'He said there is absolutely no risk'

Healdsburg resident Leslie Santucci received a $138,000 divorce settlement in 2005 and wanted to put it somewhere safe.

The 48-year-old mother of 8-year-old twins planned to use the money someday to own her own home again.

A travel agent at HMS Travel in Santa Rosa, she describes herself as a "naive investor" but "not a total dunce."

After a family friend referred her to investment adviser Gary Armitage, she knew enough to ask him about the level of risk and was told exactly what she wanted to hear.

"He said there is absolutely no risk involved in their investments," she recalled.

She invested $133,000 with Armitage, putting $103,000 in longer-term investments and $30,000 in a cash account in case she needed to access the money quickly.

Armitage told her she could access the money in two days with one phone call to his office. She successfully made one withdrawal to buy a car. But after she learned of problems with her investments in September 2007, she requested the remaining $10,000.

That's when the battle began.

"I could not get an answer out of Armitage to save my life," she said.

Two days turned into two weeks, which turned into two months of increasingly angry phone calls to Armitage's office.

"My philosophy was I'm going to tie up your phone lines until you talk to me," Santucci recalled. It eventually worked, and she got her $10,000 out of the cash account. But her $103,000 in corporate notes not backed by real estate is likely wiped out.

-- Kevin McCallum