Pastor Sentenced for Operating $1.8M Scheme

On April 27, 2012, in Seattle, Washington, Anthony C. Morris, a Seattle-area pastor, was sentenced to 40 months in prison, three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $1,843,932 in restitution for defrauding two dozen victims out of more than $1.8 million.  Morris pleaded guilty in January 2012 to wire fraud and money laundering.  According to the plea agreement and charges filed in the case, between 2003 and April 2011, Morris convinced various investors to provide him money based on false and fraudulent representations.  Morris told investors that their money would be placed in an overseas trading program or used to invest in property for his church.  He represented that the investments would provide a high rate of return in a short period of time.  Morris promised to return investor money in as little as a few days or a few weeks, with returns of as much as 400 percent.  All these representations were false, and in fact, Morris simply used the funds from later investors to pay off earlier investors.  Some of the money went for Morris’s expenses and for the expenses of his church.

Source: IRS.gov

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