Businessman Moore will be sentenced in fraud case

British businessman James Moore is facing up to three years in a Florida prison for his conviction in an international real estate fraud tied to the failed Grand Palisades resort west of Walt Disney World.

The massive 900-room resort, now renovated and rebranded as The Grove, sat vacant and subject to foreclosure for about eight years after the Great Recession. It was the largest foreclosure in recent history in Central Florida.

Moore worked with Kissimmee developer Paul Oxley on the project, who fled the U.S. shortly after he filed a personal bankruptcy, leaving behind $238 million in unpaid debt. A sentencing date for Moore has not yet been set.

Authorities said in several court cases that Oxley diverted the money to illegal uses, such as marketing costs and personal expenses. Authorities have not been able to locate him.

British citizens who thought they were putting down payments on the resort in Florida soon found out that about $145 million of their deposit money had been stolen.

Dozens of those investors have written to the federal court in Orlando, asking that Moore be given significant jail time. By statute, he is facing a maximum of 36 months.

Moore ran a British company called Inside Track that held seminars teaching Britons how to invest in property, the largest of which was the Grande Palisades. He has claimed total ignorance of what Oxley was doing, until a 2009 meeting where Oxley tried to force him to sign a letter saying the expenses paid out to marketing had to be refunded. Moore refused, but also failed to tell authorities that he’d discovered Oxley’s fraud.

He has pleaded guilty to one count of concealing or failing to report a felony, otherwise known as misprision.

Moore wrote to the court, “I did not know my obligations were to report it at the time … I truly believed that Paul Oxley was a good man, an honourable developer with a good track record who came highly recommended to me.”

Tamsin Barks, who once did business with Inside Track, has tried to rally victims of the fraud to push for more investigation and harsher penalties. She wants more Brits to write letters to the court.

“We want as many people as possible to send Victim Impact Statements as soon as possible, explaining to the judge all their financial losses to them personally, the emotional stress, the people it has affected, their children their grandchildren,” Barks said in an email.

Victim statements can be emailed to Karmen.Coates_@flmp.uscourts.gov, titled ‘Victim Impact Statement’— United States of America v Mr. J. Moore” or to Karmen L. Coates, Sentencing Guideline Specialist, 401 W.Central Blvd., Suite 1400, Orlando, Fla., 32801.