Business

B’way swindler banned

Wall Street won’t be giving Long Island con man Mark Hotton a second act.

The 47-year-old broker — who pleaded guilty in July to cheating the producers of a troubled Broadway musical out of $60,000 — has been hit with a lifetime ban by the brokerage industry’s self-regulatory body, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, The Post has learned.

The ban follows a multiyear probe by Finra that found Hotton was just as dirty as a Wall Street broker as he was with the two desperate Broadway producers who were looking for backing for “Rebecca: The Musical.”

The West Islip resident duped his brokerage clients out of more than $8 million since 2005, Finra said. That’s 135 times the size of the swindle that had his name go up in lights last year.

Hotton was arrested by the FBI last October for duping the producers.

He confessed last month to never actually securing the $4.5 million he promised them, and then coming up with elaborate stories to cover his tracks, including the dramatic “death” of a wealthy Australian investor he called “Paul Abrams,” whom Hotton pretended had died of malaria.

Hotton also confessed to using some of the same phony cast of characters to cheat a Connecticut real estate company of $550,000.

Hotton was released on bail following his guilty plea and faces up to 40 years in prison in when sentenced on Nov. 1.

Years earlier, as a broker at Oppenheimer & Co., where he worked between 2005 and 2009, Hotton also conned investors into giving him money for often fake investments, Finra said.

He convinced one couple, for example, to write a $500,000 check from their retirement account to an investment company he appeared to control. One day after the check was deposited, Hotton diverted least $230,000 to his personal accounts, and another $100,000 went to pay back another investor, Finra said.

When the couple asked for their money back, Hotton made up a series of excuses for why they had not received their money and presented them with fictitious documents to explain why their money had not been returned, Finra found.

In all, Hotton stole $5.9 million from his brokerage customers. In addition, he caused $2.5 million to be wired from his customers’ accounts to his outside business activities, Finra found.

The amount of money misused “is likely larger,” Finra warned, citing how “Hotton has gone to great lengths to attempt to conceal his fraudulent conduct.”

A lawyer for Hotton didn’t return a request for comment.