Miami-Dade woman who fleeced investors gets 4-year sentence

A Miami-Dade woman has been sent to prison for four years after pleading guilty to swindling $2.4 million from more than 500 Haitian-American investors in South Florida.

Judith Dianne ParisPinder, 49, also must do 200 hours of community service after her release and pay back her investors.

U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles ordered ParisPinder, who had lived in Biscayne Park, to start her prison term after her sentencing hearing in Miami federal court on Monday.

In a plea deal, ParisPinder admitted that she pocketed her investors’ money for a wedding, vacations and other entertainment. She also admitted she used an additional $2.2 million that she raised from investors to keep some at bay until her Ponzi scheme collapsed.

Paris-Pinder was able to lure investors by promising them up to 50% returns, federal prosecutors said. The scheme worked this way: Investors provided millions of dollars as advances to people who were purportedly represented by lawyers and were going to receive insurance-company settlements and give them a portion of that money later, prosecutors said. But there were no claims, no lawyers and no settlements, they said.

“According to her plea, the entire investment was a scam,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release. “Paris-Pinder did not work for or with lawyers with litigation clients and there were no settlement agreements.”

Miami attorney Scott Bennett Saul, who represents Paris-Pinder, said that from the time of her arrest in September it was her intention “to amicably resolve her situation” by admitting responsibility and cooperating with federal authorities. She pleaded guilty to a wire-fraud charge in November.

Separately, the Securities and Exchange Commission obtained a civil judgment against her in September. In recent years, the SEC in Miami has cracked down on schemes that target immigrant communities.

Although much smaller in scale, Paris-Pinder’s scheme was similar to that of disbarred Fort Lauderdale attorney Scott Rothstein, who operated a massive $1.2 billion Ponzi scam more than a decade ago. He was convicted of fraud and sentenced to prison for 50 years.

Paris-Pinder was formerly the president of Pinder Associates Inc., a North Miami company.

Prosecutor Eric Morales said Paris-Pinder kept the Ponzi scheme going by using money from new investors to pay existing investors. She raised about $4.6 million from investors, leading to $2.4 million in losses that she kept for herself, Morales said.