Judge denies Alfaro a shorter sentence

Convicted S.A. businessman must serve 97 months for swindling drilling investors

Convicted felon Brian Alfaro, the former San Antonio oil and gas businessman who swindled investors, has failed in a bid to have his eight-year prison sentence cut short.

U.S District Judge Fred Biery on Friday denied Alfaro’s request to have the sentence shortened to 78 months from 97 months.

Alfaro, 55, argued in a Feb. 20 motion that his term of imprisonment was based on a sentencing range that had since been shortened by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent agency that establishes policies and practices for federal courts. Those include guidelines for the appropriate form and severity of punishment.

Biery ruled Alfaro is ineligible for a reduction in part because he caused “substantial financial hardship” to at least one of his victims.

The judge also found he wasn’t eligible for a reduction because he hadn’t been assessed “status points” in his case. Such points are included as part of the sentencing guidelines if a defendant committed his offense “while under any criminal justice sentence, including probation, parole, supervised release, imprisonment or work release, or escape status.”

A defendant may be eligible for a sentence reduction if he didn’t already receive an adjustment for his “aggravating role” in the crime and was not engaged in a “continuing criminal enterprise.” But Biery ruled Alfaro had received an adjustment and had engaged in a continuing criminal enterprise.

After an eight-day trial in 2020, a jury found Alfaro guilty on seven counts of mail fraud. His company promoted oil and gas wells to investors, who bought units in the drilling projects.

Alfaro told investors their money would be spent to drill

wells with only a small portion covering a management fee. In reality, prosecutors said, investors’ money supported a lavish lifestyle that included a $2 million house in Shavano Park, a $1 million office building, Spurs season tickets behind the team’s bench and expensive automobiles.

Biery originally sentenced Alfaro to 10 years and one month in prison, but it was later reduced to 97 months after an appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Alfaro is serving his sentence at a low-security correctional facility in Texarkana. He’s currently scheduled to be released in January 2027.

In addition to his motion for a sentence reduction, Alfaro on Feb. 5 filed an amended motion to vacate his sentence and objected to a court order directing him to pay more than $9 million in restitution to his victims. That motion is still pending.

Alfaro has argued that trial evidence could support that he took “transaction-based compensation — totaling about $85,000 — on only seven occasions rather than 300. Prosecutors filed court papers opposing the original version of Alfaro’s motion.