Scott Mason and his wife, Lynne, in a photo taken for the alumni magazine of Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He was sentenced Wednesday to eight years in prison. Read more

Former investment manager Scott Jeffrey Mason was sentenced to eight years and one month in federal prison on Wednesday after confessing to stealing millions from clients of Rubicon Wealth Management, his former Gladwyne-based advisory firm, and failing to pay income taxes on the stolen money.

“I know what I did was wrong. There are no excuses. I stole from people who trusted me, believed in me, to live a lifestyle I could not live on my own,” Mason said in a Philadelphia federal courtroom.

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Mason, 66, “had every advantage in life,” but “he wanted more,” said his lawyer, Matthew Rinaldi.

Mason pleaded guilty in January to taking money from clients’ accounts to finance his Main Line lifestyle, stealing from others to pay his first victims, failing to pay taxes on his theft income, and lying to cover it up.

Rubicon managed $231 million for around 115 clients as of March 2024, according to Securities and Exchange Commission reports.

Besides the prison sentence, Judge Timothy J. Savage ordered Mason to repay $25 million he owes 17 former clients. Prosecution and defense lawyers agreed they are unlikely to get more than a fraction of that money because Mason spent it.

For at least 17 years of the 30 years he ran Rubicon, “Scott Mason lived a lie,” prosecutors said in a presentencing memo. “He raised his children in a beautiful Main Line home, purchased a multimillion-dollar beach house at the Jersey Shore, took luxurious international vacations,” and made sure his wife and children “wanted for nothing.”

But it was all financed by using client funds “as a personal slush fund [that] snowballed into a sprawling fraud,” prosecutors said.

On Wednesday in court, the judge ordered Mason, 66, to face his victims and apologize.

Among them was Star Sitron, Mason’s aunt by marriage, who lost more than $3 million to her trusted adviser and set in motion last year’s federal investigation that led to Mason’s guilty plea on fraud and tax charges in January.

Two founding partners of Philadelphia’s Red Tettemer O’Connell advertising agency told the court Mason had marked the firm’s February 2024 sale with a celebratory meal — and then stole some of the proceeds they had hoped would enrich their families for generations.

Mason’s largest client, Stanley J. Tulin, a retired Philadelphia insurance executive, said Mason’s thefts had forced him to sell his retirement home and cancel charity contributions. Tulin said Mason’s victims were hardworking people who had earned their money and enjoyed Mason’s personal friendship and invitations to family events, not realizing he was stealing millions from their accounts.

Also in the courtroom were family members including Mason’s father, Melvin Berle Mason, convicted of running a Ponzi scheme that ended his own investment career in 1975 — an event Scott Mason said “traumatized” him in his youth. Also present were his mother, wife, and three children, whose lavish family parties, including a wedding at the Wells Fargo Center, were funded by thefts from his clients.

Under federal guidelines, the sentence, which matches the term negotiated by prosecutors and defense lawyers in advance of his sentencing, reflects the size of the losses and the tax fraud, reduced modestly by Mason’s guilty plea and cooperation with authorities.

Mason earned around $300,000 a year from Rubicon but stole an additional $1 million a year to pay for vacations abroad, country club memberships, a Shore home, and his children’s coming-of-age parties and weddings, according to testimony at his sentencing.

Mason admitted his crimes to federal prosecutors in Philadelphia last summer and pleaded guilty to federal criminal fraud and income tax charges in January.

Obliged to make amends, Mason sold his Long Beach, Ocean County, home; his stakes in a Long Beach Island mini-golf course and in a fund managed by Radnor-based NewSpring Holdings; and other assets bought with clients’ money.

Even with those sales, Mason raised less than 20% of the $25 million he owes. He has been working at a McDonald’s for $12 an hour and is unlikely to return the rest, which he spent, according to prosecutors.

Mason reported his crimes to prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission last summer following a chain of events that victims and a former employee recounted during the sentencing hearing.

Sitron complained in early 2024 about an unexpected charge on her account to Diane Jankowski, an administrator at Rubicon from 2015 until she retired last year. Jankowski reviewed the charge, identified an unauthorized transfer of Sitron’s funds to Mason, and reported it to Sitron’s bank, she recounted at the hearing and in an interview.

Word spread among clients, and lawyers for Sitron and for Tulin prepared to sue him in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court.

Confronted by clients, Mason and his lawyers spent two days reviewing his illegal depredations with federal authorities last August.

Tulin said he invested $28 million with Mason and also trusted him to oversee his personal affairs — only to find his adviser had been stealing and spending his cash.

Mason began stealing from Tulin as early as 2007. Starting in 2016, Mason tried to hide the thefts by stealing from other clients, forging signatures and falsifying records to cover his tracks.

Mason graduated from Abington High School in 1976, then from Hobart and William Smith Colleges, where he met his wife, Lynne. The couple have three grown children.

After working as a stockbroker for three Philadelphia brokerages in the 1980s and early 1990s, including a partnership at the former Fuhrman Matt Securities, Mason founded Rubicon with partners in 1995. In recent years he had been Rubicon’s sole senior officer, even serving as his own compliance officer.