(CBS-DETROIT) – A 40-year-old Michigan man will spend more than three years in prison after orchestrating a multi-year fraud scheme to defraud investors.
A U.S. District Court judge sentenced Trent William Witteveen of Montague to 41 months in prison on Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a news release.
Between June 2018 and January 2021, Witteveen ran a Ponzi-like scheme involving his timber company, according to court documents cited by the department. During that time, he told investors that he had secured logging rights from landowners and promised significant returns if they provided money to pay the landowner for the rights.
Federal officials say that in most cases there were no current contracts for timber harvesting because Witteveen had previously harvested timber on the landowner’s property.
To make the contract with the landowner appear real to investors, Witteveen presented cashier’s checks or money orders payable to the landowners. He would later return that money to his own bank account, federal officials say.
Witteveen would also deliberately increase the value of wood to get more money from investors.
After receiving money from an investor, Witteveen used it to pay back all or part of what he owed to previous investors, or to pay back the same investor with their money to give the impression that he was delivering the promised returns paid. Federal officials say this allowed Witteveen to keep the plan alive.
Witteveen received more than $2 million from investors over a period of 31 months and used most of that money to pay for his own personal expenses, the ministry said.
In addition to the prison sentence, the judge ordered Witteveen to pay $844,282 in restitution to his victims.
The 40-year-old operated the business under the names Titan Timber and Titans Timber LLC.
The FBI investigated this case with assistance from the Michigan State Police.
