Texas man sentenced to over five years in prison for mail fraud

LINCOLN, Neb. -- A man from Texas received 5 1/2 years of prison time for committing mail fraud and was ordered to pay a restitution of $40,903,052.09 to his victims.

Acting U.S. Attorney Steven Russell said 65-year-old Frederick Voight, of Richmond, Texas, was sentenced in Lincoln on Wednesday for mail fraud. Voight was sentenced to 66 months in prison and will serve three years on supervised release after. There is no parole in the federal system. Voight was also ordered to pay restitution to the victims in the case in the amount of $40,903,052.09.

According to court documents, Voight was running his business through multiple business entities, including F.A. Voight and Associates, LP, (FAVA), Voight Financial Services, Inc. and Daystar Funding, LP between September 2009 and October 4, 2018. Voight showed investors that he would search for companies that had an "excellent and innovative product in a growing market" but were short of the money needed to take their product to market. Voight explained that his business entities pooled investor funds and provided financing to companies in the form of secured loans with equity components in some transactions.

Officials said Voight knowingly failed to disclose certain material facts to lenders and potential lenders in correspondence and other materials that he knew the lenders and potential lenders would use to decide whether to loan their monies to business entities owned by and/or affiliated with Voight, and/or to renew or "rollover" existing loans instead of being repaid their principal. These omissions, combined with other statements made to the lenders and potential lenders, led some lenders and potential lenders to believe that the full amount of money they lent to Voight's entities would in turn be invested in specifically identified companies, referred to as "program companies."

Authorities said Voight knew that most of the money received from the lenders was not invested directly into the program companies. Instead, interest payments and principal repayments made by Voight to investors generally did not come from interest payments made by the program companies but instead came mainly from the proceeds of new loans from lenders. Voight failed to tell lenders the material fact that he was making interest payments to other lenders with funds gained from new lenders and/or new loan monies from prior lenders into Voight's "Programs." By failing to tell them the information about the source of their interest and the use of their funds, Voight deprived lenders of materially valuable information needed to decide how to use their assets and monies.

According to court documents, Voight knowingly caused items to be sent and placed in the U.S. Mail from victims in Holdrege, to the office of FAVA in Richmond, Texas on Feb. 4, 2013. The items mailed included a check in the amount of $45,000 payable to FAVA, for the "RevH2O program." The items represented the proceeds of a loan made by the victims with the belief that the proceeds of their loan to Voight's company would in turn be used by Voight's company to provide funding to RevH2O. However, as Voight was aware of, victims' money did not go to RevH20 but was used mainly to pay interest payments to other lenders without the knowledge or consent of the victims. The victims were never told by Voight how their money was actually used, depriving them of material information regarding the use of their investment.

Officials said the investors and related business entities lost approximately $40,903,052.09 due to Voight's scheme.

This case was investigated by the United States Postal Service Office of Investigations, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service.