By PETER GUINTA
Lee Cisar of St. Augustine, a close friend of Lydia Cladek's for 16 years and an employee of Lydia Cladek Inc. for 10 years, said Tuesday that she lost an investment of several hundred thousand dollars when Cladek's business empire crumbled in March.
"This girl has completely devastated me," Cisar, 75, said. "I've been destitute before, but I was a lot younger then, and healthier."
Cladek was indicted Tuesday on 14 counts of mail and wire fraud as well as conspiracy charges.
Cisar was forced to turn in her car, lost her home to foreclosure and is applying for an apartment in a federally subsidized project.
Federal investigators have complied lists of thousands of bilked investors in what they call a classic Ponzi scheme type operation.
Cisar was there at the beginning of Lydia Cladek Inc., working on insurance issues from Cladek's home first, then from offices on Old Mission Avenue and finally from tony new offices at Sea Grove in St. Augustine Beach.
"I never thought there was anything wrong," she said. "I felt that the slowdown was due to the economy. But at the end, when I asked for my money, she wouldn't even see me. Investors waited for her, screaming and yelling and banging on doors, while she was running out the back. I was a friend of hers and I couldn't see her."
Lydia Cladek Inc. was a sub-prime automobile investment company that financed and bought car loans from auto dealers at a discount. The mostly low-income customers paid 29.5 percent interest on those contracts.
Cladek offered returns of 15 to 18 percent on investments.
One Ponte Vedra Beach businessman who lost more than $60,000 asked that he not be identified.
He said, "I'm ecstatic. She's finally getting indicted. Some of her victims had worked hard for every dollar they'd earned. But they lost all their savings to Lydia."
Previous news reports on the Cladek case said investors poured into her offices almost too quickly, offering her checks as small as $10,000 and as large as $600,000.
He said Cladek offered them a choice whether to collect 15 percent interest monthly or roll 15 percent into an accruing investment account.
The investor said that in 2006, long before the crash, he woke up one day and "didn't have a good feeling" about the amount of interest Cladek was paying.
He withdrew a substantial part of his original investment.
"It's rare that any investment pays 15 percent," he said. "Lydia called me and said my check would be there within 60 days. But it was there the next day."
People trusted her
Several victims said Cladek inspired confidence because of her quick refund policy and sympathetic ear. Word of mouth also grew from her church, The Center for Positive Living.
The Ponte Vedra Beach investor said he kept a third of his account active, happy to collect $700 per month interest on the amount remaining.
"I knew I could lose it all," he said. "But I wanted to see how long I could collect interest checks until they stopped."
The FBI cordoned off the business March 31.
Another Cladek victim, Kevin Crowell of St. Augustine, a staff sergeant with the Florida Army National Guard, said he and his wife Lisa invested their retirement money and lost it.
They became suspicious when their interest checks started arriving late, then stopped entirely.
Crowell said he demanded his investment back. She refused to refund anything.
"I told her in her office that I would bring her down," Crowell said. "She said, 'I'm sorry you feel that way.'"
According to Crowell, Cladek acted deeply spiritual around spiritual people and deeply concerned about animals when with animal rescue people.
"She had many, many different faces," he said.
Cisar agreed with that observation. "She was playing this wonderful do-good person with other people's money," Cisar said. "She had to be a very good actress."
Crowell said Cladek's friends were people in this town going to her Sea Colony home -- after Cladek disappeared to one of her other 12 houses -- who took expensive things and sold them for her.
"The FBI took a while to shut that down," he said.
Glad she's behind bars
Crowell is also frustrated at how much the attorneys handling the bankruptcy case are paid.
"Any money recovered goes to them first," he said. "Any time they make a call or send a letter, the victims have that much less money to get back. We get only the pennies left over."
And the victims can't claim any of their losses on their income tax forms until the entire criminal process is complete, which could take years, he said.
"This case won't be hard to prove," Crowell said. "It would be nice to know she's wearing a little orange astronaut suit behind bars rather than sitting around in her multi-million-dollar home."
Cisar, now needing full-time oxygen due to emphysema, said her daughter also lost a small nest egg she had been building.
The federal list of victims has Cisar also owed $1,038 in back pay.
"I hear people say it was greed that drove them to Lydia," she said. "It disturbs me to hear that. I did it to build a retirement for myself. I didn't have one. Right now, I'm trying to rebuild, but I don't have too much to work with."
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