A Ponzi Scheme Collapses

Nearly a dozen fraudsters who conspired to operate a $40 million Ponzi scheme will be spending plenty of time behind bars after a joint effort by the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of North Carolina. Among those now serving time is the scheme’s mastermind, Keith Franklin Simmons, who was sentenced to 40 years in prison late last year. And just last month, the 11th and final defendant in the conspiracy—Jonathan D. Davey—was sentenced to more than 21 years.

The federal judge who sentenced Davey said the term handed down reflected the effects of the fraud on its 400 or so victims—mainly elderly and vulnerable—and that the scheme resulted in “life-wrecking damage” and caused victims to lose “life savings, trust, faith, and their sense of dignity.”

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