DALLAS — A former North Texas financial advisor convicted of killing his client and trying to stage the death as a suicide has been sentenced to life in prison, officials said.
Keith Todd Ashley, 51, was found guilty in October on charges of wire fraud, mail fraud, carrying a firearm in relation to a crime of violence and bank fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Texas.
Ashley was convicted in the February 2020 death of James "Jim" Seegan, a 62-year-old Carrollton man.
Seegan's wife found him dead at home with a gunshot wound to his head. According to detectives, a typed note indicating his death was a suicide was found directly next to his body.
However, after a months-long investigation, detectives said they found evidence that revealed Ashley incapacitated and then killed Seegan.
Officials said the two were friends and that Ashley often visited Seegan's home. They believed Ashley killed Seegan in an attempt to gain control of his finances.
According to federal prosecutors, Ashley, also a former nurse, began working as a financial advisor in 2016. Ashley would promise his clients he would invest their money in financial products, but instead he would use the funds to pay other clients, to keep his brewery in business and to pay personal bills and "fund a lavish lifestyle," officials said.
In May 2016, Ashley began stealing money from Seegan.
Prosecutors said Ashley's scheme included transferring Seegan's money into his personal accounts and changing the beneficiary of Seegan's life insurance policy to a trust that Ashley controlled.
After Ashley killed Seegan, officials said, he "went through elaborate steps" to collect Seegan's life insurance and transfer money from Seegan's account to his own account. He also tried to get a copy of Seegan's autopsy report, officials said.
A federal grand jury indicted Ashley in November 2020.
"Today’s sentence brings a sense of relief and justice to the victim’s family and friends, who have endured pain and grief as a result of the defendant’s horrific actions,” U.S. Attorney Damien M. Diggs said in a news release this week.
