{"id":49957,"date":"2022-06-02T14:44:53","date_gmt":"2022-06-02T21:44:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjnotebook.com\/?p=49957"},"modified":"2022-06-02T14:44:53","modified_gmt":"2022-06-02T21:44:53","slug":"glorified-con-man-defrauded-100-investors-of-8-3-million-through-the-ancient-slag-scheme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cjnotebook.com\/?p=49957","title":{"rendered":"“Glorified Con Man” Defrauded 100 Investors of $8.3 Million through the “Ancient Slag” Scheme"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0LOS ANGELES\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"A British national was sentenced Thursday to three years in federal prison for defrauding over 100 investors out of more than $8 million through a scheme that sold \u201cancient slag,\u201d a mining waste byproduct that supposedly contained precious metals, officials stated.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 U.S.District Court Judge John A. Kronstadt sentenced Michael Godfree, 80, a United Kingdom citizen who resides in the Mount Washington neighborhood of Los Angeles,.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Judge Kronstadt also ordered Godfree to pay $8.3 million in restitution.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Godfree plead guilty in December 2021 to one count of mail fraud, officials stated.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cGodfree was nothing more than a glorified conman,\u201d prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum. \u201cAt bottom, [Godfree] was selling nothing more than worthless dirt (that he generally didn\u2019t own) along with a non-existent \u2018process\u2019 to extract value from the dirt\u2026.\u00a0Unsurprisingly, not a single victim-purchaser has ever seen any return on their purchase. Instead, the money was spent on lavish goods and personal expenses for [Godfree].\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 From 2011 to November 2017, Godfree schemed to defraud victim-purchasers of material he identified as \u201cancient slag\u201d and \u201cgold ore,\u201d according to the evidence.<\/span><\/p>\n

He was co-founder of The Minerals Acquisition Company (TMAC), a Pasadena-based outfit that offered to sell slag to victims who were told the company would be able to extract precious metals from this slag, which was generated from copper mining. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"TMAC sold ton-quantities of the slag with promises of refining the material and recovering precious metals. TMAC provided victims with supposedly attorney-certified \u201cCertificates of Title\u201d that purported to transfer ownership of the slag to victims.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Godfree fraudulently induced the victims to buy the \u201cancient slag\u201d by falsely stating the \u201cancient slag\u201d was valuable because it contained precious metals and a process would soon be available that could extract the precious metals supposedly in the slag.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In fact, officials stated that Godfree and TMAC did not actually own most of the slag they sold, there was not a commercially viable process for extracting precious metals from the slag, and the business operation had not been endorsed by a lawyer.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Acting on Godfree\u2019s false promises, victims sent the company money by mailing checks to the TMAC offices in Pasadena and by wiring money to accounts that Godfree controlled. Godfree used the funds to pay for his personal expenses.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In total, Godfree and TMAC caused losses of approximately $8.3 million to the victims of their fraud.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 TMAC was dissolved in 2015, but its operations were largely taken over by Precious Metals of North America Inc., another of Godfree\u2019s companies.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The FBI investigated this matter.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0LOS ANGELES\u00a0 A British national was sentenced Thursday to three years in federal prison for defrauding over 100 investors out of more than $8 million through a scheme that sold \u201cancient slag,\u201d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"Glorified Con Man" Defrauded 100 Investors of $8.3 Million through the "Ancient Slag" Scheme<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u00a0LOS ANGELES\u00a0 A British national was sentenced Thursday to three years in federal prison for defrauding over 100 investors out of more than $8 million\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" 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