Kirkland investment adviser ‘knows she’s done wrong,’ pleads guilty to stealing $9.4M

Kirkland investment guru took $9.4M, pleads guilty

SEATTLE — A Kirkland investment adviser raised her right hand — still bandaged from a recent suicide attempt — and pleaded guilty Tuesday to stealing $9.4 million from more than three dozen clients.

Rhonda Breard, 47, promoted her financial expertise in television infomercials and in $49 seminars at local community colleges. Beginning in 2004, she started encouraging clients to take money out of certain accounts and turn it over to her — supposedly for new investments.

Instead, she used the money to buy expensive homes, cars, jewelry, personal watercraft and snowmobiles.

“She knows she’s done wrong,” her attorney, Ron Friedman, said afterward. “She’ll be saying she’s sorry for the rest of her life.”

Friedman confirmed that Breard tried to kill herself after her fraud unraveled early this year. She told the judge she’s on psychiatric medications but nothing that would affect her ability to understand the proceedings.

Breard is expected to face a standard range of about eight to 10 years in prison when she is sentenced for one count of mail fraud in July.

Several victims watched her plead. Rick McCurdy, a teacher at a Kent junior high school, said he and his wife lost about $77,000, and he’s had to postpone his retirement by a couple of years.

“We went to one of her seminars in 2005, and we bought into her whole thing — hook, line and sinker,” he said. “You try to trust people, and when people violate that trust, you have to ask why. It hurts.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Carl Blackstone told Magistrate Judge James P. Donohue that Breard’s scheme was straightforward. She used the money her clients gave her for personal expenses, then mailed them false account statements to conceal her actions — hence, the mail fraud charge.

Breard agreed to turn over essentially all of her assets in an attempt to repay the victims, but the money is nowhere near enough. Prosecutors said they found about $250,000 in cash, but Breard’s three properties are heavily mortgaged.

Breard ran Breard and Associates Wealth Management and was licensed to sell securities through Des Moines, Iowa-based ING Financial Partners.

Two of her victims sued her, a co-worker and ING in federal court last month. They allege that ING failed to supervise her even though in the early 1990s she was fired from Smith Barney for unauthorized trading, fined more than $100,000 for misconduct and had her license suspended for 10 days in separate incidents.

Dana Ripley, a spokesman for ING, said in an e-mail Tuesday that the company “is exploring whether an equitable resolution can be reached” with Breard’s victims.