Elder financial abuse by financial advisers follows a recognisable pattern: proximity, trust, vulnerability, and opportunity. Clarice Saw, also known as Clarice Chin Saw and Chin Saw, worked the securities industry in the New York area for nearly 30 years across more than thirteen firms, including Citigroup Global Markets, LPL Financial, and Cetera Investment Advisers in Flushing, New York. In late 2020, she took on an 87-year-old retired janitor as a client, an immigrant who did not speak, read, or understand English. He had no immediate living family and had recently received approximately $1.8 million in life insurance proceeds following the death of his wife. Over the next eighteen months, Saw systematically inserted herself into every aspect of his financial life, obtained a general power of attorney he did not understand he had signed, waited until he was hospitalised after a severe injury, and then liquidated and transferred his entire $2.4 million brokerage account to accounts she controlled. The SEC filed charges on July 28, 2023. On April 15, 2026, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York entered a final judgment against her.
How Saw Built Access to a Defenceless Client Over Eighteen Months
The foundation of Saw’s scheme was a relationship she cultivated with calculated patience. The client, an 87-year-old retired janitor living in New York, had no immediate living family when his wife died in 2015. He received approximately $1.8 million in life insurance proceeds and opened a brokerage account with Saw at Citigroup Global Markets in October 2020. He spoke his native language, which the SEC filing did not identify, and Saw spoke it too, a connection she used to position herself as someone he could trust in a country whose language he did not share.
Saw began bringing him to medical appointments and ingratiated herself into his daily life. In late 2020, she suggested he appoint her as his healthcare agent. He agreed. The document she drafted for him to sign was entirely in English. According to the SEC, she told him it was a healthcare proxy. It was not. It was a general power of attorney making Saw the legal agent over all his financial affairs. He did not understand what he had signed.
The Hospitalisation That Gave Saw Her Window
In September 2021, Saw moved her practice from Citigroup to Cetera Investment Advisers in Flushing and convinced the client to transfer his brokerage account to the new firm. Cetera required brokers to obtain firm authorisation before acting as a client’s power of attorney. Saw did not seek that authorisation. In November 2021, the client suffered a severe injury. He was hospitalised for several weeks and then transferred to a nursing home, where he remained until July 2022.
Saw learned of the hospitalisation and acted immediately. In December 2021, while the client lay in a hospital bed, she used her power of attorney to make herself a joint owner of his TD Bank account. She simultaneously opened a new TD Bank account, naming herself as the primary owner with the client listed only as a co-owner. She then posted a note on the client’s Cetera brokerage account falsely stating that due to his hospitalisation, the client had decided to liquidate all positions and transfer the proceeds to a separate bank account. The client made no such decision. He was in a hospital and a nursing home. He did not know what Saw was doing with his money.
$2.4 Million Liquidated, Transferred, and Spent
Within days of that false internal notation, Saw sold approximately $1.7 million of the client’s securities and transferred the proceeds into the client’s TD account. She then moved the funds the following day into the account she controlled. Several days later, she repeated the process with the remaining $730,000, following the same transfer chain until the entire $2.4 million had moved from the client’s brokerage account, through the TD account nominally in his name, and into accounts she owned.
She then spent it. Saw used the misappropriated funds to pay approximately $100,000 in car and mortgage payments, made ATM cash withdrawals totalling more than $46,000, and purchased securities in her own personal brokerage accounts using the client’s money. The scheme ran from December 2021 through March 2022, a period during which the client was entirely institutionalised and unable to monitor or protect his own accounts.
A 26-Year Career That Ended with a Default Judgment and a $1.4 Million Civil Penalty
Saw resigned from Cetera in June 2022 under the category of “employment separation after allegations.” She subsequently affiliated with Coastal Equities and then CoastalOne in New York. Her FINRA BrokerCheck record showed four disclosures at the time of the SEC charges: three customer disputes and the employment separation. She had been in the securities industry since 1996.
The court granted the SEC’s motion for summary judgment on July 25, 2025, finding Saw liable for violating Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5, as well as Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933. On March 27, 2026, the court granted the SEC’s motion for monetary and injunctive relief. The final judgment entered April 15, 2026 permanently enjoins Saw from future securities law violations and orders disgorgement of $640,587.30, prejudgment interest of $98,144.04, and a civil penalty of $640,587.30, for a total monetary judgment of approximately $1.38 million. The litigation was led by Oren Gleich and Sheldon Mui, supervised by Jack Kaufman and Mark Sylvester of the SEC’s New York Regional Office.
Conclusion
The client Clarice Saw robbed was 87 years old, hospitalised, and alone. He had no family to check his accounts and could not read the English-language documents Saw had him sign. She used the language they shared to build trust, then used a power of attorney he did not understand to drain everything he had. The final judgment of approximately $1.38 million entered April 15, 2026 closes the SEC’s civil action. Whether the recovery reaches the man whose retirement savings Saw spent on her car and mortgage is a separate matter. His name does not appear in the court record.
