Former exec gets 6½ years in solar firm Ponzi scheme

A former Bay Area solar company executive has been sentenced to 61⁄2 years in federal prison for his role in a $1 billion scheme to defraud investors, the sixth person to be sentenced since the collapse of DC Solar Solutions four years ago.

Ryan Guidry, 45, of Pleasant Hill, pleaded guilty in 2020 to conspiracy and money laundering. He was sentenced Monday by U.S. District Judge Dale Drozd of Sacramento, who also ordered him to pay $619 million to victims of the fraud, similar to restitution orders against others in the firm.

Guidry worked for DC Solar from 2011 to 2019 and became vice president of operations in 2015. The company, based in Benicia, made solar generators mounted on trailers that provided event lighting and emergency power for communications companies.

But federal prosecutors said DC Solar turned into a Ponzi scheme that used investor funds to pay earlier investors. Prosecutors said the company sold the generators through special funds for investors to get federal tax credits, then claimed to lease those generators to third parties to generate revenue, little of which it actually made. Of the 17,000 generators the company claimed to have manufactured, prosecutors said, 9,000 were nonexistent.

After DC Solar filed for bankruptcy, a dozen investors reported losses of tax credits totaling $1 billion, including Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, which said it lost $340 million.

DC Solar’s owners, Jeffrey Carpoff and his wife, Paulette Carpoff, of Martinez, pleaded guilty to similar charges. Jeffrey Carpoff was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2021, and Paulette Carpoff to 11 years and three months in 2022. Prosecutors said Jeffrey Carpoff used some of the funds to buy a minorleague baseball team, 148 luxury and collector vehicles and a NASCAR race car sponsorship.

The company’s former chief financial officer, Robert Karmann, was sentenced to six years in prison. Alan Hansen, who received money from DC Solar while working for one of its customers and later became an executive at the solar company, is serving an eightyear sentence. Joseph Bayliss, an employee who pleaded guilty to signing false reports about the nonexistent generators, was sentenced to three years in prison. Ronald J. Roach, a Walnut Creek accountant, pleaded guilty to related charges and is scheduled to be sentenced in March.

Guidry’s plea agreement allowed a sentence of up to 15 years, but his lawyer, Robert M. Wilson, said he was not a central player in the fraud scheme and asked Drozd for a five-year sentence.

“Ryan found himself in the middle of a colossal fraud perpetrated by Carpoff, his wife, their lawyers, accountants and other professionals,” and has cooperated with prosecutors since 2019, Wilson said in a court filing. “This was a sophisticated fraud. Ryan is not sophisticated. ... He drove a pickup truck. He’s blue-collar . ... He knew Carpoff was doing some questionable, if not illegal, business practices, but he had no idea of the nature and scope of the fraud.”

The U.S. attorney’s office did not seek the maximum sentence but said Guidry was part of the conspiracy to fleece investors.

“Guidry accepted $1 million that he knew came from deceived investors to get a signature on a false lease contract” and committed other deceptive actions, Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Hales wrote in a filing last week. “In short, Guidry knew DC Solar was committing fraud and he sought to profit from it.”