Fraudulent Dallas energy company led by convicted con artist bilked $16 million from investors

Federal prosecutors handed down criminal and civil indictments in opposition to 5 individuals Wednesday, like Richard Dale Sterritt Jr. of Garland, who was formerly convicted of financial investment fraud in 2003 and sentenced to five yrs in jail in a inventory manipulation scheme.

U.S. Justice Section and U.S. Securities and Trade officers say Sterritt and 4 others solicited $16 million in investments from far more than 300 men and women among March 2018 and November 2020 to fund a Dallas-based mostly enterprise termed Zona Strength Inc.

Zona was meant to be utilizing the money to acquire mineral legal rights in West Texas, but rather, the revenue went to a collection of shell corporations run by Sterritt, according to the charging paperwork. Investigators said Sterritt even utilised the pseudonym “Richard Richman” as he orchestrated the scheme.

Prosecutors in New York handed down felony expenses for securities fraud, wire fraud, revenue laundering and other offenses to Sterritt, 64, and two other Texas people today — Michael Greer, 45, of Dallas and a longtime company companion, Robyn Straza, 58, of Dallas.

Also indicted had been Robert Magness, 51, of New York and Mark Ross, 53, of Parkland, Fla. The SEC criticism also names 3 some others — Deanna Looney, Katie Mathews and James Christopher Pittman — in the fraud and inventory manipulation scheme.

They face up to 20 decades in prison on the securities fraud and income laundering costs.

“Through a net of connected strategies, Sterritt and his co-defendants allegedly stole tens of millions of bucks from investors, tried to manipulate a publicly-traded inventory and laundered the proceeds of their crimes via the order of luxurious things like a Bentley,” acting U.S. Attorney Mark J. Lesko claimed.

The indictment alleges that Sterritt and the other folks used shell companies to hide the functions of Zona Electrical power. It also accuses the group of laundering resources from Zona Electricity into a penny-stock organization run by Sterritt called OrgHarvest, which called alone a hashish cultivation corporation based mostly out of Dallas and issued news releases about investments it received from Zona Power.

“Investors should really be wary of men and women applying aggressive revenue ways to pitch unregistered choices that guarantee significant investment returns with minor or no hazard,” explained Richard R. Greatest, director of the SEC’s New York regional workplace. “As alleged, Sterritt and his accomplices defrauded and victimized investors by inducing them to commit utilizing wrong statements and then misappropriating their cash.”

The indictment claimed Sterritt and the many others invested more than $10 million of the revenue they raised from buyers to acquire luxurious autos, bear plastic operation and give dollars to Sterritt’s household, close friends, girlfriends and other co-conspirators.

In 2003, Sterritt and other accomplices pleaded responsible to costs connected to a plan to pump up the stock of a Dallas-primarily based company named Continental Financial investment Corp. by transferring the stock among several shell providers to make it seem to be in superior need. Sterritt’s father, Richard Sterritt Sr., was convicted together with his son, but people fees have been dropped as a component of the son’s plea deal that bundled five decades in jail.