Linda Deavers (61, Fishers, Indiana) was found guilty of 10 counts of wire
fraud and 5 counts of money laundering. Deavers faces a maximum penalty
of 20 years in federal prison for each count of wire fraud and 10 years
in federal prison for each count of money laundering.
Deavers was indicted in September 2012. She was arrested in October
2013, after flying into California from Hong Kong. The jury returned the
verdict on July 11, 2014. Her sentencing hearing is scheduled for
October 2, 2014.
According to evidence presented at trial, Deavers devised an
investment fraud scheme that used an entity by the name of Angel Annie
Humanitarian Trust, LLC. As part of her pitch to investors, Deavers
represented that the entity was a Section 501(c)(3) charitable
organization, that she had connections to trading programs in Europe
that would generate large rates of returns and that she had been
successful in investing in such trading programs previously. She
represented that any money invested with her and Angel Annie
Humanitarian would be invested in such trading programs overseas. None
of those representations were true. Deavers collected more than $5.2
million from investors located in Florida.
After returning approximately $1.8 million to investors, Deavers used
most of the remaining $3.4 million in proceeds to fund her lifestyle,
in Indiana and Europe, and to pay various expenses for herself and her
family, including a $1 million deposit on a mansion. To lull her
investors into a false sense of security, Deavers used e-mail and Skype
to provide the investors with a series of false excuses as to why she
had not been able to successfully invest their money. Even after Deavers
had spent the last of the funds from her victims, for several years,
she continued to falsely claim that she was working on investments for
them.
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