COVINGTON, Ky. —

Angel Williams has been looking for housing for months. The end of her lease was quickly approaching, and she said she wants to move closer to her job in Florence to cut down on the money she is spending on gas.

Now she is out of more than $1,500 and has no home to show for it after she was scammed.

Covington police are now investigating.

A few days ago, Williams thought her dream home was within reach. She took her three kids to see the home, after she toured it on her own.

"I'm about to get this dream home that I always wanted for me and my kids," she said. "We prayed over it and everything. Me and my mom prayed over it and it was just like this is just meant to be. This is a new beginning for me."

"Walk in your walk-in closet. Feel like a queen," one of Williams children said during the tour.

Williams said the children fell in love. The family took several videos inside what they believed was going to be their new home.

"Everything seemed legit," Williams said. "I get there, they give me the lock code number, I get the key, I go in."

She had been communicating via text, email and phone calls with the man posing as the landlord. Twice, she said he gave her an access code to go inside the home. She said the codes were different each time.

Williams found the man's contact information through a listing for the four-bedroom Covington home on Craigslist.

She asked the man if he accepted Section 8 vouchers, which is housing assistance from the federal government. The man said he did. He also sent her a renter's application and year-long lease agreement. She signed both.

"He was like, 'I want you to get to know me a little bit better before you get the property, get to know the property a little bit better.' And I'm like, 'OK' and I'm doing that. And it's just like everything just seemed legit. I get the application. It has the equal opportunity property on there and everything," she said.

The man told Williams he was a truck driver, processes payments on the road and only accepts a specific kind of prepaid gift card as payment.

Williams purchased $1,700 worth of gift cards Monday and sent photos of them, along with the receipt. The money was supposed to cover $1,300 for a security deposit and $400 for first month's rent.

"An hour goes by and I'm like alright I'm waiting for the keys. Texted him, texted him, called him, couldn't get through," she said. "When it got about 5 o'clock and he didn't text me back or call me back about the keys, I knew something was wrong. I felt it in my stomach."

Williams had no receipt, no keys and no home. The person she had been contacting went silent.

"I tried not to cry in front of my daughter but I'm like 'daughter, I feel like we got scammed. I feel like this man just took all of our money,'" she said. "Please Lord, this is not true. This man didn't just take everything from me. So I tried calling again and he didn't answer."

According to the Kenton County property valuation administrator, the home is owned by AH4R Properties Two LLC. American Homes 4 Rent is legitimately renting the home for $1,950 dollars a month. WLWT reached out to the company alerting them of the scam and asking who has access to the property. The company has not yet responded.

Tuesday evening there was a fraud alert sticker on the door of the home.

WLWT is not reporting the name of the scammer, because we cannot confirm the person is who they claim to be.

When reached by phone Tuesday night, the man, whose number is posted on the Craigslist ad, said the Covington home is still available for rent.

WLWT asked the man whose number is posted on the Craigslist ad if he is also renting out a home in Florence. The man said he is renting out the Covington home and the Florence home. WLWT has confirmed neither property are his to rent.

When WLWT Investigative Reporter Jatara McGee started asking the man about the $1,700 Williams sent him, he denied it at first and then hung up.

Police recommend a few tips for avoiding similar scams: do not use prepaid gift cards for payment. Do not use websites like Craigslist that anyone can post to for housing. Utilize reputable websites.

Google also has a feature that can help. Right click an image, for example, an image of a home on a listing, and select the option to search the image with Google lens. The feature will run a search to see if the photo is listed on other websites. If you notice another website has a different landlord or seller listed, that is a red flag.

Ruja Ignatova strode onto the stage in a flowing burgundy ball gown adorned with black sparkles. Beams of light flashed, fireballs erupted and Alicia Keys' "Girl on Fire" blared through the speakers.

"Looks like a girl, but she's a flame. So bright, she can burn your eyes — better look the other way," the song crooned as a beaming Ignatova thanked the cheering crowd at London's Wembley Arena.

That was in June 2016, when cryptocurrency was an emerging buzzword and investors were scrambling to cash in. Ignatova called herself the "Cryptoqueen" and touted her company, OneCoin, as a lucrative rival to Bitcoin in the growing cryptocurrency market.

"In two years, nobody will speak about Bitcoin anymore," she said, as investors applauded and whistled.

Sixteen months later, Ignatova boarded a plane in Sofia, Bulgaria, and vanished. She hasn't been seen since.

Authorities say OneCoin was a pyramid scheme that defrauded people out of more than $4 billion as Ignatova convinced investors in the U.S. and around the globe to throw fistfuls of cash at her company. Federal prosecutors describe OneCoin as one of the largest international fraud schemes ever perpetrated.

She is now one of the FBI's 10 most-wanted fugitives, alongside accused gang leaders and murderers, and is the only woman currently on that list. Of the 529 fugitives on the FBI's list since it launched in 1950, she's one of just 11 women.

Ignatova and her partners "conned unsuspecting victims out of billions of dollars, claiming that OneCoin would be the 'Bitcoin killer,'" U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, New York's top prosecutor, said in a statement last month.

"In fact, OneCoins were entirely worthless ... (Their) lies were designed with one goal, to get everyday people all over the world to part with their hard-earned money."

She knew it was a scam from the start, court documents say

Since Ignatova disappeared in October 2017, her face has been plastered on the FBI website and across major news outlets worldwide. She's also one of the most wanted fugitives in Europe.

At the bottom of her FBI wanted poster is a note: "Ignatova is believed to travel with armed guards and/or associates. Ignatova may have had plastic surgery or otherwise altered her appearance."

The FBI says it picks fugitives for the list based on the length of their criminal records and how dangerous they may be. It also favors fugitives who are not well known to maximize the benefit of the program's nationwide publicity.

The bureau declined to provide additional details to CNN beyond court documents from the U.S. Department of Justice, which did not list an attorney for Ignatova. "This case is an ongoing investigation. We are unable to comment beyond what has already been released publicly," said Daniel Crifo, a spokesperson for the FBI office in New York.

But court documents detail a mind-blowing narrative: how Ignatova and her OneCoin co-founder, Karl Sebastian Greenwood, were allegedly aware from the start that their ambitious venture was a Ponzi scheme.

"The cryptocurrency OneCoin was established for the sole purpose of defrauding investors," IRS Special Agent John R. Tafur said in a statement.

While Greenwood and Ignatova were working on the concept for OneCoin, they referred to it in emails as a "trashy coin," federal officials said in court documents. The documents show Greenwood described their investors as "idiots" and "crazy" in an email to Ignatova's brother, Konstantin Ignatov, who also took part in the scam and assumed OneCoin leadership after his sister vanished, according to prosecutors.

"It might not be (something) really clean or that I normally work on or even can be proud of (except with you in private when we make the money)," Ignatova wrote to Greenwood in 2014.

She also proposed an exit strategy should the company fail, saying in a 2014 email to Greenwood that they should "take the money and run and blame somebody else for this."

From a young age, Ignatova wanted to be rich

Ruja Ignatova, 42, is a German citizen but was born in Bulgaria, where her father was an engineer and her mother was a teacher.

In his book, "The Missing Crypto Queen," author Jamie Bartlett detailed her rise from modest beginnings to entrepreneurial stardom.

When she was a girl, her family moved to Germany, where Ignatova excelled as a student and spent her free time studying and playing chess, Bartlett wrote. Classmates described her as smart, driven and aloof.

Ignatova won a scholarship to a university in Konstanz, Germany, where she met and married a fellow law student. She maintained she didn't want children, Bartlett wrote, because they would get in the way of her acquiring wealth.

She also told people she wanted to be a millionaire by age 30.

"She desperately wanted to be rich, even devouring books in the early hours about how to make money," Bartlett wrote.

After studying European law at Oxford University, Ignatova landed a job in Sofia as a consultant for McKinsey & Company, the international management consulting firm.

Clients trusted her and related to her rise from humble beginnings and fierce desire to be rich, Bartlett wrote. Her fluency in languages, including Russian, German, English and Bulgarian, also helped.

Appearances mattered to Ignatova, who often attended events in evening gowns and bright red lipstick, with diamonds dangling from her ears.

"Everything exhibited success and glamor," Bartlett wrote. "She was obsessed with style and image."

OneCoin allegedly promised investors a fivefold to tenfold return

Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin are digital assets created and managed by a global, decentralized network of computers instead of a bank or government. Bitcoin, for example, is "mined," or created, by professional crypto miners using armies of servers in data centers.

It is a largely unregulated and highly volatile industry, and expert opinions on the viability of crypto run the gamut. Advocates broadly envision a future in which economies run on digital currencies validated by the community of users rather by a central bank. Critics dismiss it as a Ponzi scheme or, at minimum, a highly risky investment.

In 2014, Ignatova and Greenwood, her co-founder, started pitching OneCoin to investors in Europe, New York and around the world. They hosted online webinars and conferences where they urged potential investors to deposit funds in an account that would enable the purchase of OneCoin packages, according to a federal indictment.

OneCoin operated as a multilevel marketing network in which investors received commissions for recruiting others to buy cryptocurrency packages, federal prosecutors said. The packages catered to various income levels, from "starter" to "tycoon trader."

Ignatova and her partners promised buyers a fivefold or even tenfold return on their investment, according to court documents.

A buying frenzy ensued. Between the fourth quarter of 2014 and the fourth quarter of 2016 alone, investors gave OneCoin more than $4 billion, federal prosecutors said, citing records obtained in the course of their investigation. Some $50 million came from investors in the U.S., according to court documents.

"She timed her scheme perfectly, capitalizing on the frenzied speculation of the early days of cryptocurrency," said Williams, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan.

OneCoins were not mined like other cryptocurrencies, federal investigators said. Instead of armies of powerful servers, OneCoin was generated by a piece of software, court documents said.

Federal prosecutors said that in an email to Greenwood in August 2014, Ignatova wrote, "We are not mining actually but telling people s---."

OneCoin's value was not based on market supply and demand like other cryptocurrency, prosecutors said, but simply manipulated privately by OneCoin itself.

But then things came crashing down

The facade started cracking in 2016 when investors had a hard time selling their OneCoins to recoup their original investments, court documents say.

Word began to spread online that the business was a scam. Media outlets started asking questions. International and U.S. federal investigators got involved.

It's not clear what happened to Ignatova's marriage. But the FBI said she learned OneCoin was being investigated after she bugged an apartment belonging to her American boyfriend and found out he was cooperating with a federal probe into her company's practices.

In October 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice charged Ignatova with one count each of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. She also was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, which carries a maximum five-year sentence. A federal judge in New York issued a warrant for her arrest.

Less than two weeks later, on Oct. 25, 2017, she boarded a commercial flight from Sofia, Bulgaria, to Athens, Greece, court documents said.

Then she disappeared, leaving her business partners to take the fall for the failing company.

The FBI said it believes she may have traveled on a German passport from Athens, possibly to the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Russia, Eastern Europe or even back to Bulgaria. It's offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to her arrest.

"She left with a tremendous amount of cash," Michael Driscoll, the FBI's assistant director-in-charge in New York, told reporters. "Money can buy a lot of friends, and I would imagine she's taking advantage of that."

Her partners weren't so lucky. Greenwood was arrested in July 2018 at his home in Koh Samui, Thailand, and extradited to the U.S. He pleaded guilty in December to wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to launder money. He is in jail and faces 20 years in prison for each of the three counts when he's sentenced in April.

Ignatova's brother, Konstantin Ignatov, was arrested in March 2019 at Los Angeles International Airport. He'd traveled to the U.S. on business and was preparing to board his return flight to Bulgaria when five large men in suits handcuffed him and took him to an interrogation room, where they peppered him with questions about his missing sister, Bartlett wrote.

Ignatov pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering and fraud charges, and is scheduled to be sentenced in February.

OneCoin has shut down and its website is no longer active.

But its founder, the woman in the long gowns and flashy jewelry, has eluded authorities. More than five years after the Cryptoqueen got off a plane in Greece, her whereabouts remain a mystery.

CINCINNATI —

A memo from Cincinnati City Manager Paula Boggs Meuthing contains details of fraudulent activity that no taxpayer wants to see.

"This is really an attack on the taxpayers of Cincinnati," cybersecurity expert Dave Hatter said.

Issued Wednesday, the memo said a $137,000 payment that was supposed to go to a Dept. of Transportation and Engineering contractor went to a scammer instead.

It happened when someone impersonating the contractor's office manager sent a message asking city workers to update the company's electronic fund transfer information. As a result, a $137,000 payment went to the con artist and not the contractor.

"This kind of thing is a huge problem," Hatter said.

WLWT investigator Todd Dykes shared the memo with Hatter, who works for a firm called Intrust IT.

Hatter also oversees public money as the mayor of Fort Wright in Kenton County.

While he doesn't know for sure what happened, Hatter has a hunch.

"What Cincinnati put out — there's not enough information there to say for sure this is what's happened, but. ... I can almost guarantee you they probably got an email from the vendor requesting a payment. The vendor's accounts had been broken into. There was an imposter impersonating the vendor," Hatter said.

That appears to be how the scam unfolded based on the city manager's memo, although the manager's office declined to talk about it.

The memo said the city does about 24,000 electronic fund transfers a year, making what happened in this case "extremely rare."

"With 24,000 a year, and also people don't realize this as a thing, I could see how Cincinnati would easily not catch this," Hatter said. "In my opinion, based on what I know so far ... they are just the unfortunate dupes that sent money to the wrong place because they wouldn't know otherwise, you know."

It's not clear if the legitimate contractor will be made whole and receive the $137,000. All the city manager's memo said is police are now involved and the city is trying to recover the money.

DRY RIDGE, Ky. — Kentucky State Police are warning of a new round of scam calls that use "aggressive" tactics to convince victims to turn over personal information and money.

Police said the scam works by convincing people to buy items over social media.

"The solicitor typically targets elderly people by showcasing items well below market value, and later requests payment by gift cards. This is a scam! If it sounds too good to be true, it often is," police said in a release Friday.

Kentucky State Police recommends treating every solicitation call or encounter as a scam until proven otherwise. To do this, research the actual market value of items being sold online, and do not try to purchase one unless you are doing it in-person or through a "credible, secured online payment platform."

Not sure if it's a scam? KSP offers some "warning signs" to look out for, including:

• High pressure sales or frequent calls.
• Pressuring you into an immediate decision ("act now" offers).
• Requesting credit or debit card or any banking information.
• Offering to send someone to your home or to overnight something.
• Offering something for free.
• Not responding to questions or cutting you off.
• Hawking a "no-risk" investment.
• Refusing to provide written information or references (that includes hanging up when you ask for written information or other forms of authenticity).
• Requesting payment in form of gift cards.
• Imitating law enforcement to request payment for citations, bail money, etc.

KSP recommends not engaging with scammers. Instead, report them to local law enforcement.

NEW YORK, N.Y. — President Donald Trump's former political adviser Steve Bannon was arrested Thursday morning on charges that he and three others scammed many people who donated an online fundraising scheme called “We Build The Wall.”

The charges were outlined in an indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court.

Federal prosecutors say Bannon and three others “orchestrated a scheme to defraud hundreds of thousands of donors" in connection with an online crowdfunding campaign that raised more than $25 million to build a wall along the southern border of the U.S.

Along with Bannon, the other three men arrested in the case are Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato, and Timothy Shea. They’re each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, both of which carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

According to the indictment, the scheme started in December of 2018.

To induce donors to donate to the campaign, court documents say Kolfage repeatedly and falsely assured the public that he would “not take a penny in salary or compensation” and that “100% of the funds raised . . . will be used in the execution of our mission and purpose” because, as Bannon publicly stated, “we’re a volunteer organization.”

Those representations were reportedly false. In truth, prosecutors say Kolfage, Bannon, Badolato, and Shea received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donor funds from "We Build the Wall," which they each used in a manner inconsistent with the organization’s public representations.

In particular, Kolfage is accused of covertly taking more than $350,000 in donations for his personal use, while Bannon allegedly used a non-profit organization under his control to receive over $1 million from the campaign. Prosecutors say Bannon used at least some of that money to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal expenses.

To conceal the payments to Kolfage from "We Build the Wall," the men allegedly devised a scheme to route those payments from the campaign to Kolfage indirectly through a nonprofit and a shell company under Shea’s control, among other avenues.

“They did so by using fake invoices and sham ‘vendor’ arrangements, among other ways, to ensure, as Kolfage noted in a text message to Badolato, that his pay arrangement remained ‘confidential’ and kept on a ‘need to know’ basis,” prosecutors say.

Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said: “As alleged, the defendants defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors, capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars, under the false pretense that all of that money would be spent on construction. While repeatedly assuring donors that Brian Kolfage, the founder and public face of We Build the Wall, would not be paid a cent, the defendants secretly schemed to pass hundreds of thousands of dollars to Kolfage, which he used to fund his lavish lifestyle. We thank the USPIS for their partnership in investigating this case, and we remain dedicated to rooting out and prosecuting fraud wherever we find it.”

WEST CHESTER TOWNSHIP, Ohio —

An accused scam artist is behind bars after a number of people have come forward, claiming they're out thousands of dollars for work that was never completed.

Elmer Bunger said he's one of the victims.

He said Charles Boswell agreed to pave his driveway for a good price.

He said last Thursday, Boswell began the work, and he paid him $1,600. Then, things started getting fishy.

"Got a phone call supposedly and said he had to go but said he'd be back the following day to finish it and he never showed up. But before he left I told him, don't screw me over or I will find you," Bunger said.

On Saturday, Bunger said he found him at a nearby asphalt plant.

Boswell told him he'd finish the job, but then took off. Bunger followed him for miles on Mosteller, Kemper and surrounding roads.

"I told him that if he came to my house and we could discuss how to get this work done or how to get my money back that I would get off the phone with the police, but obviously that wasn't going to happen, it was too far gone at that point," Bunger said.

Boswell eventually agreed to go to the house where Bunger said police were waiting.

He was arrested for warrants out of Mason, theft by deception and forgery charges, accused of scamming others in similar situations.

Last month, police reports show Boswell never completed a driveway for a 73-year-old Mason woman who paid him $4,400.

Police said Boswell offered her a rebate, but the check was voided. Officers went to a bank teller who said the account didn't have sufficient funds to cash the check anyway.

No charges were filed in Bunger's incident because police told him it was a civil situation, and he'd have to go to court to try and get his money back.

"This guy had a card and told me he worked at a legitimate company but for those guys out there not doing it correctly be careful who you find, because I told him I'd find him, and I did," Bunger said.

Boswell is in the Warren County Jail on $7,500 bond.

SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY, Calif. —

A Modesto, California, family once victimized by a suspected scammer is now the recipient of good fortune, thanks to a generous good Samaritan.

The two families met on a San Joaquin County ranch on Thursday.

As Dave Pechan and Angelica Cuevas stood face-to-face for the first time, the rancher handed Cuevas a cash gift.

Cuevas' son, who translated for her, said to the rancher in English that his mom is grateful as the money will help pay for rent and utilities.

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Pechan first learned of the Cuevas family on Sept. 24 when sister station KCRA shared her story of how a suspected scammer promised them an affordable home to rent, only to run off with their hard-earned money.

"I was very upset because basically, that was hard work money that we saved up for," Angelica Cuevas said in Spanish.

"It was just painful to watch," Pechan said.

Pechan said what he and his wife were most heartened by was the family's work ethic.

"I consider work ethic so valuable to, not only to the people to earn money, but our whole country," Pechan said.

Pechan not only replaced what the family lost in dollars but also their faith in humanity.

"I'm grateful that there are still people with good hearts," Cuevas said.

A police detective said five more people have come forward as victims recently. That number adds to the original four from Turlock.

Investigators believe more victims are out there.

CINCINNATI — After Monique Colbert was scammed out of her unemployment benefits, the juicer she used for her side gig broke, but now things are looking up for her.

Matt Damschroder, the director of Ohio Job and Family Services, said they are looking into ways to get unemployment benefits back to people who were scammed out of theirs.

"We are actively researching ways that we can provide these victims of these schemes with the benefits that they're entitled to," Damschroder said.

While Colbert waited to get her benefits back, though, PURE Juicer offered her a discount on their best juicer, and then people who saw her previous story offered to pay for the machine.

"Oh, my God, I'm like speechless," Colbert said when she was presented with her new juicer.

With her new juicer and granddaughter Brooklyn and nephew Shawn, Colbert said her juicing business is ready to crush it.

"I got exactly what I need, so this is a big major part of helping me succeed," she said. "I just want to say thank you to everybody because I am so grateful and I am so appreciative. This is really going to help me be able to help you and help other people in the community."

SAN DIEGO —

A San Diego businesswoman whose Ponzi scheme bilked hundreds of people out of nearly $400 million was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in federal prison.

Gina Champion-Cain, 57, received more than the sentence recommended by prosecutors. At the sentencing, U.S. District Judge Larry Burns noted that some victims were friends she had known for years, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

"This went on for seven years. This wasn't just strangers hoping to get rich," Burns said. "This is a level of deceit and betrayal I wasn't fully aware of."

Champion-Cain was best known for her chain of now-closed Patio restaurants but also had clothing and vacation rental businesses. The scheme involved Champion-Cain getting people to invest in a business — American National Investments — that supposedly made high-interest loans to businesses seeking California liquor licenses.

Instead, some of the investment money was used to repay earlier investors in a classic Ponzi scheme, authorities said. Other money went to propping up Champion-Cain's failing businesses but millions more paid for a luxury lifestyle that included homes, cars, jewelry and box seats for San Diego Padres and Chargers games, prosecutors said.

The scheme took in at least $372 million from more than 490 investors, who lost at least $180 million, prosecutors said.

Champion-Cain pleaded guilty in July to conspiracy, securities fraud and obstruction of justice.

In a court statement, Champion-Cain said her main goal is to recover money for her victims, although the judge said much of the money had been spent.

In a statement to a probation officer last year, Champion-Cain wrote that she had intended for the lending program to be legitimate but it grew out of control and she began "making up" deals, the Union-Tribune reported.

"I always told myself that I would be able to pay these notes back someday with the massive growth of the empire I was trying to build," she wrote.

Chicago Title, the escrow company that Champion-Cain used to hold investor money she raised, was sued by investors and so far has reached settlements with nearly 200 of them for more than $60 million, the Union-Tribune said.

Crispin Torres, the former financial officer of American National Investments, pleaded guilty to conspiracy in connection with the scheme and was sentenced this month to four years in prison.

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. Related video: Keep The Identity Thieves Away With These Simple Tips"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.Victims of the new scheme were told the money they invested would be used to pay for space, equipment and material to develop Mangum's supposed breakthrough process, according to the DOJ, and that once it was developed it would generate huge returns for investors. Instead, Tager, Shoucair and Mangum formed a consulting business and made "fraudulent statements to investors to secure funding that was only partially used to support the business, which was never profitable."To make their scheme seem legit, the trio created a website for the business, according to the DOJ, that said it owned an 80-acre mining claim with a substantial amount of mineral-rich ore and that their revolutionary mining technology could achieve 20 times the yield of traditional mining at a fraction of the cost. It also promised that "investors would achieve 100% percent returns on their money in 12 months."In total, $8 million was raised from investors through the use of a national telemarketing strategy, according to the DOJ. Officials estimated that only $3 million of the funds was used to pay for potentially legitimate business expenses."However, three million dollars of investors' money was spent for the personal benefit of Tager, Mangum, and Shoucair, with another two million dollars of the funds going to pay telemarketers, including Gross, who helped raise the funds," reads the release.The Utah US Attorney's Office prosecuted the case. The investigation was a collaboration by the Utah Department of Commerce Division of Securities, FBI and IRS.Shoucair, from North Hills, California, was sentenced last October to 72 months in federal prison for conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud and money laundering.Mangum, from South Jordan, Utah, was sentenced in November to 48 months in federal prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering.