Five Years for Stealing From Ponzi Man

PHOENIX (CN) - An Arizona man was sentenced to five years and three months in federal prison for conspiracies that included stealing money from a man who stole it first, in a Ponzi scheme.

Wayne A. Mounts, of Mesa, was sentenced last week to 63 months in prison for conspiracy to launder money and to defraud the IRS.

Mounts and co-defendant Gino Carlucci were both convicted by a federal jury in July 2011, after an eight-day trial.

Mounts and Carlucci stole "large sums of money" from Joseph Flickinger and Flickinger's clients and associates, prosecutors said in a statement announcing Mounts's sentence.

Flickinger, a tax return preparer, was sentenced in 2007 to 70 months in prison after pleading guilty to tax fraud conspiracy, mail fraud and wire fraud in "a Ponzi-style investment scheme through which he had defrauded his clients," prosecutors said in the statement.

After defrauding Flickinger of his Ponzi money, Mounts and Carlucci spent the money on themselves, prosecutors said. Mounts withdrew more than $250,000 in cash from a bank account in 2 months, just under $10,000 at a time to duck reporting rules.

They spent another $150,000 to buy a 43-foot luxury boat that Carlucci concealed from the government for more than two years.

Judge Kathryn H. Vratil, chief judge of the District of Kansas, sitting in Phoenix by special designation, ordered Mounts to pay $686,841 in restitution to the victims in Flickinger's case and $80,787.80 in restitution to the IRS. She also ordered hom to forfeit $722,841.

Vratil will sentence Carlucci on Feb. 28 in Phoenix. He faces up to 20 years for conspiracy to commit money laundering, five years for conspiracy to defraud the United States and three years for filing a false tax return.

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