DC Solar ponzi scam may be largest in history of the US, Jeffrey Carpoff sentenced to 30 years
Last edited Wed Nov 10, 2021, 07:57 AM - Edit history (1)
Prosecutors say the scam may be the largest in the history of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento, one that bilked investors out of nearly $1 billion and generated a lavish lifestyle for its perpetrators that included more than 150 exotic sports cars and antique vehicles, vacation villas from Lake Tahoe to the Caribbean and even ownership of a minor league baseball team.
On Tuesday in federal court in Sacramento, Jeffrey Carpoff, the man behind the massive fraud, learned the penalty for his crimes: a 30-year prison sentence and an order to pay more than $790 million in restitution. “You were selling air,” U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez told Carpoff before sentencing him to the maximum allowed. “There was nothing there. You knew that. “You can blame the lawyers and the accountants all you want. But you’re the heart of this.”
Carpoff and his wife, Paulette, pleaded guilty in January 2020 to taking part in the Ponzi scheme involving their Benicia-based DC Solar Solutions company, plea deals that came after months of negotiations.
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“I can’t apologize enough,” Carpoff, 50, said. “I can’t apologize to the investors, to the government. “I can’t apologize to my family It really got out of hand, and it’s horrible.”
Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article255657146.html#storylink=cpy
Feds: Billion-Dollar Bay Area Ponzi Scheme Funded Jet-Setting Lifestyle, Ownership Of Minor League Baseball Team
SACRAMENTO (CBS SF) — Jeff Carpoff, owner of Benicia-based DC Solar, was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison Tuesday in a billion-dollar Ponzi scheme that he used to finance luxury homes and automobiles, the purchase of a minor league baseball team and a sponsorship of a NASCAR team.
Acting U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert called the case one of the biggest criminal fraud schemes in San Francisco Bay Area history
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According to court documents, between 2011 and 2018, DC Solar manufactured mobile solar generator units, which were solar generators that were mounted on trailers and were promoted as able to provide emergency power to cellphone towers and lighting at sporting events.
A significant incentive for investors were generous federal tax credits due to the solar nature of the project.
But investigators said Carpoff and his fellow conspirators sold solar generators that did not exist to the investors, making it appear that they existed in locations that they did not, creating false financial statements and obtaining false lease contracts. In reality, at least half of the approximately 17,000 solar generators claimed to have been manufactured by DC Solar did not exist.
“Jeff Carpoff orchestrated the largest criminal fraud scheme in the history of the Eastern District of California,” Talbert added. “He claimed to be an innovator in alternative energy, but he was really just stealing money from investors and costing the American taxpayer hundreds of millions in tax credits.”