Christopher Parris, 46, and John Piccarreto, 43, both formerly of Rochester, New York, were two of the operators behind one of the largest Ponzi schemes in the history of Western New York, a $115 million fraud fronted by a man who called himself King Perry. Perry Santillo, the scheme’s most flamboyant figure, once threw himself a party at a Las Vegas nightclub and commissioned a song with lyrics boasting that King Perry wears a $10,000 suit everywhere he rides. Behind the showmanship was a machine that ran on other people’s retirement savings. Parris was a 50% owner of First American Securities and a manager of First Nationle Solutions, one of the sham issuers at the center of the fraud. Piccarreto was associated with First American Securities and acted as an investment adviser. Between at least 2011 and 2018, Santillo, Parris, Piccarreto, and their associates raised more than $115 million from approximately 1,000 investors nationwide, returned about $44.8 million in Ponzi payments, and left roughly $70.7 million in losses. In August 2026, the SEC barred both Parris and Piccarreto from the securities industry, following their criminal convictions and the entry of federal civil judgments against them. Schemes that convert community and personal trust into a Ponzi structure also defined the cases against Leor Moshe of Capital Funding ASAP and Armando Gutierrez Rosas of Aras.
On August 6, 2026, the SEC issued orders barring both men from association with any broker, dealer, investment adviser, or other regulated entity, and from participating in any penny stock offering. The bars followed the criminal cases in the Western District of New York. Parris pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud in August 2021 and was sentenced to 220 months in prison and ordered to pay restitution of $102,952,582.77. Piccarreto pleaded guilty in April 2021 to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and to filing a false tax return, and was sentenced to a combined 84 months in prison and ordered to pay restitution of $19,842,613. Both men had already consented to federal civil judgments in the SEC’s case, SEC v. Perry Santillo, et al., in the Southern District of New York.
Buying Up Retiring Advisers’ Client Lists to Guarantee a Fresh Supply of Victims
The defining innovation of the King Perry scheme was its method of acquiring victims. Rather than cold-calling strangers, Santillo, Parris, and their associates traveled the country buying the books of business of investment professionals who were retiring or exiting the industry. When an established adviser sold his practice, his clients, often elderly people who had trusted that adviser with their retirement savings for years, were handed to the Santillo operation. The new operators then persuaded those inherited clients to cash in their existing, legitimate investments and move the money into securities issued by companies the operators secretly controlled. The trust that the retiring adviser had built over decades was effectively sold along with the filing cabinets, and then exploited. This structure guaranteed the scheme a continuous supply of new investors and new money, which is the lifeblood of any Ponzi scheme.
The investment products themselves were designed to look like a diversified portfolio. Investors were offered unsecured promissory notes and preferred stock issued by an array of official-sounding entities: First Nationle Solutions, Percipience Global Corporation, United RL Capital Services, Boyles America, Middlebury Development Corporation, and NexMedical Solutions, among others. The variety created an illusion of choice and diversification. In reality, none of these issuers had substantial legitimate business operations, and all were controlled by the operators. Money that came in from new investors was used to make Ponzi payments to earlier investors, to fund the operators’ lifestyles, and to perpetuate the scheme. Santillo and Parris controlled hundreds of different business bank accounts opened under numerous business names at various financial institutions, a web that made the flow of money difficult to trace.
$10,000 Suits, a Las Vegas Nightclub Party, and a Song About King Perry
The lifestyle the scheme funded became part of its notoriety. Santillo used investor money to pay for houses in several states, cars, and expenses at a country club and a Las Vegas resort. At one point he threw a party at a Las Vegas nightclub and commissioned a song written about himself, the lyrics of which crowned him King Perry, the King of Hyde, an Italian stallion who wears a $10,000 suit everywhere he rides. That song, entered into the public record of the case, became the emblem of a fraud built on the retirement savings of ordinary people. While the operators lived in the manner the song described, the victims were losing everything. One married couple from Victor, New York, invested approximately $221,758 and received three payments of $2,500 before losing the remaining $214,258. A Pennsylvania victim identified in court records by the initials JP invested a total of $936,000 across several of the sham issuers and was repaid only $15,000.
A COVID-19 Mask Fraud Added to Parris’s Sentence and $103M in Restitution
Parris’s prison term was lengthened by a second fraud he committed after the Ponzi scheme collapsed. During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Parris misrepresented himself as a seller of respirator masks and other personal protective equipment, taking money for masks he could not deliver. That pandemic fraud was folded into his federal sentencing, contributing to the 244 months, or roughly 20 years and 4 months, that he ultimately received, one of the longest white-collar sentences handed down in the region. Santillo, the King Perry figure, was sentenced separately to 210 months, or 17 and a half years, and ordered to pay the same $102.9 million in restitution that Parris owes jointly. In a letter to the court, Santillo wrote that he was haunted by the devastation he had caused and ashamed of his choices. The FBI described the operation as the biggest Ponzi scheme ever run in Western New York.
Industry Bars That Formalize the End of Two Careers Built on Fraud
The August 2026 SEC bars against Parris and Piccarreto are, in one sense, a formality: both men are already in federal prison and already owe restitution in the tens of millions. But the bars serve a specific regulatory purpose. They permanently prevent Parris and Piccarreto from ever again associating with any broker, dealer, or investment adviser, or from participating in any penny stock offering, closing off any possibility that either could return to the industry that gave them access to their victims. The Ponzi scheme structure they operated, in which they bought the trust of retiring advisers’ clients and converted it into a supply of fresh money, is precisely the kind of conduct the industry bar exists to prevent from recurring. Piccarreto’s involvement, though smaller in scale than Parris’s, carried its own $19.8 million restitution obligation and its own 84-month sentence. Both men admitted their conduct in their criminal pleas.
Conclusion
The King Perry Ponzi scheme took more than $115 million from about 1,000 people, many of them elderly investors who never chose to do business with Santillo, Parris, or Piccarreto at all. They were handed over when their trusted advisers retired and sold their practices. The operators moved them into sham companies, paid early investors with later investors’ money, and used the proceeds to fund houses, cars, country club bills, and a Las Vegas party with a custom song about a man in a $10,000 suit. Parris got 244 months and a $103 million restitution order, lengthened by a pandemic mask fraud. Piccarreto got 84 months and owes $19.8 million. In August 2026 the SEC barred them both. The song called him King Perry. The victims called it their retirement.
