He promised to turn dirt into gold. He got millions of dollars — and prison time
Amanda Jackson, CNN, 26 April 2021
(CNN) — A Utah man promised investors his business could turn dirt into gold and swindled millions of dollars from them over several years, according to federal officials. Now, he has been sentenced to prison for his role in an $8 million telemarketing fraud scheme.
Marc Tager, 55, is the latest defendant to be sentenced in the scam that started in 2014, according to the Department of Justice. On April 14, he was sentenced to 43 months in federal prison for conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, money laundering and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
Tager, from Sandy, Utah, was one of four men charged in connection with the scheme that scammed 140 people, most older than 65, according to a news release from the DOJ. Jonathon Shoucair, 69; Matthew Mangum, 51; and Kenneth Gross, 75, were sentenced last year.
Officials say Tager, Shoucair and Mangum were the leaders of the scam and they told investors they had a revolutionary process developed by Mangum that could extract gold from dirt.
“Investors were told that the defendants controlled this proprietary, breakthrough, nanotechnology that used environmentally friendly means to recover microscopic particles of gold from dirt,” reads the news release.
Gross, from Porter Ranch, California, would cold-call potential investors, according to the DOJ, and then pass along interested parties to Tager and Shoucair, who would obtain funds from the victims.
“What investors did not know was that Tager and Shoucair first met while serving multi-year federal prison sentences together for previous fraud related convictions,” reads the release. In 2005, Tager was serving a two-year sentence for mail fraud when he met Shoucair, who was serving a five-year prison sentence for running a $50 million telemarketing fraud, according to officials.
