NEWS – “without comment”
Trustify CEO Danny Boice sentenced to 97 months in prison
By Andy Medici – Senior Staff Reporter, Washington Business Journal
Mar 26, 2021
Danny Boice, who co-founded a private investigator platform called Trustify, has been sentenced to more than eight years in prison for fraud, the Justice Department announced Friday.
“By spinning an elaborate web of lies, Boice fraudulently induced victims to invest over $18 million in his company so that he could misappropriate millions of those dollars to fund his lavish lifestyle and personal aggrandizement,” said Raj Parekh, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, in a statement. “This case demonstrates that we will hold corporate executives accountable when they cast aside their fiduciary duties for personal financial gain.”
Boice was sentenced to 97 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, the agency said. He has been ordered to pay $18.13 million in restitution and $3.7 million in forfeiture, according to the Justice Department.
According to court documents, the Justice Department said Boice raised more than $18 million from more than 250 investors by falsely overstating Trustify’s financial performance, including inflating monthly and annual revenues and fabricating corporate customers. He was also accused of sending a fraudulent email to convince an investment firm to invest nearly $2 million in the company, per court documents.
The DOJ also said Boice personally received $3.7 million in proceeds from the fraud and diverted funds from Trustify to make a down payment on a $1.6 million house in Alexandria and a $1 million beach house in New Jersey, as well as to pay for a chauffeur, a house manager, private jet trips and family vacations.
The sentencing is just the latest in a series of court cases and judgments against the company. In 2019, the Delaware Chancery Court appointed a receiver to oversee the company’s assets after its creditors successfully petitioned that Trustify be placed into bankruptcy.
Boice has also been taken to court by other entities, including law firm Buckley LLP, which won a judgment against Trustify in 2019 for unpaid legal bills, and former landlord JBG Smith Properties (NYSE: JBGS), which won its own judgment for back rent in 2019. Virginia also hit the company in August 2019 with a tax lien for $593,054.03 for “consumer use” taxes for the period between Jan. 1, 2015, to Jan. 31, 2019, according to a memorandum of lien.
In 2020, Trustify and Boice were the subjects of a civil suit by the Securities and Exchange Commission that alleged an $18.5 million fraud scheme.
Full Article: https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2021/03/26/trustify-ceo-danny-boice-sentenced-prison.html