Allegedly lured bad investments
By Travis Andersen
A retired Boston police officer
is facing wire fraud charges in federal court in New York, according to
authorities.
Daniel Rice, 50, of Stoughton,
was arrested Friday on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire
fraud, the FBI said in a statement.
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He was released after appearing
in federal court in Boston and is scheduled to be arraigned in Buffalo Friday.
Court records did not list a
lawyer for Rice. A call to a number listed for him was not returned Monday
night.
According to prosecutors, Rice,
owner of the now-defunct Security Financial Development LLC, steered investors
to companies that were controlled by an alleged accomplice, Michael Wilson,
formerly of Hamburg, N.Y.
Rice allegedly convinced a
Montana broker, identified in court records as C.B., to wire $250,000 in March
2009 to one of Wilson’s companies, even though Rice knew that the “companies
failed to pay out on deals promising large returns in short periods of time,”
the FBI statement said.
In January 2010, the same
broker wired $100,000 to Rice, who kept $40,000 for himself and transferred the
rest to a bank account for Wilson in Buffalo, authorities said.
Another investor’s funds,
totaling $71,875, were wired to bank accounts in the Buffalo area for a Wilson
company in July 2010, officials said.
“None of these deals paid out”
to the investors, the FBI statement said. “The only money ever recovered was
the $71,875 wired . . . in July 2010, which was recovered because the
government quickly applied to have the receiving bank accounts frozen. The
funds eventually were returned to the investor, who lives in Utah.”
It was not clear Monday night
when Rice retired from the Boston Police Department. Boston police did not
respond to inquiries about his dates of service.
City records show that he
earned $107,111 in 2012 as a detective. He is not listed as a department
employee on the 2013 payroll.
The FBI statement noted that
the Boston police Anti-Corruption Division assisted in the investigation.
Rice started Security Financial
in 2007, and it was dissolved in 2011, according to records posted on the
website of Secretary of State William F. Galvin’s office.
The company stated in a 2007
filing that it would “promote and conduct financial solution services” for
construction and renovation projects and “engage generally in any activity
which may be lawfully carried on by a for-profit corporation” in Massachusetts.
Travis Andersen can be reached
at travis.andersen@globe.com.
