BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Another chapter is set to close on the Kingdom Con. Thursday, Bill Stenger, the former president of Jay Peak, will be sentenced for his role in the massive fraud.
He promised to help transform the Northeast Kingdom into a tourist destination and a technology hub.
“This is a wonderful day for our community and for our state,” Stenger said in September 2012.
Even state and congressional leaders bought it.
“Jobs know no political party. They know no philosophy. What they know is we need them and there’s no better example of creating jobs, I believe, in the history of this great state,” then-Vermont governor Peter Shumlin said.
But the dream Stenger pitched for the area he said he loved, turned into a nightmare and literally left a mark on the community– a hole in the heart of downtown Newport.
The former Jay Peak president became a king of the kingdom, if you will, skilled at bringing cash to one of the most economically challenged parts of the state. There were major makeovers at Jay and Burke Mountain, and an entire block in Newport was brought down to make way for better businesses and a hotel.
Stenger did it through federal EB-5 money. Foreign investors paid $500,000 to help create job-generating businesses in exchange for a path to U.S. residency.
He first tapped into EB-5 funds in 2006. For more than a decade, 800 investors from 74 countries would fund numerous projects that Stenger said would spawn 10,000 jobs.
Until the king’s castle came…
