Pleasant Hill man sentenced to prison in $1B Ponzi scheme
A judge sentenced a 45-yearold East Bay man Tuesday to 61/2 years in prison and ordered him to pay $619 million in restitution for his part in a solar company's $1 billion Ponzi scheme, authorities said.
Pleasant Hill resident Ryan Guidry, a former vice president of operations for DC Solar, pleaded guilty in January 2020 to conspiracy against the United States, as well as aiding and abetting money laundering.
According to a U.S. Justice Department statement, DC Solar made trailer-mounted mobile solar generators, touting their alleged sustainability and claiming use for emergency power to cellphone towers and lighting arrays at sporting events and concerts.
DC Solar employees told investors that alternative-energy investments could yield federal tax benefits and sold more generators than were actually manufactured. Investigators found that more than half of the company's claimed 17,000 generators never existed, and that DC Solar paid early investors by selling nonexistent generators to later investors.
After a December 2018 raid at the company's Benicia office and at a Martinez home registered to company founders Jeff and Paulette Carpoff, the company's accounts were frozen, forcing it to lay off dozens of employees. The company declared bankruptcy in February 2019.
Guidry worked at DC Solar from 2012 to 2019; he not only knew his company's business model relied on defrauding investors of funds but also knowingly took $1 million from investors to arrange a signature on a false lease contract.
He also split a cash sum with Alan Hansen, a Vacaville man and telecommunications company employee, to forge a signature on a related agreement.
Guidry created a spreadsheet of fake locations for the company's mobile solar generators, and then worked with Jeff Carpoff to move generators to those locations either before or on the day of scheduled investor inspections. After DC Solar stopped making generators in 2017, Guidry transferred vehicle identification number stickers between generators in Benicia and Las Vegas to fool investors about transactions.
After an investigation by the FBI, the IRS and federal insurance inspectors, Guidry and several other conspirators were charged with a range of offenses, including money laundering and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Jeff Carpoff, 52, and his wife, Paulette, 49, pleaded guilty in January 2020 to charges of money laundering and conspiring to commit wire fraud, authorities said. He was sentenced Nov. 9, 2021, to 30 years in prison and ordered to pay $790.6 million in restitution.
She was sentenced June 28, 2022, to 11 years and three months in prison out of a possible 15 years.
One week after Jeff Carpoff's conviction, Joseph Bayliss, 47, of Martinez was sentenced for his role in the scheme to three years in prison and was ordered to pay $481.3 million in restitution.
Robert A. Karmann, 54, of Clayton pleaded guilty to related charges and was sentenced April 12, 2022, to six years in prison and was ordered to pay $624 million in restitution.
Alan Hansen of Vacaville, a former employee of a company that DC Solar purported to do business with, pleaded guilty to participating in the fraud scheme and accepting the $1 million bribe to sign a false contract.
He was sentenced May 31, 2022, to eight years in prison for conspiracy against the United States, as well as aiding and abetting money laundering.
Ronald Roach, 55, of Walnut Creek pleaded guilty to related charges associated with the Carpoff scheme in 2019 and faces a maximum of 10 years in prison at a March 14 sentencing.