A former Abingdon man was sentenced on May 15 in Federal Court after pleading guilty in 2020 to charges related to a Ponzi scheme he masterminded.
Mark David Ray was sentenced to 50 months, or a little over 4 years, and three years of supervised release.
Additionally, Ray will have to pay over $23 million in restitution, to several individuals and financial institutions.
He’ll be required to make monthly payments of at least 50 percent of his disposable income per month during the entire term of supervised release or until the restitution obligation is paid in full.
Ray will have to surrender to prison by 2:00 p.m. on July 17.
Prosecutors said that from late 2017 through early 2019, Ray along with Reva Stachniw of Galesburg and Ron Throgmartin of Buford, Georgia, raised $650 million from investors by falsely promising profits from cattle and marijuana businesses.
Stachniw and Throgmartin were convicted at trial in August of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering.
Stachniw is scheduled to report to Pekin Federal Correctional Institute on July 1.
They were each sentenced to 6 years in prison and ordered to pay back more than $35 million in restitution.
A 2019 Securities and Exchange Lawsuit against Ray says that he was the “mastermind of the scheme”.
