Overview:
New York Attorney General Letitia James announced the conviction and sentencing of Marc Henry Menard, formerly of Mineola, New York, for a three-year investment fraud scheme that stole more than $600,000 from Haitian investors in New York, Florida and Georgia. Menard was sentenced to five years’ probation, banned from the securities industry, and ordered to repay victims $385,271.
NEW YORK — Marc Henry Menard, a Florida man accused of defrauding Haitian investors out of more than $600,000, has been convicted and sentenced to five years’ probation, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced July 30.
Menard, formerly of Mineola, New York, pleaded guilty in April in Nassau County Supreme Court to Grand Larceny in the Second Degree, Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree, and Securities Fraud. In addition to probation, he was banned from the securities industry for five years. He also admitted owing investors $385,271, and judgments were entered in their favor.
“Marc Henry Menard lied to hard-working New Yorkers and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars to treat himself to lavish trips and luxury purchases,” James said in a statement. “Thank you to my partners in law enforcement for helping to end this fraud and bring Menard to justice.”
The case stems from a three-year scheme Menard ran through his company, Marcotech LLC, beginning in July 2020, in which he solicited Haitian investors across Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland and Queens counties, as well as Florida and Georgia, with promises of monthly returns between 12 and 20 percent. Investors who recruited others were promised even higher returns, according to the attorney general’s office.
Instead of trading on investors’ behalf as promised, prosecutors said Menard funneled the money into his own personal trading account, where high-risk day trading and options trading produced losses of more than $670,000 between July 2021 and October 2022. He used additional investor funds to repay earlier investors in a Ponzi-like fashion and to cover personal expenses, including more than $100,000 in trips to Turkey, Puerto Rico and Disney World, a 2021 Mercedes-Benz, a 2022 BMW, and purchases at Louis Vuitton and Gucci.
To keep the scheme going, Menard allegedly showed investors a fabricated ATM receipt reflecting an account balance of more than $8 million and a fake trading screen showing a net value over $1 million. In reality, the highest balance his accounts ever reached during that period was roughly $301,000, according to the AG’s investigation.
Menard was previously ordered to pay $765,875 in a related civil case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2024, after he failed to respond to the SEC’s complaint accusing him and a romantic partner, Laesha Jean-Louis, of defrauding more than 50 investors out of at least $1.65 million. Jean-Louis was later dismissed as a co-defendant in that case.
The prosecution is the latest in a string of financial fraud cases in recent years that have targeted Haitian communities through affinity fraud, in which perpetrators exploit trust within their own communities to lure investors. Menard’s name had circulated among community members for years, including during the fallout from the EminiFX cryptocurrency fraud case, and some told The Haitian Times they had also invested with MarcoTech and NovaTechFX, another Ponzi scheme that targeted Haitian investors.
In this type of fraud, scammers target members of their own communities
Attorney General James urged New Yorkers to verify any investment professional’s registration through FINRA’s BrokerCheck, avoid wiring money or sending cryptocurrency to unvetted individuals, and be wary of anyone promising guaranteed high returns or pressuring quick decisions. Anyone who believes they were victimized by a similar scheme can file a complaint with the attorney general’s office online or by calling 1-800-771-7755.
