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A federal judge rejected a Texas businesswoman’s last-minute attempt to take back her guilty plea to charges that she defrauded investors in a phony real estate scheme and sentenced her to 87 months in prison.

Samantha L. Mueting of San Antonio targeted investors with iCore, a company she promoted as a multinational commercial real estate provider. Mueting claimed iCore operated in at least 64 countries, with 156 offices, managed upwards of hundreds of billions of dollars in a commercial real estate investment fund and employed anywhere from 1,500 to 5,000 employees.

In reality, iCore’s incorporation address was a postal box in a UPS store and never employed more than half-dozen employees at any given time. Mueting and her collaborator in iCore, Josephus De Laat, defrauded investors of more than $2.1 million.

According to the San Antonio Express-News, Mueting was indicted in 2021 on a mail fraud conspiracy charge and eight wire fraud-related charges. She entered into an agreement in 2022, when prosecutors agreed to drop the wire fraud charges in exchange for a guilty plea to the mail fraud charge. Last Friday, however, she filed court papers to withdraw her guilty plea on the grounds because she was “actually innocent of the conduct” connected to the $4 million in restitution she was ordered to repay. She added that she received “ineffective assistance” from her previous defense counsel.

Mueting was free on a $50,000 unsecured bond while awaiting sentencing. The court rejected the request of her defense attorney for a less severe sentence due to her lack of a previous criminal history and because she did not use her clients’ money for personal spending. However, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Stephenson successfully urged the judge to impose a sentence at the high end of the guidelines.

“The fact is, Ms. Mueting is still not fully reconciled with what she did and what she needs to do next, which is serve a considerable amount of time in prison to pay for her crimes and to begin making restitution payments from her assets as soon as possible,” Stephenson said.

Following her sentencing, the judge sentenced co-defendant De Laat, who served as iCore’s chief financial officer, to five years of probation for his guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He must also compensate some of the defrauded investors with roughly $1 million, jointly and severally with Mueting.

Photo courtesy of Samantha L. Mueting’s LinkedIn page