West Orange Financial Advisor Gets 6 Years for Stealing $1M From Clients

A financial advisor from West Orange was sentenced Monday to six years in prison for stealing nearly $1 million from two elderly clients.

Randy Schneider, 44, was sentenced in Superior Court in Morristown after pleading guilty in December to second-degree theft by unlawful taking. Schneider agreed to pay full restitution to his victims—a professor and a medical doctor who are brothers—under the plea agreement.

Schneider was a broker at Oppenheimer & Co. in Florham Park from January 2002 until October 2011 when he was fired for misappropriated checks from one of the two victims, the Attorney General's Office said.

A Division of Criminal Justice investigation revealed Schneider stole more than $900,000 between 2004 and 2011 from an elderly professor by stealing cash, interest from bearer bond coupons and bonds belonging to the victim, the Attorney General's Office said.

Schneider stole an additional $20,000 in the same manner from the victim's younger brother, a medical doctor who was also an Oppenheimer client, the Attorney General's Office said.

Schneider deposited bonds and proceeds from the bonds into his own accounts, the Attorney General's Office said.

Schneider also pleaded guilty in December to third-degree charges of theft by unlawful taking and theft by deception in Essex County where he stole $11,000 worth of jewelry from an ex-girlfriend and pawned it, the Attorney General's Office said.

Schneider also stole $26,000 from a bank by opening a new account with a fraudulent check and he withdrew the funds before the bank discovered the fraud, the Attorney General's Office said.

Schneider was sentenced to three years in prison for each of those charges and will serve those terms concurrently with the six-year sentence.

“This defendant is a common thief in a business suit,” Acting Attorney General John Hoffman said. "By stealing upwards of a million dollars from two vulnerable and trusting clients, he proved that a prison jumpsuit is the more appropriate attire for him.”