Investing is often considered a quintessentially American pursuit, one which allows people to significantly improve their financial standing through hard work and intelligence. By identifying stocks with a high gross profit ratio, or GPR, almost anyone can access timely and lucrative returns that will allow them to profit.

Unfortunately, a number of Central New Yorkers likely won’t be seeing these benefits after they trusted a financial adviser with an ugly past. However, in a second appearance before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commision (SEC), the adviser blamed his company’s lawyer, the Head of Private Equity Funds at a Rochester law firm, for omitting his disciplinary record from marketing documents.

Over the years, Gregory W. Gray Jr. has developed an astonishing disciplinary record as a financial adviser. The SEC reports that in 2006, he threatened to kill an Illinois investor after the client complained that Gray had made an authorized transaction with their money. Records show that he also called another investor 47 times in one day, repeated berating her over a similar complaint that the had mishandled her money, and threatened to call the workplace of a client’s son to make a fictitious claim to his supervisors. After three of his investors reported him to the police, he was later forced to quit three investment companies amid allegations of misconduct, and the New York Stock Exchange banned him from working as a registered representative from 2008 to 2011 due to his use of unauthorized transactions and tendency to harass and threaten customers.

Because of this, Gray would have been an unlikely choice for any remotely discerning investor: after all, federal securities law requires a broker-dealer to disclose any information that might affect their decision in a document called a private placement memorandum, or PPM. Moreover, Gray’s history could easily have been uncovered with an online search. But when Gray returned to his hometown of Syracuse in 2011, offering the chance to invest in a children’s social media site called Everloop, Inc., as many as 80 people chose to fund the project, losing millions in the process.

According to former state Senate candidate Andrew Russo, his connection was enough of a reason to take Gray at his word: after all, the two grew up only a half mile from each other and played sports together as kids. Additionally, Gray claimed to have attracted a number of prominent state businessmen to the project, and his company’s PPM was nothing if not attractive: the document issued called him an experienced employee of several top investment banks with 12 years in the investment community, who was also a registered investment adviser with the National Association of Securities Dealers. In May 2012, after Russo invested in the company, Gray reportedly asked him and another investor, Ryan McMahon, to become advisers in a new company, Archipel Capital, offering to pay them for bringing in new investors in the area. At the time, McMahon, now the Onondaga County Legislature Chairman, said that he googled Gray’s name without his middle name, which turned up no results. The SEC posted a decision on Gray’s punishment under his full name online in 2009.

In October 2012, Russo learned of Gray’s legal troubles and ban after another investor told him to look up the SEC’s report. However, when he asked Gray for an explanation in an email, Gray reportedly called him, claiming that he was overreacting and that the allegations were exaggerations and falsehoods. Russo then told all of the investors about his discovery, who then reported Gray to the SEC. A number of Syracuse-area investors later reported him to the SEC in 2013.

Following these allegations, the SEC sued Gray and his central company, Archipel Capital in February, accusing him of running an illegal Ponzi scheme with funds from his investors. The organization also accused him of misusing more than half of a $650,000 settlement that should have been shared by Everlopp’s investors.

However, in an appearance before the SEC in February, Gray told the organization that it was not his intention to mislead his investors. Because his history with the SEC was easily available online, Gray claims that he assumed that everyone involved with his companies knew about his past. And while he admitted that some parts of his PPM were false, including his claim to be a registered investment adviser with the National Association of Securities Dealers, he said that this decision was made by his company’s lawyer, John Koeppel of the Rochester firm Nixon Peabody. He claimed that Koeppel only told him to add information about his past when investors learned about his disciplinary action independently. Some comments by investors support this claim: one stated that seeing the name of a highly prominent law firm on the PPM was enough to convince him that Gray was reputable.

Following this accusation, Gray also claimed that his disciplinary history was included in the PPM. However, he refused to specify whether he was referring to the documents potential investors saw in 2011 and 2012, or the document Koeppel reportedly updated in 2014.

The NYSE hearing panel released a decision stating that Gray’s behavior did not appear to have changed since 2008, noting that he did not appear to understand the gravity of his actions, was unwilling to admit wrongdoing and seemed ready to abuse his customers. As a result, the organization is supporting a stiffer penalty than his prior three-year ban, possibly even a permanent ban.

Meanwhile, the FBI arrested Gray at his Florida home in April on charges of securities fraud and perjury. He allegedly swindled at least one investor out of $5 million in an apparent Ponzi scheme. A number of Syracuse investors are reportedly planning to file a class-action lawsuit against him.