Former exec sentenced to 5 years for fraud

A former energy company executive was sentenced on Tuesday to five years in federal prison for defrauding 50 investors in the Bay Area and elsewhere out of more than $15 million before the company went bankrupt.

Joey Stanton Dodson, 58, of Indio (Riverside County), pleaded guilty in federal court in San Jose last June to defrauding investors as executive chairman and managing partner of Citadel Energy Partners between 2012 and 2015. The company described itself as a provider of management services to oil and gas companies in North Dakota, but prosecutors said in court papers that Dodson used some of the money for his own “lavish lifestyle” and to repay investors in another failed business, and never operated Citadel as a legitimate management business.

Citadel declared bankruptcy in 2015, and its investors lost all their funds. Dodson was prosecuted in San Jose because one or more of the defrauded investors lived in the Bay Area.

Federal sentencing guidelines recommended a prison term of six to eight years. Arguing for a sixyear term, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Francisco said Dodson “repeatedly lied to his victim-investors to pay for his own lavish lifestyle. Dodson’s victims trusted him with their savings, and he used their money to build a house of cards that depended on Dodson swindling new victims to repay old ones.”

Defense lawyers asked for probation for Dodson, who has been free on bail since his indictment in 2019.

Dodson suffered a “traumatic childhood which was marked by horrific violence, including witnessing a murder in his own home as a young child,” attorney Daniel Olmos said in a court filing. When Dodson was 7, Olmos said, his mother’s former boyfriend kicked down their door and fatally shot her then-boyfriend. After the gunman served eight years in prison, Olmos said, Dodson’s mother married him, and he went on to physically abuse her and her children, including Dodson.

Since Citadel Energy Partner’s collapse, Olmos wrote, Dodson “has rededicated his life to helping his community” and has played an important role in efforts to combat human trafficking. Marc Evans, a Los Angeles lieutenant who heads the Police Department’s human trafficking task force and is on the board of Foundation for a Slavery Free World, said in a court filing that Dodson “has been vigilantly assisting in our efforts to combat human trafficking.”

In response, prosecutors said the government “notes with sympathy Dodson’s traumatic upbringing and applauds his charity work. However, his calculated and repeated deceptions of over 50 victims, along with the outright theft of their money given in trust, counsels against variance” from the sentencing guidelines.

He was sentenced Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman. In addition to the prison term, she ordered Dodson to repay $15.6 million to his investors.