A Monmouth County insurance salesman and purported financial advisor has pleaded guilty to a charge of defrauding 21 clients out of nearly $1.5 million.
Jordan L. Zemlock, 50, of the Morganville section of Marlboro Township, pleaded guilty on Feb. 4 to a count of theft by failure to make the required disposition of property received, admitting that he cheated clients out of their investments between August 2009 and March 2012, according to a Feb. 11 press release from Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce J. Kaplan.
Zemlock was charged on April 20 for the third time in four weeks after a client became suspicious of his investment advice, declined to give him $129,000, and contacted police.
Investigation up to that point revealed that Zemlock had accepted over $300,000 from five other clients, promising them that he would invest the money, but diverted it for his personal use.
Based on this information, Zemlock, who owned a business known as Jay-Zee Financial Group Inc., was then charged.
That was the third arrest for Zemlock, who was originally charged on March 20, 2012. The victim in that case was identified as a 74-year-old South Brunswick man, who alleged that Zemlock was supposed to invest $135,000 for him, but kept the money for himself.
Following the publication of that arrest, a Florida man contacted police, saying he was unable to recover a $148,000 investment with Zemlock. Based on an investigation into those allegations, Zemlock was subsequently charged with theft by deception and two counts of witness tampering, for asking investors not to speak with police about the missing funds.
An investigation by Detective Ronald Seaman of the South Brunswick Police Department and Investigator Donald Heck of the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office further determined that the majority of victims were senior citizens.
Investigators also determined that Zemlock had been operating his business out of his home.
In addition to an insurance license in New Jersey, he was licensed to conduct business in Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania and South Dakota.
Zemlock pleaded guilty under an agreement reached with Middlesex County Assistant Prosecutor Thomas Mannion. As part of the agreement, Zemlock will be sentenced to serve up to 10 years in a New Jersey state prison and must repay the 21 clients a total of $1,466,246, when he appears before Superior Court Judge Bradley Ferencz at the Middlesex County Courthouse in New Brunswick on April 12, according to Kaplan.