West 062016

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3 | GOING COED JUNE 20, 2016 | VOL. 52, No. 25

23 | FACES & PLACES

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PONZI VICTIMS LOSE AGAIN WITH JURY RULING

70

ARMONK CPAs DEFRAUD INVESTORS

years in the making

BY BILL HELTZEL

A

bheltzel@westfairin.com

SEE PAGE 9

Bakery and pastry arts professor Peter Greweling oversees work by student Mary True during a chocolate-making class at The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park. File photograph by Bob Rozycki.

federal jury in White Plains has ruled that an insurance company was justified to rescind a professional liability policy for accountants several months after it learned that an Armonk CPA firm had bilked investors for $2.1 million. As a result of the jury’s verdict and previous judicial rulings, the victims of Marshall Granger & Co.’s Ponzi scheme cannot recover any of their losses from Continental Casualty Co. Continental sued Marshall Granger and its general partners, Laurence M. Brown of Katonah, and Ronald J. Mangini of Mount Kisco, in 2011. The insurer claimed the accountants had failed to disclose ongoing fraudulent activities in their application for a $4 million professional liability policy. U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel ruled two years ago that Continental was entitled to

rescind the policy, due to misrepresentations, but allowed the case to go to trial on an issue raised by Joseph Boughton Jr., a long-time friend and client of Brown from Alpharetta, Georgia. Boughton was not a victim of the Ponzi scheme but he could be the biggest loser in the insurance case because his Northstar Investment Group loaned nearly $1.2 million to the accounting firm. Boughton could not be reached for comment. What’s more, Brown and Mangini stole the corporate identity of one of Boughton’s companies to use in the fraud scheme. It was Boughton who reported the scheme to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and that information was central to Continental’s claim that it should be allowed to rescind Marshall Granger’s liability policy. From the time Continental first learned » PONZI, page 6

Developer trims size of Alzheimer’s facility plan OPPONENTS SAY CHARACTER OF HASTINGS AT STAKE

BY ALEESIA FORNI aforni@westfairinc.com

A

rtis Senior Living, a McLean, Va.-based owner and operator of centers that cater specifically to people with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, is proposing a two-story, 72-bed memory care facility in Hastingson-Hudson after trimming the building’s size from earlier plans

due to residents’ concerns. The property was bought in February for $2.7 million, according to land records. The development would convert what is now The Riverview restaurant’s parking lot on the east side of 1 Warburton Ave. into the assisted living facility. In Artis’ presentation to the Hastings Board of Trustees on June 7, the company

said the west side of the property and the Riverview facility would be donated to the village for public use. The proposed 38,000-squarefoot structure would be 40 feet high at its roof peak, sit on roughly 2½ acres along the Yonkers border and provide 38 parking spaces. Artis said it would agree to no further development or expansion of the

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site following its completion. The building would be constructed in a one-family residential zone. Artis has made a request to the village for zoning amendments to add assisted living facilities as a new use to its code, something Hastings Mayor Peter Swiderski said is “not radically at odds with the sort of special use designated under the current law.”

According to Artis, 5.4 million people in the U.S. have Alzheimer’s, a number expected to triple by 2050. One in 9 people over the age of 65 have Alzheimer’s, the sixthleading cause of death in the country. New York is home to 390,000 people living with Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia. Artis brought the proposal to » ARTIS, page 6

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