Tacoma – An unlicensed “investment advisor” from Vancouver, Washington, pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court in Tacoma to mail fraud in connection with his scheme to defraud investors, including friends and family members, out of more than $4 million, announced U.S. Attorney Nick Brown. Charles Richard Burgess, 66, faces up to 20 years in prison when sentenced by U.S. District Judge David Estudillo on November 4, 2022.
“For more than two decades Mr. Burgess led his victims to believe that he was successfully investing their funds for retirement. But in fact, since at least 2013, the investment fund was insolvent and losing value, and Burgess was stealing investor funds to line his own pockets,” said U.S. Attorney Brown. “More than two dozen people have lost retirement savings because of Mr. Burgess’s fraud.”
According to records filed in the case, in the mid-1990s Burgess began selling investments in an unregistered investment vehicle that Burgess called “the pool.” Burgess never became a registered or licensed investment advisor. But between January 1995 and April 2021, he convinced 64 people to invest $13.4 million in “the pool.” He sought investments from friends and family members with whom he had a trusting relationship. Burgess did nothing to screen the investors to see what type of risk they could tolerate, and he did not provide them with written materials about the nature of the investments.
Burgess told investors…
