A federal judge sentenced former Hawaii and California licensed insurance broker Kevin Loux on Monday to nearly four years in prison for stealing more than $400,000 from elderly clients.

Loux, 63, pleaded guilty last September to a wire fraud charge for  persuading one of his clients to transfer money from a mainland bank account to a local account purportedly to place in higher-yield investments.

Instead of investing his clients’ money, Loux used it instead to pay his personal expenses, to supplement his income and to create the illusion of legitimate financial returns by using money from later investors to pay earlier investors, he said in his plea agreement.

Kristi Meyers, who said her parents Clarence and Sharon Nonaka lost their retirement savings to Loux, urged U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway to impose the maximum penalty under federal law for the wire fraud plus one year under state law for giving her father a bad check. The maximum prison term for the wire fraud is 30 years.

Mollway sentenced Loux to 46 months in prison followed by five years of court-supervised release.