Con man said to be still bilking from prison
Thrice-convicted fraudster Todd Dyer is behind bars but he is still in business, says an ex-cellmate who claims he lost his entire retirement account to Dyer and his cohorts.
“My total loss before I could change my retirement back to me was $200,000,” said Richard Sills, who recently wrote in a letter to U.S. District Court Judge Pamela Pepper, one of the two Milwaukee federal judges who sentenced Dyer to his current prison sentences.
The allegation by Sills, who is serving a 20-year sentence for possession of child pornography, is the latest in a long line of fraud allegations leveled against Dyer by law enforcement or regulators. Dyer’s first run-in with regulators came in 1993 when Georgia securities officials ordered him to stop selling unregistered securities.
“Todd Dyer is a walking fraud scheme, always ready to shift into gear when he sees an opportunity,” said Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Joseph Wall. As an assistant U.S. attorney, Wall twice successfully prosecuted Dyer for masterminding fraud schemes that cost investors millions of dollars.
Dyer gained notoriety in 2013 when the Journal Sentinel reported he was under investigation. He responded to the probe by saying “Bring it on. “Bring. It. On” and later said he would make Wall look like “the biggest moron who ever walked on this Earth.”
Dyer was convicted of defrauding investors out of millions of dollars in 1999 and 2017. He was sentenced to 70 months in the 1999 case and 15 years in the latter case. He was also sentenced to five years after being convicted of state securities fraud in Illinois in 2004. The state time was served concurrent to the federal sentence.
Sills’ letter to Pepper is public be
cause it was filed in an ongoing lawsuit against Dyer. In that case, the U.S. Attorneys Office is asking that Dyer be banned from contacting witnesses or victims of his fraud schemes and to freeze actions on the lawsuits he and his cohort had filed against some victims or witnesses.
The federal suit was filed after Dyer and a cohort filed four suits against victims of his crimes. Those suits have been dismissed.
Sills told Pepper that his problems with his then-cellmate at the Elkton prison in Ohio came when Dyer “found out that I had a retirement account with approximately $185,000 in it.” Sills said he told Dyer he had the money invested in a joint account with his sister.
Dyer “advised otherwise and said she could wipe out my account at any time,” Sills wrote. Sills said he learned his sister had withdrawn $10,000 without his knowledge.
So, Dyer told him to change the power of attorney on the account to his secretary, Tracy Bolton.
Bolton, a longtime Dyer associate, was indicted along with Dyer in 2015 but the charges were later dropped. She did not return calls for comment.
“My secretary is very trustworthy and she would be willing to be your POA,” Sills said Dyer told him.
So, Sills gave Bolton power of attorney and transferred his retirement account to her control.
Then, Sills said, the money was signed over to Melvin Krumdick, a Dyer associate. Krumdick is a Catholic priest who was dismissed by the Maryknoll Society in 1999 for violating canon law, a Maryknoll spokesman said.
Krumdick was also indicted with Dyer and the charges were dropped.
Krumdick hung up on a reporter who called him this week. Bolton, who like Krumdick lives in the Chicago suburbs, did not return calls for comment.
Then, Sills said, Krumdick and/or Bolton placed $50,000 in a “Todd Dyer irrevocable trust,” and $50,000 in a second trust, though Sills did not state the name of that trust’s beneficiary. Dyer also instructed Bolton to give Krumdick $50,000 “for his trouble,” Sills wrote.
“This was not my intention for my money,” Sills wrote. “Tracy Bolton was to create a trust for my daughter and put the money in it.”
Sills said Dyer told him the financial maneuvering was necessary to prevent Bolton from getting hit with an income tax bill.
Dyer also told Sills that when he won a pending lawsuit he would give Sills $50,000 “for being his associate if I helped him financially by loaning him $1,000 each month.”
Sills said he reluctantly allowed his money to be moved to the various accounts. “I did not want to, but they had my money and power of attorney,” Sills wrote.
Dyer, 58, was recently transferred to the Leavenworth federal prison. He is scheduled to be released in 2029, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons online inmate locator. Sills, 66, is still in the Elkton facilities and is scheduled to be released in 2033.
Prison officials declined to say why Dyer was transferred out of Elkton. The normally braggadocios Dyer declined a request to be interviewed, prison officials said.
Sills agreed to be interviewed but prison officials at Elkton vetoed the Journal Sentinel’s interview request.
Sills was vulnerable to losing money to Dyer because he violated a key rule of prison life, said Justin Paperny, a prison consultant. Paperny co-founded White Collar Advice after he served 18 months in prison for securities fraud.
His advice to wealthy criminals heading to prison: “Keep your mouth shut . ... Lay low, stay quiet, do not let people know if you are rich.”