LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A Las Vegas man was sentenced to over 70 months in prison for defrauding hundreds of small business owners, many of them elderly, of about $12 million for his own benefit, court records showed.
Michael Jones, 43, was sentenced to 78 months in prison followed by five years of supervised release. He pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud and 10 counts of wire fraud, records showed.
Jones was ordered to pay $11,509,086.67 in restitution to the victims and a forfeiture totaling $7,934,095.32, in addition to his prison term, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
According to court documents, from October 2009 to February 2014, Jones and his co-defendants convinced more than 2,100 small business owners to pay nearly $12 million. Jones described the money as advance fees to fund expenses to apply for supposed government, private, and charitable grants for the victims’ businesses.
Jones and the others would follow a script and tell the victims that the organizations would provide grants to them regardless of their business type however, the victims first needed to pay thousands of dollars in fees to access those grants, according to court documents.
According to the DOJ, Jones and his co-defendants convinced the small business owners to give them money in exchange for services that they never provided to solely benefit themselves.
