A Las Vegas attorney was sentenced to 366 days in prison today for assisting a client launder approximately $2.25 million that had been obtained fraudulently in an online investment scheme, announced the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Nevada.
R. Christopher Reade, 43, of North Las Vegas, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Kent J. Dawson, who allowed Reade to self-report to federal prison by Oct. 17, 2014. Reade pleaded guilty in January to one count of accessory after the fact to laundering of monetary instruments.
“Reade’s conduct was not a “one-off” act spawned by the unfortunate coupling of naïveté and necessity,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven W. Myhre. “It was a knowing, calculated, and sophisticated course and pattern of conduct motivated by greed and engaged in over time. Reade knew that his conduct was wrong and that it ran contrary to his professional obligations as an attorney and would hurt others.”
Reade was a licensed attorney in Las Vegas and practiced business law. His client, Rick Young, owned and operated a Nevada corporation known as Global One Group, LLC, a web-based company which purported to train others how to trade in the foreign currency exchange market, or FOREX. Young advertised that he was an experienced and highly successful trader in the FOREX market, who for a fee would teach persons his winning trading strategies and techniques. Young solicited persons to become members of Global One which would allow them access to his web-based live training seminars. Young claimed that he had developed an automated trading program that traded according to his strategies simply by “flipping a switch.” Young enticed members into providing money for “loans” to Global One and told them that they would be able to earn high yield returns on their investments. In actuality, the automated trading program did not exist in the form that Young represented and Young was running an elaborate Ponzi scheme in which proceeds from the member loans were diverted to Young his own use. From about 2006 to 2008, Young derived approximately $16 million in proceeds from the scheme.
FBI press release link: click here