A California man was sentenced to eight years in prison for coordinating real estate scam in Belize that defrauded hundreds of victims out of approximately $77 million.
Newport Beach-based Andris Pukke, who also went by the aliases Marc Romeo and Andy Storm, controlled and directed Sanctuary Belize, which was a vacation and retirement community under development in Belize. Pukke generated more than $100 million of investments into lots at Sanctuary Belize with the phony pledge that those who purchased lots in could build retirement homes, vacation homes, or investment properties.
Pukke also directed his salespeople to tell investors that Sanctuary Belize had no debt and that every dollar from victims would go to develop the property – in reality, this endeavor had more than $12 million in debt while Pukke stole nearly $10 million from Sanctuary Belize for personal investments and expenditures, including land purchasing in the Bahamas and child support payments.
Pukke also had prior convictions for mail fraud and obstruction of justice and a prior $172 million judgment against him from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in connection with a deceptive company he controlled called AmeriDebt. As a result, he used his aliases to conceal his involvement in Sanctuary Belize.
While he was being investigated by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, Pukke attempted to induce another individual to create a sham document that he hoped to use as evidence to avoid prosecution.
Pukke was convicted of wire fraud and obstruction of justice on July 10. In addition to his prison term, he was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to forfeit $9.9 million; he was previously ordered in litigation with the FTC to pay restitution to victims of Sanctuary Belize in the amount of $120.2 million.
“Hundreds of hard-working Americans—many of them retirees—lost their savings to this brazen fraud,” said US Attorney Jay Clayton. “Andris Pukke thought he could hide behind foreign land deals and false names, but he was wrong. This sentence removes a bad actor and serves as a warning to other would-be fraudsters.”
Clearly the punishments are not fitting the crimes in our country. We are seeing repeat offenders of huge fraudulent crimes stealing from people over and over again. Why was this man able to do this a second time? This is ridiculous. There can be millions of laws on the books, but if there are no consequences, the laws are useless and only “feel good” efforts that have NO impact. Stop spending money and time on the laws and work on enforcing what is already there. Increase law enforcement, increase the punishments. This needs to stop. I keep hearing stories of millions stolen and too often the convicted are found guilty over and over again. It should be a one and done, if they ever do it.