HARBORVIEW ADVISORS: MY LOOK BACK STORY

I started working in 1983, flipping hamburgers under the Golden Arches. It was honest work, repetitive, humbling, and grounding. What I didn’t know then was that it would mark the beginning of more than four decades of continuous employment, responsibility, and reinvention.

In 1997, my wife, at the time, Kerry Stong (formerly Kerry Sue Wilday), and I were expecting our first child. At the time, we owned and operated a small coffee and sandwich shop at 100 Middle Street in Portland, Maine. We bought the business with a loan secured by her father’s mobile home—he was an entrepreneur himself and believed in us before we had much proof we deserved it.

We learned fast. The menu improved, service sharpened, and foot traffic followed. Even the police officers across the street became regulars. When Kerry became pregnant, we made a hard but clear-eyed decision: we sold the business, repaid her father in full, and closed that chapter with dignity and profit. Mission accomplished. Now I needed a career.

After a few false starts in real estate and commercial finance, I noticed an office down the hall from our former shop: Dean Witter. I applied and was hired almost immediately. Back then, the job title was “stockbroker.” I understood markets instinctively, but the culture—cold calls, late nights, selling first and planning second—never fit me.

So I adapted.

As the industry evolved, I moved with it. In 2002, I founded what would become Harborview Advisors, recruiting partners but remaining the singular originator of the firm. Independence suited me. I was no longer a W-2 employee; I was an entrepreneur. We kept more of what we earned, but we carried the weight of overhead, compliance, staffing, and accountability. I thrived in that environment.

In 2014, we registered Harborview Advisors with the SEC as an independent Registered Investment Advisor. I served as both Chief Operating Officer and Chief Compliance Officer for seven years, overseeing six advisors and more than $300 million in client assets. My compliance record was exemplary.

This matters, because while I have always lived near the edge — risk, speed and creativity — I also know how to follow rules.

I can operate inside rigid systems without compromising integrity, even when my instincts lean unconventional. That tension has defined my life and my work.

By 2021, I stepped away from management to refocus on clients, and we joined a larger RIA operating under a shared regulatory umbrella. I was still building, still contributing, still trusted.

Then, in June of 2023, everything changed.

I experienced a profound personal and medical crisis—one that those close to me understand without explanation. What followed, in my view, was not support or accommodation, but a series of actions that reflected discrimination tied to a disability recognized as a protected class.

The imbalance of power was stark, and over time, institutional resources were used not to resolve the situation, but to silence it.

In February 2024, I filed an administrative complaint with the Maine Human Rights Commission. The process was wholly inadequate and failed to resolve the discrimination I was facing. If anything, it emboldened those responsible.

On December 2, 2025, I was terminated—without warning, without communication, while still incarcerated, before I had any opportunity to obtain legal counsel of any kind, and before I had entered a plea related to criminal charges I did not commit. I learned of my termination via an email sent by the Manager of LLC the Harborview Investments; Drew Swenson, CPA, JD, LLM President of Paragon of Management located In Portland, Maine where Harborview Advisors is also based. I assume that it was a unanimous vote including my two advisor partners: William R. Todd Partner and Wealth Manager and Harry M. Krigman Managing Partner and Wealth Manager at Harborview Advisors.

The violent incident underlying those charges resulted in a severe traumatic brain injury and over sixteen days of incarceration in the Gallatin County Detention Center. I am and will continue to seek medical treatment for the very serious injuries I incurred.

Prior or this event, I had never been in custody before. Not once.

Today, the status of my 23.30% ownership interest in Harborview Investments, LLC remains unknown. The Manager of the LLC has refused to respond to direct inquiries regarding my membership. I have no income, no confirmed ownership interest, and—at least for now—no family structure as I once knew it.

And yet, I am still standing.

I planned for retirement well, even when I didn’t plan for collapse. That foresight gives me time. My creative entrepreneurial skills have always landed somewhere, and they will again.

My compliance expertise—built over decades, tested under SEC scrutiny, and proven in practice—is not erased by circumstance.

I prefer the edge. I always have. But I also know how to operate within the rules, and my record proves it.

As I write this, I am in a hotel room in North Bozeman, Montana wearing a GPS monitor, under a protection order, uncertain of what comes next…

What I am certain of is this: I have rebuilt before. I know how to survive transition. And this chapter—however disorienting—is not the end of the story.

If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.

And if I can come back from it, that may be the most important work I’ve ever done.

Easy does it. Ride or die.

– The Mainer Montanan