Repository, The (Canton, OH)

Estimated printed pages: 12

April 19, 2009
Section: crimes_and_courts
Joe Bonanno or Mr. Hyde
Tim Botos
CantonRep.com staff writer
If Timothy Welland Hyde is good at one thing, it's selling. With slick,
tightly cropped black hair and round dark eyes, a voice for radio and a
warm smile, he welcomed clients to his financial advising business in
Jackson Township. For a variety of fees and commissions, he and
employees arranged client investments in stocks and securities. By all
appearances, Hyde Financial was a success. It was located in Suite 302 on
the third floor of one of the area's premier office buildings, known as the
Belden Village glass tower.
At work, Hyde is regarded as a financial genius and brilliant
mathematician. He not only handled his own clients, but he also served as
a guru to a handful of his other brokers, who together managed at least
$63 million in client assets.
"He made money for me," said 66-year-old Joan Kinsley of Lake
Township, a client and retiree from R.C.A. Rubber Co. "He was always
bragging about having Internet access to trading information that only he
and the Timken Co. had."
A married father of two, Hyde and his family lived in a half-million dollar
home in Jackson's Carrington Estates. He drives a 2008 black Cadillac
Escalade and wears Rolex watches, fancy suits and shoes on his 6-foot,
195-pound frame. Image, he told people, matters. Look successful and
clients will invest with you, he'd say.
His safe and seemingly well-to-do world, though, was merely a mask. In
the past four months, pieces of his disguise slowly eroded, exposing bits
of his true identity.
There's much more to Hyde. He kept secrets. Some from his clients.

Others he kept from those who knew him personally.

Eleven days ago, federal authorities indicted him on three criminal
charges - wire fraud and two counts of making false statements.
At the heart of the government's allegations: Hyde isn't 33 years old or 40
years old. He has used two different birth dates since moving to the
Akron-Canton area in the early 1990s. His Social Security number didn't
belong to him.
Turns out, Hyde may have been the ultimate salesman. He had actually
sold himself as someone he wasn't.
In the indictment, federal prosecutors say Timothy Welland Hyde isn't
really Timothy Welland Hyde. His real name, they contend, is Joseph Dino
Bonanno. He's actually 47 years old.
"So, I got a fake ID 25 years ago. I changed my name. What's the big deal,
so what?" he said in a brief interview last week.
Aside from the identity switch, he said, he did nothing wrong. His firm
never stole a dime from anyone, he added. "It was a good company, where
old people can go with their money, instead of going to the nefarious
people who are in this type of business."
So who exactly is Joseph Dino Bonanno, and why the charade?

Although he shares a name with the late notorious Mafia kingpin Joseph
"Joe Bananas" Bonanno, he's not a lineal descendant of the crime family.
This Joseph Bonanno is the first-born son of Robert and Fatima Bonanno.
He was born May 7, 1961, in Youngstown, along with a twin sister. He
also has two younger brothers.
Bonanno grew up on Bonnie Brae Avenue in Niles, in Trumbull County, in a
home where his mother still lives. He and his sister graduated from
Warren JFK, a Catholic high school, in 1979, the same year their parents
divorced. He then attended Ohio State University.

In later years, he'd tell people he was a proud Buckeye graduate, but
there's no record of a Joseph Bonanno or Timothy Hyde ever earning a
degree at the school. While a student, he met Laurie Lynn Simonson, an
Akron girl. On Sept. 14, 1985, the two were married.
The newly wed Bonannos moved to East Walpole, Mass., a small town
about 18 miles south of Boston. He got a taste of the discount furniture
sales business, which he'd later pursue again in Ohio under his assumed
identity.
On Dec. 15, 1988, he was arrested in nearby Dorchester, Mass. Charged
with larceny (theft), he was accused of stealing $1,571.76 from First
American Bank. He fled before standing trial on the felony. To this day,
officials in Suffolk County, Mass., hold a warrant for Bonanno's arrest.
The couple, who had no children, returned to Ohio. Laurie Lynn filed for
divorce in 1990. She remarried a year later. She declined an interview for
this story.
After the divorce, all outward traces of Joseph Bonanno vanished. No
records to be found of a driver's license, work history, club memberships,
home addresses or dealings with local courts. It was as if Joseph Dino
Bonanno had disappeared.

But as abruptly as Joseph Bonanno became invisible, Timothy Welland

Hyde appeared in Northeast Ohio in 1991 with only a sketchy
background. Armed with a freshly issued Social Security number and a
clean start, Bonanno became Hyde.
It's unclear why he selected that name or how he came upon it. Perhaps,
he picked it out of an old newspaper obituary, because Hyde was a real
person.
In Maple Grove Cemetery in Ashtabula County, a 90-minute drive
northeast from Stark County, lie the remains of the real Timothy Welland
Hyde.

Born prematurely on Feb. 3, 1976, in Greenville, Pa., the baby died nine
days later at Youngstown's Tod Children's Hospital. He was laid to rest
between two stillborn brothers in clearly marked graves. His father, Terry
Welland Hyde, doesn't know a Joseph Bonanno. He said he doesn't know
why the man assumed his dead son's identity.
"Crazy, bizarre ... to even digest," said Terry Hyde of Farmdale in Trumbull
County, explaining that the name Welland was a family name handed
down over generations.
Whatever the reason, Bonanno kept his true identity secret for the next 18
years. In requests for interviews for this story, family members in
Trumbull County denied knowing a Timothy Hyde. His father even denied
having a son named Joseph Bonanno.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," he said.
Bonanno's identity remained hidden despite frequent run-ins with the law,
civil lawsuits against him, his submissions of piles of business and
government regulatory papers to various state and federal agencies, a
second marriage and birth of two children, and even a pair of elongated
trips through U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
All of it accomplished under his assumed name, Timothy Hyde.
Or variations of it.
On occasion, he simply used the name Timothy Welland, without Hyde at
the end. He apparently obtained driver's licenses or state ID cards with
two birth dates - one of Feb. 3, 1970, the other of Feb. 3, 1976.
He gave Jackson Township police each birth date on citations they issued
to him six months apart in 2002. The first for not controlling a loose dog
at his Ranier Avenue NW home. The second for driving under the influence
of alcohol while causing a hit-skip auto accident.
In all, he accumulated at least five DUIs from law enforcement agencies in
Stark and Summit counties.
Though he always avoided serious jail time and kept his identity under

wraps, it was Jackson Township police who years later would bring Hyde's
secrets to light.

Leaving his criminal past in Massachusetts and with the new Hyde
identity, he moved to Akron in the early 1990s. He met and married Lisa
(Pearsall) Reynolds. They wed in Las Vegas on June 22, 1995, her 33rd
birthday.
On a marriage application, he claimed it was his first marriage. He
declared Feb. 3, 1970, as his birth date. He named his parents as Timothy
Hyde and Mary Hartman.
In Ohio, Hyde created Mattress and Furniture Liquidators and Sleep
Warehouse. By the late 1990s, the business had grown. He boasted a
handful of the discount retail furniture outlets near Hills Department
Store on Route 62 in Canton, as well as in Akron, Garfield Heights,
Brookpark, Cleveland and Youngstown.
However, a string of unpaid bills began to compound. The furniture
business, corporate owner Hyde Industries, and his related advertising
and marketing companies accumulated a trail of debt - owing money to
everyone from a furniture supplier in Atlanta to local TV and newspapers
for overdue advertising accounts.
His mother-in-law, Elaine Parker, said Hyde put her name and Social
Security number on papers related to the business without her knowledge.
It wasn't even until the last few months, she said, that she learned his real
name is Joseph Bonanno.
"He's a professional con man, in my opinion," she said.
In 1999, the furniture business filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy, liquidating
and closing. A year later, he personally filed for bankruptcy. It didn't take
long, though, for Hyde to reinvent himself professionally, as a financial
adviser.
He passed two securities exams in 2001 to become a stockbroker. It's a
profession that's difficult to break into with bankruptcies in your

background. Had anyone known about his pending larceny count, it

would have been impossible.
He worked from local offices as an adviser and independent stockbroker,
selling securities and related financial products for AXA Advisors of New
York, then Intersecurities of Florida and finally Cadaret, Grant & Co., of
Syracuse, N.Y.
Mailing fliers to targeted customer niches, Hyde offered free dinner
seminars to prospective clients at local restaurants such as Hartville
Kitchen, Ken Stewart's Grille and 356th Fighter Group.
It's a general practice the national Financial Industry Regulatory Authority
warned brokerage firms to monitor closely as long ago as 2007. Such
seminars, FINRA noted, often turned into high-pressure sales pitches
littered with outlandish promises on financial returns for clients.
A Rocky River attorney, Neil Petkovic, has taken a long look at Hyde in
recent months. Petkovic works for a law firm that specializes in
stockbroker misconduct cases. He represents a pair of clients in their 70s
who invested with Hyde. He expects to take on more in the near future.
Hyde's business practices, he said, included plenty of red flags, from the
free dinner seminars to questionable investment advice. Hyde, he
explained, practiced holistic financial planning, an approach that
examines a client's complete financial picture from cradle to grave.
There's nothing wrong with that, per se.
"But for an unscrupulous broker, it's a shopping list," Petkovic said,
adding that his senior citizen clients, who owned their home outright,
were encouraged to get a second mortgage so they'd have more money to
invest.

Along the way, Hyde built up his clientele at Hyde Financial to more than
900 people (mostly from Stark County), 1,500 accounts and at least $63
million in assets, even following the downturn in the market, according to
a recent regulatory filing. Some clients now wonder if he kept other
secrets. Had the man who lied about his identity acted in good faith with

their money?
Timothy Hyde, financial adviser, was a regular in recent years at Fox and
Hound English Pub & Grille. It's a Belden Village-area bar and restaurant
less than a mile from Hyde Financial's office.
"I'd see him out places, practically falling down," said client Joan Kinsley.
"It worried me, but I was making money with him. So the guy had a
drinking problem, but I figured it was a pretty stressful line of work."
A Fox and Hound employee said Hyde sat in the same high-backed
wooden chair, second seat from the middle, facing taps that pour 36
brands of draft beer. Hyde always drank a "rock pour" of Captain Morgan
rum, an extra large shot (two ounces) on ice, with a bottle of water
alongside it. The bar stocked $8 per six-pack bottles of Fiji water
especially for him. Dasani water, he'd said, wasn't good enough.
He'd surround himself with an entourage of employees or anyone who
would listen, whether he was complaining about the service while
slamming his glass on the bar or bragging about partying recently with a
Navy SEAL.
Some customers tried to steer clear, calling him obnoxious, arrogant,
rude and crude. Still, Hyde appeared to have plenty of money. He paid
with a credit card and tipped well.
Rolling into the parking lot in his Escalade, dressed in smart suits and
shoes and wearing an assortment of Rolex watches, he looked like a guy
who'd made it.
At home, he, his wife and two children also had moved up.
In 2005, they'd bought a half-million dollar home on Kinloch Court NW in
Carrington Estates. The 5,100-square-foot home includes a kitchen with
granite countertops and custom-built cherry cabinets. A floor-to-ceiling
stone fireplace in the living room, a built-in patio hot tub and fire pit and
a basement outfitted with a workout room, five-hole putting green and
wine cellar.
In 2007, then again last year, Hyde changed which brokerage firms

handled client accounts. The moves were explained to be in their best

interests, Kinsley and other clients were told. What they didn't know was
that he had been reported to federal regulators for alleged trading
violations.

He voluntarily resigned from Intersecurities in 2007. In FINRA reports, the

firm accused Hyde of mutual fund break point violations. Typically, an
investor gets a sales discount for each $25,000 invested. A violation
occurs when a broker, such as Hyde, purposely solicits mutual fund
purchases slightly below discounted threshholds, for instance $24,000 or
$49,000, merely to increase the broker's profit.
Intersecurities also alleged other regulatory violations and accused him of
submitting customer checks with insufficient funds, costing the firm
$31,000, which he has not reimbursed. Intersecurities did not return calls
requesting an interview.
Hyde shifted his business from Intersecurities to Cadaret, Grant & Co., of
Syracuse, in 2007.
However, they parted ways December. Cadaret accused Hyde of
unauthorized trading and misrepresentation or misleading information.
The firm's president and chief executive, Arthur Grant, declined to discuss
Hyde's background or his true identity. Hyde, he said, was an independent
broker, simply using the firm name.
"It's a fairly arm's-length arrangement," he said.
By December 2008, the stock market was in lousy shape. Hyde's
professional life with Intersecurities, then Cadaret, Grant had led to
complaints about him with FINRA. Soon, his personal life would command
a closer look as well.
Hyde's wife, Lisa, called Jackson Township police to their home shortly
after midnight on Christmas Day. Her husband had been drinking all day,
she told them, and he became impossible to deal with in that state.
She told officers he had slapped her on the leg and shoved her to the bed

three times, injuring her arms. Police charged him with domestic violence
and took him to the Stark County Jail. Three days later, he pleaded guilty
to a lesser charge.
Hyde once again set out on a plan to reinvent his business. What he
probably didn't know though, was that the Jackson Township police had
begun investigating his background. His fingerprints taken at the jail that
morning would contribute to exposing his true identity.

As recently as January, in a brief interview for this story, Hyde denied he

was Joseph Bonanno. He called it the most outlandish story he'd ever
heard and added that he was in the process of selling his business and
leaving it behind.
Two weeks later, Hyde employees filed business incorporation papers
with the Ohio Secretary of State. The papers indicated the founding of a
new company, Hyde Financial Investments, from the same Glass Tower
location as his old company, Hyde Financial.
No longer registered with a brokerage firm, the newly created business
applied to the Ohio Division of Securities and to the SEC to register itself
as a certified investment adviser. The move effectively bypassed a need to
work under a separate brokerage firm's license.
Clients said they were told their money was moved from Cadaret, Grant to
yet another company, Trade PMR. The Gainesville, Fla., firm specializes in
brokerage and custody services, providing administrative assistance for a
fee to independent advisers like Hyde had become.
Trade PMR did not respond to requests for an interview.
Sandy Agricola of Dover, a Hyde client, said she broke ties with him early
last month. All the changes just didn't feel right, she said. In her 18
months as a client, she'd always questioned what she considered
excessive fees.
"He was supposed to be a genius, but he never really impressed us," she
said.

Longtime friend and attorney Gregg Manes of Akron recently had joined
Hyde as an estate planning specialist
"He's a good guy. He's a go-getter. He's very industrious," Manes said
months before the indictment was released. "He brought Hyde Financial
from nothing to where it is today. ... He's a good salesman. He knows
when to talk and when to be quiet."
Clients said they were told the switch to Trade PMR was best in the long
run. That Hyde himself would be able to operate in the background,
plotting big-picture strategy, with the firm collecting fees from clients,
ranging from 1 to 2.2 percent on invested assets.
The recent business changes came amid his wife, Lisa, filing for divorce
in early February. It's unclear exactly what she knew about her husband's
background, though she was aware of his true identity. She, her husband
and children regularly attended family functions, getting together with the
Bonannos from Trumbull County and vice-versa, said Lisa's mother,
Elaine Parker.
In divorce papers, before the indictment was filed, her attorney
subpoenaed financial records not only for Timothy Hyde but also for Joe
Bonanno.
By mid-March, Jackson Township police had turned over their case to the
FBI. The Canton-Stark County Crime Lab had matched Hyde's fingerprints
to those of Bonanno from his arrest in Massachusetts in 1988. They were
the same, according to documents from the Ohio Department of
Commerce Division of Securities.
On April 8, a federal grand jury handed up its indictment against Hyde,
charging one count of wire fraud and two counts of making false
statements.
Only days ago, former employees registered yet another new financial
advising firm with the SEC. Operating from the same location where Hyde
Financial and Hyde Financial Investments did business, it's called Helios
Investments. Charlene Dombrowski, Hyde's chief compliance officer who
holds the same title with Helios, declined to comment about the status of

the business.
According to Helios' SEC application, Robert James Bonanno (the same
name as Joseph Bonanno's father) was appointed company vice president
this month and owns at least 75 percent of the firm.
Joseph Bonanno/Timothy Hyde said he's no longer involved in the
business. "Hopefully, I pray they're able to salvage it; that's a good
company," he said.
In its indictment, the government contends that between February 2001
and March of this year, Joseph Bonanno filed roughly 45 false statements
about his identity with state and federal financial industry regulators.
Those statements, including information on his criminal background,
were relied upon in granting him licenses to operate as a stockbroker and
investment adviser.
The state immediately suspended his investment adviser license and
plans to permanently revoke it. Bonanno's attorney, Ian N. Friedman of
Cleveland, said he's unaware of any allegations regarding funds handled
by Hyde Financial.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Bridget M. Brennan, who is prosecuting the case,
declined to discuss details of it or whether authorities had planned to
examine Hyde's business records.
Bonanno is to appear in U.S. District Court in Akron on April 29, where
he'll be formally charged in front of Judge John R. Adams.
Joseph Bonanno, aka Timothy W. Hyde, was indicted April 8 on federal
charges of wire fraud and making false statements. Read the indictment.
Hyde Financial was located in suite 302 on the third floor of the Belden
Village Tower.
Bonanno used the name Timothy Welland on this state document.
The real Timothy Welland Hyde, who died in 1976 at 9 days old, is
buried in Ashtabula County.

 Under the Hyde name, Joseph Bonanno married his second wife in 1995.
He listed Feb. 3, 1970, as his birth date and claimed it was his first
marriage on his application.
These two citations from Jackson Township Police show the two
different birth years Hyde gave police in 2002.

Information for this story was collected from interviews with dozens of
people who knew, worked for or were related to Timothy W. Hyde, other
financial professionals, regulatory officials and hundreds of pages of
public and court records.

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