They thought the years of painful legal battles were over.
Instead, three men who received a combined $11.5 million as part of last year's historic settlement of clergy sex abuse cases involving the Los Angeles Archdiocese find themselves preparing to go to court once again.
This time, Salvador Tenerelli and brothers Stephen and Michael Trerotola have filed a lawsuit alleging that they were defrauded by the financial brokers who invested their settlement money.
The suit names as defendants the Swiss financial services firm UBS and several individual brokers who worked for the firm.
Tenerelli and the Trerotola brothers, who are all in their 60s and all in poor health, thought they could comfortably spend the rest of their years living off the interest from the settlement, according to the suit.
But one of their brokers, Richard Frankel, poured their entire settlement into a complex financial product known as auction rate securities, which he said were "as good as cash," according to the suit.
That promise fell through when the market for those securities collapsed earlier this year along with the credit crunch, the suit contends.
Frankel, who now works for a different financial firm, said that at the time he recommended the product he had no idea the auction market would fail and leave the funds stranded.
"I did not know. Should I have known? Maybe I should have, maybe my company should have. But if you talk to enough brokers, none of them knew," Frankel said.
The three men's investments are now frozen, and it is unclear when or how much, if any, of the money they could get back, according to the lawsuit.
Tenerelli, a former engineer who is dying of cancer, recently had his left arm amputated at the shoulder and is struggling with medical bills as he goes through radiation therapy.
The Trerotola brothers, who are diabetics and have suffered strokes and heart attacks, are also having trouble supporting their 84-year-old mother, who had to move out of their Glendale apartment because they could no longer afford to pay the rent, according to attorney Joseph Cotchett.
All three are currently surviving off their disability checks, Cotchett said.
"After being horrifically victimized by trusted 'men of the cloth,' the three clergy-abuse plaintiffs and their lawyer were cheated by a billion-dollar financial institution and a trusted group of 'financial advisors,' " the suit alleges.
