Marvin Solis, 30, Richmond, California, was sentenced on June 11, 2014, to 27 months in prison and ordered to pay restitution for a real estate investment fraud scheme he perpetrated against his relatives.
Solis pleaded guilty on January 29, 2014. According to the plea agreement, Solis admitted to defrauding his then-wife’s family members of approximately $244,000. The fraud, which stretched from September 2008 through March 2009, involved three parts.
First, Solis solicited approximately $207,000 from several relatives of his wife, telling them that he would invest the money in real estate.
Contrary to his promises, Solis spent the money that he received from them and lost it making risky commodities trades. He never invested their money in real estate.
Second, he encouraged his victims to open credit card accounts to fund renovations of the properties he had promised to purchase for them. Instead, he ran up approximately $10,000 in charges on these credit cards.
Third, he used the personal information of one of his victims, without the victim’s knowledge, to open a credit card account in the name of Solis’s company and then charged approximately $26,600 on the card, again without authorization.
Solis was indicted by a federal grand jury on September 5, 2013, on two counts of wire fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343. He pleaded guilty to both of these counts.
The sentence was handed down by the Honorable Edward M. Chen, U.S. District Court Judge. Judge Chen also sentenced the defendant to a three year period of supervised release and restitution. The defendant will begin serving the sentence on August 11, 2014.
U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag, Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Special Agent in Charge Scott O’Briant, and FBI Special Agent in Charge David J. Johnson announced the sentence.
Benjamin Kingsley is the Assistant U.S. Attorney who is prosecuting the case, with the assistance of Mary Mallory and Rawaty Yim. The prosecution is the result of an investigation by SIGTARP and the FBI.
