Family loses retirement to ponzi scheme

He preyed on victims hoping to invest for their future.

Now, Richard Piccoli will likely spend the rest of his life in prison.

There were hundreds of local victims, and many were embarrassed to go public, but one family allowed to take an up close look at how losing their entire retirement nest egg has affected them.

Carl Bell worked for over 30 years at a bottle factory.

"The only way I did it is work seven days a week, and all the hours I could work," said Carl.

So when he heard that his brother was making 8% interest through a financial planner named Richard Piccoli, Carl decided to entrust Piccoli with his nest egg.

"And then he said 'Well, he's a Christian.' Well that's a good point there that makes him sound good, but he wasn't a Christian," said Linda Bell.

The Bells invested their entire 401K, hoping to make the most of the $58,000 dollars that took them more than 20 years to save.

"Well with the interest, I was figuring out what I'd get per month, then that way my grandchildren or whatever I could give them x-amount of dollars for college or whatever ya know," said Carl. "He had it all."

One morning last winter, before Bell even got an interest payment, he opened up the morning paper to find that Piccoli was arrested for operating a Ponzi scheme. He was using new clients money to pay so-called interest payments to other clients, and pocketing the difference.

Last month, at age 83, he was sentenced to 20 years in Federal Prison.

"Ya know he's a lucky man. A hundred and fifty years ago, they would've just taken him out and hung him," said Carl.

The Bells have a 96 year old friend and a grandson living with them, and now they have to stretch their dollar every day.

"It damaged us, ya know, we're bickering at each other all the time over it," said Linda. "It's a lotta stress it's a lot of hurt."

"We have nothing to back up on. I mean, I'm hoping I don't have to go out and get a job," said Linda.

The Bells are in the same boat as up to 500 other people in western New York, who invested their money with Richard Piccoli, and are now pinning their hopes on a day in January, when they may get some of their money back.

They recently received a letter from Federal Judge Skretny, who has set a January 11th deadline for the Securities and Exchange commission to come up with a number of how much of the $20 to 30 million scheme is still left to give back to investors. It could be a third, It could be half.

"Anything will be better than nothing," Linda said. "To get back a little bit of what we had."

"When you lose like that, it's something you worked for all your life. You sit around and you think, 'Boy if I wouldn't have made that move,'" said Carl.

Is Richard Piccoli in jail now ?

Yes, He has been in the custody of US Marshals for the past four weeks. They are not saying which Federal Prison he'll spend the 20-year sentence in.

How much money are we talking about here?

They estimate somewhere between $20 and 30 million dollars was misused in the scheme, and so far investigators have found about $7 million of that. Now over the next several weeks leading up to January 11th, they'll be looking for more tangible assets to help pay these victims back.