat hero from the first Gulf War, but records showed he served only a few months in a National Guard unit in Long Island.
He also was drowning in debt despite owning two lavish homes, a 50-foot speedboat and a fleet of eight luxury cars.
“Everything he did was a lie,” said Joe Sweeney, a member of the ski rescue team who had been close friends with Marone and his wife and two young kids.
When Marone served weekends on the ski rescue team, he won accolades for rushing out first to rescue skiers in need.
“He deceived us all about so much that it’s hard to tell if his rescues were a lie, too,” Sweeney said.
The patrol’s lawyer, Kevin Conway, said the brokerages were aware of Marone’s checkered past.
“The brokerages failed to supervise him even though they knew his checkered past and previous customer complaints,” said Conway.
Marone had pleaded guilty earlier in a separate criminal case for grand theft and was sentenced to 6 to 18 years in state prison.