FORT WORTH, TX—A Fort Worth man convicted for running a fraudulent oil and gas Ponzi scheme was sentenced to prison on Thursday, officials said.
U.S. District Judge Terry R. Means sentenced Jeffrey Watts, also known as “Jeff Watts,” 41, to six years and six months in federal prison.
The judge also ordered Watts to pay $4.6 million as restitution.
Watts has been in custody since his arrest in May in Eugene, Oregon, where he fled when his scheme began to unravel.
According to court documents, these are the facts and circumstances surrounding this case:
- Beginning in fall 2011 and continuing to December 2013, Watts engaged in a scheme to defraud involving oil and gas investments.
- He presented himself as the founder and principal of Blue Alpha Energy, falsely representing to investors that the company had invested in oil and gas well in Texas and was owned and/or operated by Arrowhead Productions, a legitimate, but unrelated company based in Fort Worth.
- Watts established Blue Alpha Energy and a group of related sham entities to perpetrate his fraud scheme by leading investors to believe they were investing in oil and gas wells owned and/or operated by Arrowhead Productions.
- For example, Watts represented to investors that Arrowhead LG, LLC was an assumed name or doing business as Arrowhead Productions.
- He claimed to have possessed documents that bore the purported signature of the actual president of Arrowhead Productions, as the President of Arrowhead LG, LLC.
- Watts falsely portrayed these sham entities as legitimate, third party lenders or investors in his alleged oil and gas interests, and he transferred investor funds between these accounts and the accounts of Blue Alpha Energy.
- Watts falsely represented to investors that they would receive monthly distributions according to their ownership percentage in oil and gas wells owned and/or operated by Arrowhead Productions.
- He also duped his business partners and employees into believing his fraudulent representations, causing them to disseminate printed investment information that conveyed his misrepresentations.
- To further the scheme, Watts made monthly payments to investors in Blue Alpha Energy, using investor funds transferred between bank account of the sham entities he controlled.
- Between 2011 and 2013, approximately $5.8 million in investments was raised from approximately 45 investors.
- However, in December 2013, several investors in Blue Alpha Energy learned Watts never had investment agreements with Arrowhead Productions and, in fact, funneled the investor funds into the sham business entities he controlled.