Richard Yasnis, of Massachusetts, swindles 9/11 victim, her mother out of more than $140,000, Nassau prosecutors say

A Massachusetts man allegedly swindled a 9/11 victim and her elderly widowed mother out of more than $140,000 in a phony stock market and home improvement scheme, Nassau prosecutors said.

Richard Yasnis, 43, was arraigned Thursday and pleaded not guilty to a two-count indictment for grand larceny in the second degree after posing as a financial adviser from Cahill Financial Group and convincing the women to hand over their money to him for a phony business and a stock-picking scam, prosecutors said.

Yasnis, of Natick, Massachusetts, met with the younger woman in May and June of last year, telling her he could get 20% returns on their investments, according to Nassau District Attorney Anne Donnelly.

The woman, who received money from the government for an injury she suffered while working on the relief effort at Ground Zero after the 9/11 terror attacks, gave Yasnis $48,000 to invest in a real estate renovation project on July 31, 2023, prosecutors said.

A week later, Yasnis told the woman he had a hot lead on an initial public offering for a company called Flexport and needed $150,000 to be part of the deal, according to the district attorney's office.

The woman scrambled to help raise the money, Donnelly said. Prosecutors say the woman gave Yasnis a piece of jewelry worth $5,000 to sell for the investment and drafted her 77-year-old mother to hand over $88,000 from her dead husband’s life insurance policy.

In September, when the women asked Yasnis to provide proof that he had invested their money, he refused and then went silent, prosecutors said.

Investigators found that Yasnis was not a licensed investment broker and never worked for Cahill. Flexport, they said, has never had an IPO and is a privately held company.

"Instead of helping these women to secure their futures, Yasnis allegedly stole more than $140,000 from them — funds that were drawn in part from one of the victim’s 9/11 compensation for her work at Ground Zero in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks," Donnelly said. "We will never allow the brave men and women who fell ill after their incredible service and sacrifice in those dark days to be exploited by charlatans."

Last December, when police first arrested Yasnis for the crime, his lawyer Joseph Lo Piccolo cast doubt on the investigation and suggested the women had misled detectives on the case.

On Thursday, he again maintained his client had done nothing wrong.

"The allegations are based upon false, misleading and inconsistent statements given by the complainants to a detective, who then conducted a bare-bones investigation," Lo Piccolo said. "We anticipate moving to dismiss the charges, and should that not be successful, pursue a trial to exonerate our client."