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A decide in California has sentenced an ex-cop who squandered over $2m {dollars} of his victims’ cash at a San Manuel on line casino to 14 years in jail. [Image: Shutterstock.com]
Decide slams former cop
After branding an ex-cop “probably the most evil individuals” he has ever handled, US District Decide Michael W. Fitzgerald handed the California man a 14-year federal jail sentence for defrauding traders out of greater than $7.5m.
a requirement to pay again $7,592,491
Decide Fitzgerald sentenced Christopher Lloyd Burnell, 51, on Tuesday. His sentence features a requirement to pay again $7,592,491. The US Lawyer’s Workplace for the Central District of Los Angeles (USAO-LA) shared the ruling on Twitter:
Based on the USAO-LA information launch, the previous cop gambled away greater than $2m of his victims’ cash at Yaamava’ Resort & On line casino, previously often known as San Manuel On line casino. On Could 10, Burnell pled responsible to 11 counts of wire fraud and two counts of submitting a false tax return.
The DOJ mentioned that Burnell leveraged his employment background as a San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy to “achieve traders’ belief.” He then used the money to fund his “extravagant life-style.”
Internet of deceit
According to the US Department of Justice, Burnell’s rip-off relied on convincing victims he was a rich businessman. He claimed he had received tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in lawsuits in opposition to his former sheriff’s division and a agency that he bought an air-cooled, bullet-resistant vest to. Whereas each claims had been as phoney as a three-dollar invoice, they labored a attraction.
Burnell’s victims fell for his gross sales pitch, during which he promised returns of as much as 100% on unique funding alternatives, repayable in mere weeks. The victims dived proper in, some investing a whole lot of hundreds of {dollars} at a time.
Hooters calendar mannequin girlfriends, playing, and personal jets.”
Alas for the duped, prosecutors defined in a sentencing memo, the “funding alternatives didn’t truly exist.” As an alternative, the disgraced ex-officer used the cash to keep up “a lifetime of luxurious for himself and his Hooters calendar mannequin girlfriends, playing, and personal jets.”
Wheels come off
Burnell’s rip-off lasted for a number of years till his victims’ cash ran out and he couldn’t discover any new ones. The ex-cop even squeezed extra money out of his victims by falsely claiming he wanted loans to pay for his then-wife’s most cancers remedy.
The DOJ mentioned that, moreover the $2m playing loss, Burnell blew $500,000 on personal jet flights, $70,000 on Louis Vuitton merchandise, and $175,000 on luxurious vehicles and an condominium lease for his then-girlfriends.
Based on court docket paperwork, Burnell wrecked lots of his victims’ lives. The DOJ cites despair, divorce, suicidal tendencies, enterprise failure, pressured sale of property, and stopping children’ faculty schooling as a number of the unfavourable results.
“Merely put, no phrases can clarify the extent of emotional and bodily havoc [Burnell] wreaked on [his] victims’ lives,” prosecutors said.