Biodiesel Scammers Sentenced to Prison
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe chief executive officer and a co-owner of a former biodiesel business are behind bars for fraud. The office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana says Jeffrey Wilson and Craig Ducey will serve 10 years and more than six years, respectively, for their roles in cheating investors and purchasers out of millions of dollars.
Wilson and Ducey join five others who have received federal jail time for a scheme involving tax credits for biodiesel, renewable fuel credits and shares of a previously publicly-traded company called Imperial Petroleum Inc. The charges show the seven were involved in defrauding the government and investors out of incentives and money in plans Assistant Attorney General John Cruden says have "set renewable fuel efforts back for the entire nation." He continued "at a time when Americans should have been working together to have clean, sustainable and safe energy, the defendants chose to line their own pockets. Prison is the appropriate consequence."
The U.S. Department of Justice says the fraud started when Wilson knowingly moved forward on a deal involving e-biofuels LLC, which was set to be sold to Imperial Petroleum, which was faking incentives paperwork for fuel it had not actually produced. Wilson was also sentenced to jail for multiple other infractions. Ducey’s role involved wire, tax and environmental crimes that the office says "were hidden by the securities fraud (he was not charged with securities fraud)."
You can read more about the crime and sentencing here: