LOS ANGELES – A Chatsworth man was sentenced on Monday to 10 years in federal prison for running an investment scheme that lured more than 82 victims into investing about $7 million, the U.S. Justice Department announced Tuesday.
Luis Alonso Serna, 61, a pastor at Zion Living Word Christian Center – formerly Amistad Cristiana – in San Fernando operated a foreign currency investment company called Architects of the Future Investments. The scheme targeted Spanish-Speaking Investors, officials said.
Serna plead guilty in August to a wire fraud charge.
During the sentencing, U.S. District Court Judge Beverly Reid O’Connell ordered Serna to pay $4.6 million as restitution to victims, officials said.
“This case involves an egregious fraud that targeted the non-wealthy victims who believed in the defendant because he was a pastor,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum filed with the court. “The effects of this crime on the victims are truly devastating in every way.”
“In short, [Serna] has caused not only financial loss, but the loss of homes, the loss of ability to pay for education for children, the need to declare bankruptcy, psychological damage, physical affliction, and endless suffering,” according to the sentencing memo, which contained numerous statements from victims who suffered adverse effects when they lost their money.
The court evidence indicated that Serna solicited loans from individuals by telling them that the money would be invested in foreign currency and that their investments would generate annual returns as high as 20 percent, authorities said.
Officials said Serna admitted in his plea agreement that he invested only a small portion of the loan proceeds in foreign currency or anything else that could possibly sustain the returns he promised his victims.
Serna was running a Ponzi scheme in which he used money from new investors to pay off people who had previously given him money.
This case was investigated by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the FBI.