A financial adviser fatally shot himself in a restroom of a Salem hospital last February, after a scheme in which he stole about $1.6 million from a client began to unravel, according to court records.
Robert Earls, who ran an investment firm from the basement of his seven-bedroom home, “stole nearly every dollar” from a trust account owned by Robert and Mary Buckley, his friends and next-door neighbors, a lawsuit filed in Roanoke Circuit Court alleges.
Nearly a dozen other clients fell victim to similar frauds, according to a search warrant filed in connection with a federal investigation of the case.
On the morning of Feb. 7, 2024, Earls was found dead in a locked bathroom at LewisGale Medical Center — shortly after Robert Buckley discovered the missing money and demanded to see documentation from his account, the lawsuit states.
People are also reading…
Police recovered a note from Earls’ car indicating that he killed himself rather than face the consequences of his actions.
“Please don’t hate me,” the note to his family members read, according to the search warrant filed in U.S. District Court in Roanoke. “I can’t face you. I am a coward. May God have mercy on my soul. Robert.”
The lawsuit, filed Jan. 13, is against Southern Investment Strategies, the firm Earls ran from his home off Cotton Hill Road in southwest Roanoke County. Earls is identified as the president and sole director of SIS.
According to the lawsuit and the search warrant, this is what happened:
About 20 years ago, Robert and Mary Buckley moved next door to the Earls family and struck up a close friendship that included dinners and other gatherings. Seven years into that friendship, the Buckleys were granted power of attorney to handle their ailing father’s finances, which included a trust fund with assets of more than $1.2 million.
Realizing they needed financial expertise to manage the fund, the Buckleys turned to Earls.
With more than 30 years of experience, Earls agreed to “steward, grow and safeguard the balance of the trust accounts,” the lawsuit states. At the time, SIS worked as an investment adviser in association with a much larger firm, LPL Financial.
SIS, through Earls, assisted the Buckleys in opening four separate accounts, three of them with LPL.
Earls sold stocks and assets from the LPL accounts under the guise of growing the Buckley portfolio. Funds from the accounts were transferred to separate bank accounts established for the trust fund.
The Buckleys were then told to write checks from those accounts made out to SIS-LPL.
“Mr. Earls would lie to them about ‘new investment opportunities’ and deceptively explain that they needed to write checks from the trust bank accounts to SIS-LPL to reinvest funds into these new investments,” the lawsuit alleges.
More than $1.6 million of the Buckleys’ money went into the account controlled by Earls, who then “stole nearly every dollar Plantiffs had invested with LPL Financial and used that money for his own purposes.”
Earls then allegedly provided the Buckleys with falsified LPL statements indicating that with his investments, their account was growing when the opposite was true. Just $216 remained by the time his clients figured out what was happening.
LPL is not accused of wrongdoing in the lawsuit.
Benjamin Rottenborn, a Roanoke attorney who filed the conversion and unjust enrichment complaint that seeks compensatory and punitive damages from SIS, declined to comment Thursday.
The federal search warrant, filed in October, includes more details about the steps Earls took to conceal his crimes. When statements from LPL became sporadic, Earls would provide spreadsheets that were fabricated, and then made a variety of excuses about system problems in response to questions from his clients.
According to the search warrant, 10 victims have been identified.
Brian McGinn, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, declined to comment about a possible federal investigation. “We have no comment and cannot confirm or deny the existence of an ongoing investigation,” he said.
Records with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a private membership organization that regulates brokers under federal law, show about a dozen complaints associated with Earls last year.
Bank records suggest that “Earls spent all the money the victims ‘invested’ with him on a lavish lifestyle for himself,” the search warrant states. Federal agents obtained the warrant for a search of Earls’ cellphone.
Earls would often host extravagant parties at his office, frequently took expensive trips to Nantucket and Boston, and owned a $1 million home in Cape Cod, according to accounts from some of his victims that were included in court records.
After splitting up with his wife in 2019, “Earls would buy his boyfriends expensive gifts including cars and jewelry and spent a lot of money at Roanoke bars,” the search warrant states.
It is not clear why Earls went to LewisGale on the morning of Feb 6. After his wife reported him missing, his car was found was found the next day in a hospital parking lot. Police then discovered his body in a locked bathroom with what was determined to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head.
In his suicide note, Earls wrote: “Please forgive me. I can’t do this any longer. I alone ruined an incredible family and life.”
Editor’s note: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org
