Jan. 6—A Vancouver man was sentenced Friday to 6 1/4 years in federal prison for a Ponzi scheme that defrauded 32 investors, most of them close friends and family, of $4.3 million.
Charles Richard Burgess, who goes by the first name Dick, pleaded guilty in August to a federal charge of mail fraud in U.S. District Court in Tacoma.
The charging information, filed Aug. 4, states that between 1995 and April 2021, Burgess sold investments in an unregistered investment vehicle that he called “the pool.” It states he sold investments to 64 investors totaling $13.6 million. Burgess was never a registered investment adviser and solicited investments from people who trusted him, such as friends and family members.
When people agreed to invest, Burgess instructed them to create a self-directed IRA account and wire money from that account to an account controlled by Burgess, according to the information.
Between about August 2013 and July 2021, Burgess ran a Ponzi scheme; he told investors he’d invest their money into a pool with a history of excellent performance and that he’d be paid 50 percent of the pool’s profits, according to court records.
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Instead, the information states Burgess “overstated the past performance of the fund, misrepresented the value of investors’ investments on monthly statements, used funds provided by new investors to repay earlier investors and took for himself far more than the agreed 50 percent of pool profits.”
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