Ex-financial advisor gets 20 years for child sex abuse

A 25-year veteran financial advisor was sentenced to 20 years in prison after being convicted of two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child.

Former SA Stone Wealth Management advisor Gregory Frank Estes received the prison term and began serving it on Dec. 14 after a jury in the state court of San Angelo, Texas, found him guilty of the first-degree felony charges stemming from his January 2021 arrest, court records showed. The jury acquitted Estes, 59, on a half dozen other charges but delivered the guilty verdict after almost 11 hours of deliberation and an "intense eight-day trial," according to a news report in local outlet SanAngeloLive.com. The victim was the 8-year-old daughter of a woman that Estes had been convicted of sexually assaulting in 2001, KTAB-TV and KRBC-TV reported.

The attorney who represented Estes in the trial didn't respond to a phone call and email seeking comment.

Prosecutors presented testimony from five other women who said that Estes assaulted them, while the defense argued that his credit card receipts proved he was in other locations at the times of the alleged incidents, SanAngeloLive reported. Estes, who had pleaded not guilty to an initial rap of 10 counts of sexual assault of a child and indecency with a child by contact, may appeal the decision. 

Over his more than two and a half decades in the industry, he was employed by five different firms, according to FINRA BrokerCheck. On the 2001 case convicting him of felony attempted sexual assault, Estes said in a comment on BrokerCheck that the "matter was blown out of proportion" and he accepted a probation and fine rather than "defending a long, drawn out appeals process."  

In addition to the time behind bars in state prison, the sentence carries a $1,000 fine and the requirement to register as a sex offender.