By Judy Clabes
NKyTribune editor
Nearly three years ago, the NKyTribune reported, first, that a U.S. District Judge in New York denied Northern Kentucky native Michael Hild’s new trial motions and, second, that a New York Court had sentenced Hild to 44 months in prison for fraud related to his company, Live Well Financial.
Now, as the wheels of justice grind slowly, the United States District Court of Appeals for the Southern District of New York has also denied Hild’s appeal from the January 2023 case — and affirming all the judgments of the previous court.
The judgments were affirmed “convicting him of securities fraud, wire fraud, and bank fraud” — and “of conspiring to do so.”
Hild was chief executive officer of, Live Well Financial, and, as the court stated, “engaged in a multi-year scheme to fraudulently inflate the value of a portfolio of bonds used as collateral to secure cash loans.”
The court rejected Hild’s claims of “errors by the court” and “abuse of discretion in the court’s decision.”
Finally, the court also rejected Hild’s argument that he received “ineffective assistance at trial,” a argument also rejected by the earlier court.
That judgment also affirms what his former friend and fellow Covington Catholic High School graduate, Benjamin Dusing, said at the time.
Hild now apparently lives in Richmond, Va., and made millions of dollars as CEO of the company he established in 2005. He built the company on “reverse mortgages,” a financial product that provides liquidity to senior homeowners with monthly cash income tied to their home equity.
When hard times hit the markets and Hild’s elaborate international funding dried up, his financial empire started to unwind and he was ultimately charged with securities fraud, wire fraud, and bank fraud and faced those charges in a 14-day trial in the Southern District of New York. He engaged Dusing, who had a career both as a federal prosecutor and as an attorney in private practice, earning a reputation as a top “white collar crime” defense litigator.
The NKyTribune reported at the time:
“The jury trial resulted in a guilty verdict for Hild in 2021. Within days of the verdict, Hild terminated Dusing and hired a new lawyer… Hild – through his new attorney – filed motions for a new trial on the basis of “sufficiency of the evidence, prejudicial error related to certain opinion testimony, and ineffective assistance of counsel.”
“Specific to the allegations of “ineffective assistance of counsel,” (the judge) said of Dusing, that his “performance was strong, and at the very least on par with that of other white-collar litigators who regularly practice in this district.”
Dusing, the judge said, was able to “synthesize the complicated financial concepts and transactions at issue in the case, and had a disposition that appeared to be well-received by the jury.”
Meanwhile, documents from the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, related to a suit filed by a trustee, said that Hild and his wife, Laura, received “at least $26,051,633. from Live Well Financial “in the form of grossly excessive overcompensation” between 2015 and 2019 while “200 employees lost their jobs and creditors were left with more than $110 million in unpaid, non-insider claims” in the bankruptcy.
Local sources say Hild has been in touch with a range of people seeking support for getting a pardon from President Trump. But, says one source, those requests are not generally getting traction in the local community.