Statesboro Resident Sentenced in Relation to Ponzi Scheme
| U.S. Attorney’s Office July 22, 2011 |
STATESBORO, GA—JOSEPH L. AUTRY, 44, from Statesboro, Georgia, was sentenced yesterday by U.S. District Judge B. Avant Edenfield at the U.S. Courthouse in Statesboro, Georgia, to 27 months in prison in connection with a commodities futures Ponzi scheme that he ran from May 2008 to January 2010.
United States Attorney Edward J. Tarver said, “This defendant ran an investment fraud scheme to steal citizens’ hard-earned money for his own selfish purposes. We will continue working with our federal partners to ensure that these sophisticated crimes are discovered and prosecuted.”
According to evidence presented during the guilty plea and sentencing hearings, Autry was the sole principal, manager, and employee of Autry Capital Management LLC formerly known as Joey Autry LLC (“ACM”), a company which he operated out of his home and which supposedly specialized in trading commodity futures contracts. During a joint investigation by the FBI and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”), evidence was uncovered that Autry operated a Ponzi scheme whereby he solicited and received approximately $265,000 from seven customers in Georgia to trade commodity futures contracts. Further investigation revealed that Autry misappropriated those pooled customer funds to pay his personal debt and expenses and also to pay supposed returns to investors using the investors own funds or the funds of other investors, as is typical in a Ponzi scheme.
In addition to 27 months in prison, Autry was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $155,200 in restitution.
Mr. Tarver recognized the extensive cooperative efforts of the CFTC and FBI in bringing this criminal activity to light. He praised particularly the efforts of CFTC staff member Linda Y. Peng and FBI Special Agent Marcus Kirkland, both of whom referred the criminal matter to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Assistant United States Attorney Natalie Lee prosecuted the case for the United States. For additional information, please contact First Assistant United States Attorney James D. Durham at (912) 201-2547.