A Loudoun County man pleaded guilty Wednesday to a Ponzi scheme in which he defrauded more than $3.8 million from investors, officials said.
Brett Amendola, 37, of Ashburn, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in federal court in Alexandria, according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office news release. He is scheduled to be sentenced on June 29.
During 2010 and 2011, Amendola convinced investors to give him funding while he said he was trying to purchase the Beacon Hill Golf Course in Loudoun County, officials said.
He posed as the lawyer representing an escrow account connected to the golf course purchase and led investors to believe they were wiring the money to accounts controlled by the attorney. However, the money was actually wired to accounts Amendola controlled, officials said.
Although Amendola told investors he would pay them back with interest in a matter of days, he actually used their money for reasons including to fund his and his family members’ trading accounts, to make payments to investors in this and other schemes and to pay personal expenses, officials said.
Amendola could receive a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, officials said.
