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A disgraced former financial adviser who operated out of the San Ramon Valley for decades is set to be taken into custody next month to serve out a years-long prison sentence after he pleaded guilty to long-running Ponzi scheme that drained millions from nearly a hundred unsuspecting investors far and wide.
Danville resident Edwin Lickiss Jr. – also known as Mike Lickiss Sr. – was sentenced to nine years in prison by a federal judge in Oakland last week, during which many of the 93 victims found to have been defrauded of more than $9.5 million over the course of more than 20 years gathered to watch the proceedings and emphasize the impacts of the scheme.
“For these victims, the harm caused by Lickiss’s decades-long fraud has upended the final years of their lives and, for some, thrown their spouses and children into financial precarity,” federal prosecutors wrote in filings ahead of the sentencing hearing.
The sentence was in line with recommendations by federal prosecutors, and well above the four-year sentence requested by Lickiss’ attorney Randy Pollock, who called anything longer a “de facto life sentence” given his 78-year-old client’s health issues and advanced age.
Pollock’s recommendation came at the urging of many of Lickiss’ relatives, who described the impacts of the recent federal criminal case and revelations on their own lives, as well as the further impacts of him potentially spending the rest of his life behind bars.
“I have never lived alone, and because I will lose his Social Security, I will be unable to stay in our apartment and will have to live with family,” his wife, Marilyn Lickiss, wrote in a letter submitted by Pollock in a Sept. 9 filing. “I have never wanted to be a burden to my children, so it is devastating.”
“I am also dealing with the fallout of lawsuits in which I am named even though I had no knowledge whatsoever about his behavior and have no means with which to help reimburse anyone … I know that I am not alone. There are many victims who are suffering,” she added.
Edwin Lickiss himself also emphasized the impact of his actions and the wide swath of victims such as friends, family – including a nephew who was among the victims testifying in the federal case – and business partners while apologizing for his “indefensible, hypocritical behavior” in a letter submitted by Pollock.
“My failure in character is something I find unbearable to live with whether awake or asleep,” Edwin Lickiss wrote. “I say this because we always tried to teach our children and grandchildren to trust in God. My actions were the ultimate hypocrisy – I trusted in myself instead. I deliberately chose to deceive my son with whom I worked, our four children and their spouses, our seventeen grandchildren, and most importantly my wife of almost 57 years.”
Prosecutors noted that many of the victims were also contending with health conditions and advanced age, with Edwin Lickiss’ scheme taking advantage of them at vulnerable moments and leading to dire outcomes for many as they sought to withdraw money for retirement and healthcare costs, becoming aware only after it was too late that he had failed to make good on his promises of investing their funds in high-yield bonds generating as much as 30% in returns.
They also emphasized the need for deterrence in fraud cases such as this, saying that using age as a mitigating factor “misapprehends the mechanics of large-scale financial fraud”.
“The entire premise of a Ponzi scheme lies in the perpetrator’s belief that he can outlast detection, outlast market cycles, and outlast the legal system,” prosecutors wrote in a Sept. 9 filing. “Scale becomes a prerequisite to survival: more victims feed the engine, and more capital fuels the fraud. To treat age as a basis for judicial leniency is to invert those economic incentives.”
“It creates a moral hazard, signaling that a criminal can hedge their bets, scale up the fraud, and buy at least partial immunity through time,” they continued. “A further reduced sentence would, ironically, signal that maintaining a larger fraud for a longer period with more victims is not only morally equivalent — it is rational.”
While last week’s hearing marks an end to the federal fraud case that was brought forward last year, fallout from the decades-long Ponzi scheme is continuing with two active cases in Contra Costa County Superior Court.
One of those, filed in March 2025 ahead of the federal indictment brought forward that August, is a civil fraud case from Terrie Wilson, who was among the victims in the criminal case. It names Edwin Lickiss along with his son Michael Lickiss Jr. – who was later dismissed from the case after submitting a bankruptcy notice – Arkaidos Wealth Advisors, Pacific Wealth Advisory Services, and 50 unnamed “Doe” defendants.
Wilson alleges that Edwin Lickiss, whom she had known and invested with for some time, contacted her in 2024 to say he was “thinking of her” after she’d had a heart attack, and about how he could help her generate some additional income during difficult times.
She proceeded to invest $110,000 in funds from a recent divorce settlement with Edwin Lickiss by meeting him at a Walnut Creek Safeway to hand over a check in person, later having a panic attack about it and seeking to get the money back.
As she continued trying to get the money back months later to no avail, Wilson learned about a previous lawsuit that Edwin Lickiss and his son had settled in 2024 for $1.5 million, in which the plaintiffs alleged that Edwin Lickiss had been barred from work in the securities industry in 2014, then proceeded to continue garnering investments from customers for fictitious bonds.
“Plaintiff would have never given any money to Lickiss Sr. if she had known that he had been permanently barred from working in the securities industry in August 2014, and that he had defrauded another former client of his by selling that client fictitious investments,” Wilson’s attorney Melinda Steuer wrote in the 2025 complaint.
After this revelation, Wilson went on to consult with a different financial adviser and to examine her previous investments that were held through Arkaidos Wealth Advisory and Investment Architects, where Michael Lickiss Jr. worked, and at Pacific Wealth Advisory Services where Edwin Lickiss had been a registered agent, noticing that the funds had “significantly underperformed compared to the market” due to alleged poor management.
The 2024 settlement that tipped Wilson off was one of more than a dozen civil lawsuits filed in county court over the years alleging fraud against Edwin Lickiss going back to the early 1990s, despite no criminal charges emerging until last year.
Civil cases dating back 30 years
Prior to those cases, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority had awarded more than $150,000 in in payments for two judgments in 1991, despite saying in both cases that the complaints stem from “our national decline in real estate values” and “our corresponding recession”.
The first lawsuit in county court records was a fraud case filed by Roberta Sotelo and Janet Bertolero in 1992, with a notice of voluntary dismissal filed the following year.
A fraud case brought forward in 1993 by Marjory Smith was settled in 1994, with a breach of contract claim filed by Rose Weston also filed in 1993 transferred to probate court and settled in 1995 after Edwin Lickiss filed a countersuit the previous year.
In 1994, Edwin Lickiss and his former company Danville Financial Inc. and his associate Albert Lachner were sued by Diablo Plaza and Bloom Investment Company, with a judgement awarded to the plaintiffs in 1996.
Edwin Lickiss was fined $8,500 by FINRA later that year for participating in private securities trades without properly notifying his member firm and executing settlement agreements with customers without the firm’s knowledge.
In 1998, A.I. Specialty Lines Insurance Company was awarded several thousand from Edwin Lickiss for a breach of contract lawsuit filed earlier in the year.
Edwin Lickiss sued FINRA in 2011 seeking to have 17 different arbitration claims from clients expunged from his record, with a county judge upholding the court’s ruling in FINRA’s favor following arbitration that was spurred by a successful appeal to rehear the case in 2013.
“All of the claims involved serious allegations of egregious misconduct by Petitioner while serving in the capacity as a trusted advisor,” Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Steve Austin wrote that year. “These 17 separate clients raised repeated claims of misrepresentation, breach of fiduciary duty, violation of federal and state security laws, omission of facts, and churning. Ten of the claims include direct allegations of fraud.”
The judge emphasized the importance of maintaining a record of these cases, noting that “while it is commendable that the petitioner has not done anything to generate another negative report since 1996, it does not change the fact that at one point in his life he was capable of committing multiple acts of serious professional fraud and misconduct”.
“While it was clear from Petitioner’s testimony that this conduct is the source of great personal shame and embarrassment for him, the public, brokers and regulators still have a real need to know that they occurred,” Austin wrote in the 2013 ruling.
As Wilson discovered last year, Edwin Lickiss was temporarily barred from securities trading from August 2014 to December 2014 by FINRA and agreed to sanctions “without admitting or denying the findings” that he had failed to disclose tax liens by the IRS. Prosecutors found that he continued to trade during this period in the recently closed federal case.
A lawsuit from Diana Walker and Patricia Brown filed in 2023 alleging fraud and elder abuse and seeking to recoup nearly $1 million in investments with Edwin Lickiss was entered into conditional settlement in 2025.
Edwin Lickiss faced multiple lawsuits in 2024, one of which was from Mark Watson and Katrina Watson, a former Danville couple who sought to withdraw funds while they were both being treated for cancer and looking to formally retire from their respective jobs as a fire district engineer and a teacher at multiple local churches.
“By April 2023 the Watsons’ were becoming desperate,” their attorney Michael Burke wrote. “They informed the Defendants that they would have to stop their cancer treatments if they did not get money back from their investments.”
A notice of conditional settlement was entered in that case later in the year.
Also in 2024, a judge awarded more than $550,000 to Phyllis Asher and Robert Asher from Edwin Lickiss and Marilyn Lickiss, ahead of another lawsuit filed by Mike Williams and Sharon Williams, who were awarded nearly $95,000 in damages and attorneys fees in a 2025 judgment.
The most recent of the series of civil cases in Contra Costa County was filed in late 2025, shortly after the criminal indictment in the federal case, by David Corbin, Ruth Corbin, Nancy Joy, Gregory Joy and Kathy Vickrey, all longtime investors in their sixties at the time, naming Edwin Lickiss, the businesses he worked for, Resource Investment Architects CEO Glen Haddock, along with Marilyn Lickiss and Michael Lickiss Jr. seeking nearly $3 million in damages.
Although they do not allege that Marilyn Lickiss was an active participant in the scheme, they allege that she benefited from “unjust enrichment”, pointing to funds transferred into her account by Edwin Lickiss.
A default judgment in that case was entered for Edwin Lickiss in March, with a hearing on a protective order governing discovery set for Jan. 13 as the two sides work through ongoing discovery issues.
Wilson’s complaint is scheduled for a case management conference on Nov. 18.
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