Brett Amendola, 38, of Ashburn, Va., was sentenced to 84 months in prison for carrying out a $5 million Ponzi scheme involving his purported purchase of a golf course in Loudoun County, Va. The scheme resulted in losses of at least $2.8 million to more than a dozen victims who had invested with Amendola.
Amendola was immediately taken into the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service at sentencing, where he will remain until transferred to the Bureau of Prisons to serve his prison sentence.
Neil MacBride, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; Valerie Parlave, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office; and Michael Chapman, Loudoun County sheriff, made the announcement after sentencing by U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee.
Amendola pleaded guilty on April 4, 2012, to wire fraud. According to court records, during 2010 and 2011, Amendola persuaded various investors to provide him with short-term funding that would be held in escrow to fulfill a requirement by his lender to purchase the Beacon Hill Golf Course in Loudoun County. He promised that the money would be returned to the investors – with interest – in a matter of days. In reality, Amendola diverted the investors’ money to his own use, including funding his and family members’ trading accounts, making payments to investors in this and other schemes, and paying for personal expenses, including gambling.
To carry out his fraud, Amendola posed as the attorney representing the escrow account both over the phone and through various email messages, leading investors to believe that they were wiring funds to financial accounts controlled by the escrow attorney, when in reality the financial accounts were controlled by Amendola and quickly looted for his personal use. In sentencing Amendola, the Court found that the fraud was sophisticated and that Amendola abused a position of trust when he impersonated the lawyer.
In a related case, Jerry Mckerac, 61, of Las Vegas, Nev., and Fond du Lac, Wis., was charged in an indictment with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identify theft for his involvement in the scheme, which the indictment alleges included similarly impersonating the escrow attorney as well as Amendola’s father while dealing with the victims.
This case was investigated by the FBI’s Washington Field Office and the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office. Assistant U.S. Attorneys James Gillis and G. Zachary Terwilliger are prosecuting the case on behalf of the United States.