‘Brazen and Repeated’ Lies Bilked Honest Investors of $18 Million Over 8 Years: DOJ
Three Others Going to Prison for Years Also: Two Utahans, One Idahoan
Internationally Complex Banking ‘Web’ Laced With ‘False Promises’ Tricked Investors, Prosecutors Proved
By JOSH MITCHELL
Editor
River Mississippi News
ARKANSAS — An Arkansas man, who along with two men from Utah and another from Boise, Idaho, defrauded over a dozen people of more than $18 million over eight years, was sentenced to almost 21 years in prison for “brazenly” and “repeatedly” lying to people who invested in his fake organization.
The eight-year scam also involved the use of money laundering by one of the criminals, who used investor money to pay down old debt not even related to the organization the victims thought they were putting their money into, a U.S. Department of Justice news release issued Monday explains.
John C. Nock, of Fayetteville, Ark., founded The Brittingham Group, which defrauded investors through a “complex web of bank accounts around the world,” according to Nicole M. Argentieri, head of the U.S. Justice Department’s Criminal Division.
Argentieri added that these prison sentences are part of the DOJ’s ongoing effort involving the “rooting out investment fraud and protecting Americans’ financial security.”
“The defendants have now been held to account for their crimes,” the DOJ news release quotes Argentieri as saying.
Nock, 55, was ordered to spend 20 years and 10 months in prison last week, the release states.
Likewise, the other three financial criminals involved in the almost decade-long fraud operation were sent to prison last week as well with each receiving prison stays ranging from 8 to 12 years.
They are as follows:
Kevin Griffith, 68, of Orem, Utah, 12 years and six months; Brian Brittsan, 67, of Boise, Idaho, 10 years; and Alexander Ituma, 57, of Lehi, Utah, eight years and four months.
Investigative and trial evidence demonstrated that “between at least 2013 and 2021, Nock, Brittsan, Griffith, and Ituma conspired to engage in an investment fraud scheme through The Brittingham Group, a purported investment firm that claimed to have access to exclusive investment opportunities, including deals involving the monetization of foreign bank guarantees,” the release explains.
The scheme worked because “the four defendants falsely represented the nature of their investment offerings and made guarantees to victims regarding the safety and security of their funds. The defendants also promised victims outsized returns, to be paid in a short period of time, which the defendants could not and did not ever produce,” the release adds.
Moreover, they promoted and hid the years-long conspiratorial scheme by persuading “victims to send their money to bank accounts that Griffith, Ituma, and other co-conspirators controlled, and created fake documents to send to victims to make the investment appear legitimate and to be progressing.”
Ultimately, the financial criminals transferred the duped victims’ money by way of a “complex web of worldwide bank accounts,” federal prosecutors successfully argued based on evidence uncovered through a joint investigation by the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) Dallas Field Office and the FBI, according to DOJ officials.
“For years, the defendants’ blatant and egregious investment fraud scheme used false promises to bilk investors out of millions of dollars of their hard-earned money,” said Christopher J. Altemus Jr., special agent over IRS-CI in Dallas.
“The women and men of IRS-CI will continue to band together with their law enforcement partners to pursue those who commit financial crimes and steal from trusting individuals,” Altemus stated in Monday’s DOJ press release.
Investors were fooled into believing they would garner “lucrative” financial returns if they invested in The Brittingham Group, but the financial faith they placed in the organization was met with a “conspiracy of lies and fraud,” Michael D. Nordwall of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, asserted in the news release.
All four were convicted last summer of “conspiracy to commit wire fraud, multiple counts of wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.”
But Nock was also convicted of the extra charge of laundering money since he used some of the people’s money to pay down old debt unrelated to The Brittingham Group, DOJ officials said.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Arkansas helped with the probe.
