A December 14 sentencing date is now on the calendar for the San Antonio financial adviser who steered her own clients into the Ponzi scheme a jury separately convicted her two Lubbock co-defendants of running last week. Brooklynn Chandler Willy, who owned Queen B Advisors LLC, doing business as Texas Financial Advisory, pleaded guilty in March to ten federal counts tied to the same Ferrum Capital fraud that put Joshua Allen and Michael Cox in federal custody after their trial. Her case shows how an adviser’s own client list became the recruiting pipeline for a scheme that eventually cost hundreds of investors millions of dollars.
How an Adviser Fed Her Own Clients Into the Scheme
Court documents describe a pattern that repeated across several of Willy’s clients, according to the Justice Department’s account of her plea. At her recommendation, a married couple invested in Ferrum Capital in 2018, then put another $500,000 into a second Ferrum entity in 2021 through Chandler Capital Holdings, the company Willy used to execute the contracts. Rather than investing that $500,000 as promised, Willy used it for her own credit card payments, payments to other investors, and payments to a separate business she controlled. She later convinced a different married couple to invest about $2 million in an associate’s company, telling them the money would buy distressed debt, then diverted much of it to herself, her associate, and other investors. Two more clients put in $75,000 and $600,000 on similar promises. During the investigation, Willy also forged victims’ signatures on documents and gave them to federal agents in an attempt to mislead the inquiry.
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Ten Counts, Twenty Years Each on the Largest Charges
Willy pleaded guilty to six counts of wire fraud, one count of wire fraud conspiracy, and one count of money laundering conspiracy, each carrying up to 20 years in prison, plus a count of engaging in monetary transactions in fraud proceeds carrying up to 10 years and a mandatory minimum two years for aggravated identity theft that by law must run consecutive to any other sentence. A federal district judge will set the actual sentence after weighing the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors, meaning her real exposure could land well short of the combined statutory maximum.
A transcript of Willy’s March 19 plea hearing, unsealed as her co-defendants’ trial began this month, shows U.S. District Judge Fred Biery pressing her on what drove the scheme. Asked whether she knew she was stealing from people, Willy answered, “I was a crook. I’m very sorry. I will do anything in my power to right what I can.” When the judge asked what caused her conduct, framing it as greed overcoming conscience, Willy agreed. Her attorney told the court that Willy and her husband had already placed more than $900,000 into the court registry or the government’s custody toward restitution, with plans for monthly payments the family hoped would eventually repay every victim before sentencing.
What December 14 Means for the Ferrum Capital Case
Willy’s sentencing will close out the last of three defendants in the Ferrum Capital matter, following the jury’s conviction of Allen and Cox on all four counts they faced. The Justice Department’s own announcement of that verdict refers to Willy as an “already convicted co-defendant,” reflecting that her guilty plea was kept from the jury in the Allen and Cox trial so it would not influence their verdict. Judge Biery told Willy directly that paying restitution ahead of sentencing does not guarantee she avoids prison, a caution that applies regardless of how much of the roughly $900,000 already logged toward repayment ultimately reaches victims. The FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation investigated the case, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Blackwell is prosecuting it alongside the Allen and Cox matter.
At the same hearing, with an estimated 50 to 75 victims in the courtroom, Judge Biery had Willy turn and address her family before turning to the victims themselves. She told her family she had failed them and that there would “never be enough grace” for her to forgive herself. To the victims, she said she hated having put them through the ordeal and was “so committed to making right what I’ve done wrong.” The judge also asked about her education, and Willy said she holds a law degree from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, though she was never a licensed attorney, a detail that came up as the court weighed how much she understood about the promises she was making to clients.
The case is a reminder of a structural gap that let the scheme run for years: victims sent money to Chandler Capital Holdings or directly to Ferrum entities rather than to a custodian independent of the adviser recommending the investment, so no outside institution was positioned to catch the diversion before the money was gone. Willy’s guilty plea, entered five months before her sentencing date, means that question of guilt is already settled; what December 14 will determine is how much of her sentence Judge Biery orders to run alongside the restitution payments her family says it intends to keep making.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Financial Wire editorial team.
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David M. Keller is a finance writer based in Columbus, Ohio, covering personal finance and consumer-focused economic topics. He earned his degree in journalism from Ohio University and began his career reporting on local business and economic trends for a regional media outlet. Since then, he has contributed to a variety of online publications, focusing on clear, practical coverage of topics such as cost of living, debt, and everyday financial decision-making.
