Bill Livolsi: Would You Go to Prison for Your Spouse?

Okay Nightmare Success lifters, we are back, and I’ve got to tell you about this conversation I had with Bill Livolsi. Bill’s story hits different because it starts with love. He wasn’t chasing money or running a scheme. He was trying to help his wife.

Bill grew up outside Philadelphia, the oldest of three kids. His dad worked in pharmaceuticals and became his role model. “I wanted to be just like my dad,” Bill told me. After college, he climbed the corporate ladder in finance, eventually becoming a CFO at an advertising agency in New York. Life was good.

The Move to Vegas and a Fateful Decision

In the early 2000s, Bill was living in Vegas and commuting to New York three days a week. When his fiancée wanted to move to Oklahoma to care for her sick father, Bill made the choice to step back from his career. He was financially secure and wanted to spend more time with his younger kids.

That’s when things started unraveling. His spouse was a private money manager, and her business wasn’t going well. There were lawsuits. Assets were frozen. Family members who had invested money were getting nervous.

“I was supremely arrogant, thinking that I could fix every problem that ever arose,” Bill said. Around 2006, panic set in. He couldn’t take watching the situation deteriorate anymore.

So Bill stepped in as a middleman. With the assets frozen but new investors wanting in, he took their money and used it to pay out existing investors. “If I had half a brain in my head at the time, that is the very definition of a Ponzi scheme,” he told me. “Taking new money to pay off old investors.”

The Quiet Before the Storm

After Bill’s involvement in 2006, things went quiet for a while. He thought maybe he’d dodged a bullet. But that quiet period was actually the FBI building their case.

The reality check came in 2010. Bill had just dropped his kids off at school when he came home to find FBI agents all over his property. “There’s an agent there with a rifle over their shoulder,” he said. They arrested his wife that day.

What followed was three years of his wife fighting the charges while Bill tried to hold things together for their two young kids, who were only 8 and 10 at the time. When she turned down a plea deal in 2013, the government filed a superseding indictment. Bill was on it.

Finding Help in a Walmart Parking Lot

That’s when someone told Bill about Jeff Grant, who helps people navigate the federal system. Bill called him from a Walmart parking lot after dropping the kids at school.

“I just let it all out,” Bill said. “We were on the phone for a long time, and Jeff listens really well.” That conversation changed everything. Jeff helped Bill understand the process and, most importantly, how to protect his kids.

One crucial piece of advice was to talk to the school counselors and get the kids into therapy. “It’s painful to do but it’s really important,” Bill said. “The psychologist said it’s important if you want your kids to trust you, you can tell them the truth in age-appropriate ways.”

A Judge’s Compassion

When sentencing day came, Bill and his wife got something rare in the federal system. The judge staggered their sentences so the kids wouldn’t lose both parents at once. Bill’s wife got 45 months and went in first in late 2015. Bill got 24 months plus nine months home confinement and reported in March 2019.

“That judge really reflected on the staggering,” Bill said. “I’m really grateful for that.”

The judge even left the bench after the hearing to think about the sentence, which Bill later learned was unusual. Most judges render decisions immediately.

Prison During a Pandemic

Bill surrendered to FCI El Reno in Oklahoma. His strategy going in was simple. “This is the last thing I got to do,” he told me. “Get me there so I can get it over with.”

The first few weeks flew by, but summer hit hard. The newness wore off, and Bill struggled. He made the mistake of stopping his anxiety and depression medications cold turkey. “I would not advise anybody to ever do that,” he said. Fortunately, the prison doctor helped him get back on them.

Bill used his time inside to figure out how he’d gotten into the mess in the first place. Not just what he did, but why. “I really wanted to figure out why I made the decisions I made, why I sequestered myself off from the people that cared about me.”

An Unexpected Early Release

Bill thought he’d serve most of his sentence, maybe getting out in mid-July 2020 under the elderly offender provisions. Instead, he got a surprise.

COVID-19 hit, and the CARES Act allowed early releases. Bill was working in the transportation office when a CO made a comment about not having to put up with them much longer. “I had no idea what he was talking about,” Bill said.

They quarantined about 40 inmates for two weeks, then told them they were going home. When Bill called his son to say he was getting out, “he thought I was joking.”

Bill was released on April 29, 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic shutdown.

Today, Bill works as a life coach specializing in white-collar cases. He’s the deputy director of Progressive Prison Ministries and helps run the national white-collar support group where I first connected with him through Jeff Grant. His kids made it through and they’re doing well. The question in the episode title was whether you’d go to prison for your spouse. Bill’s answer, in the end, was more complicated than yes or no.