Citibank’s South Michigan Avenue branch in downtown Chicago, where former Citi wealth adviser Helen Grace Caldwell worked. | Jonah Newman / Injustice Watch
Jonah Newman / Injustice Watch
A former Citibank wealth adviser in Chicago who swindled nearly $1.5 million from elderly clients was sentenced Wednesday to 2½ years in prison by a judge who likened her to a bank robber.
Helen Grace Caldwell, 59, who until 2021 was a vice president working in the South Michigan Avenue offices of Citibank downtown, acknowledging only that she “fell short” in her duty to protect her clients.
The judge had a much harsher view.
“The only difference between Ms. Caldwell and a bank robber is that she didn’t have a mask and a gun.” U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly said before ordering her to prison for wire fraud. “And actually, in some ways, it was worse because they trusted her — and she knew they trusted her.”
Caldwell’s case was detailed in an Injustice Watch series also published by the Chicago Sun-Times last August that described gaping holes in the state of Illinois’ safety net meant to thwart a skyrocketing number of instances of fraud targeting the old and frail.
Caldwell has to report to prison June 20. She also must make full restitution to her three victims and serve three years of supervised release after she gets out of prison.
The former banking executive — who got elderly bank clients to invest in movies she was involved in on the side as a producer of horror films— teared up as she told Kennelly she was deeply remorseful for the pain she caused and asked for a chance to prove she’s worthy of redemption.
”I allowed myself to become overwhelmed and careless, and I am so very sorry,” Caldwell told the judge. “I had a duty to protect my clients to the best of my ability, and I fell short.”
According to a plea agreement signed by acting U.S. Attorney Morris Pasqual, Caldwell defrauded three elderly Citi clients by convincing them to pour their life’s savings into Canal Productions, her film production venture. Caldwell told them that their money was going into movies being produced and promoted by Canal and that she would share the profits with them.
But she admitted in her plea deal that she “knew that those representations were false.”
Records show Caldwell transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars of her victims’ supposed film investments from Canal bank accounts to her personal bank accounts. And she used the money on personal expenses that included refurbishing a classic car, paying off parking tickets, repainting her home, booking airBnb rentals and buying home goods, clothing and décor..
“This wasn’t a mistake,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Corey Rubenstein said. “It wasn’t poor judgment. It wasn’t an anomaly. The level of deceit here was pretty high.”
In January, Caldwell pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud, a crime carrying a maximum sentence of up to 20 years.
Her lawyer, Steven Rosenberg, asked that she be sentenced to probation, with no prison time. Rubenstein wanted her to go to prison and be given a three-year term of supervised release.
On Wednesday, Kennelly said probation would be “completely inadequate” for such a “reprehensible” crime. The typical sentence for wire fraud is at least 41 months, but he said he gave Caldwell 30 months because she has no previous criminal record.
One of her victims — identified only as Victim B — spoke at the sentence hearing, saying she considered Caldwell a close friend — before realizing she was stealing from her.
“I feel as if the world around me has crumbled,” the woman told the judge.
Court records show the woman gave Caldwell $355,000 to invest in a film production.
But Caldwell diverted much of the money to herself and lied to the woman, according to the plea deal.
The woman told the judge she asked Caldwell for her money back and was told “there was none.”
She said what happened caused her so much distress that she was left unable to go about her daily life and is “imprisoned in my thoughts.”
Questioning Caldwell’s expression of remorse, Kennelly referred to letters of support from friends of Caldwell describing her as “falsely accused” and “innocent” and saying she was being punished “for not being able to predict the future.”
Kennelly suggested the letters indicated that Caldwell told her friends she didn’t commit any crime.
The judge said the statements “leap off the page, grab you by the throat and throttle you.”
Rosenberg said Caldwell had no contact with the letter-writers and that they sent the letters on their own.
Kennelly also pointed to Caldwell’s statements Wednesday that she didn’t intentionally cheat anyone, telling her, “You can’t weasel your way out of it by saying you were careless and not transparent.”
Cook County Public Guardian Charles Golbert is suing Caldwell and her Fortune 500 fomer employer to repay the savings lost by Priscilla Eddings, one of Caldwell’s clients, who is now living in a nursing home and sufferes from dementia. Golbert said he thinks Kennelly was too lenient with Caldwell.
“I understand and respect the judge’s decision, but I would have preferred to see a longer sentence for someone who would use the prestige of her position as a Citigroup financial adviser to plunder the savings of seniors with dementia,” Golbert said. “Now, it’s time for Citigroup to finally make its customers whole and repay them the money that its employee defrauded from their Citi accounts.”
In court filings, Citi lawyers have said the bank shouldn’t be held financially responsible for Caldwell’s actions. And company representatives wouldn’t comment on Wednesday’s sentencing.
Peter Duenas-Brckovich, who says his mother — not among the three victims in the criminal case — also was swindled by Caldwell, said after the sentencing: “She’s a predator. She was preying on the weak.”
He blames the banking giant. “The biggest culprit is Citi,” Duenas-Brckovich said, saying it put Caldwell in an environment that enabled her to swindle clients.
According to government documents, Citi reported Caldwell to the Illinois Department of Aging’s Adult Protective Services division in March 2022. Caldwell hadn’t been working for Citi for four months by then.
States officials didn’t take action because the client “was not being exploited by a family member, roommate or caregiver,” Citi oficials wrote in Cook County probate court documents.
Click here to read “How Illinois’ safety net to protect the elderly from financial exploitation is falling short.”
Eva Putnam reports for Injustice Watch, a nonpartisan, not-for-profit journalism organization.