A man has been jailed for more than 17 years for conning investors out of more than $20m over a fake Walt Disney theme park and resort in North Texas.
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Thomas W. Lucas Jr., 35, was also ordered to pay a compensation of $8.4 million.
Lucas Jr. was convicted on February 13 of seven counts of wire fraud and one count of making a false statement to the FBI and was sentenced to 210 months in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant.
Lucas had convinced investors into believing he had inside and private information about a secret Walt Disney theme park and resort project that was being built in North Texas.
Disney witnesses, including Disney’s then Chairman of Parks and Resorts and executive assistants, testified at the trial that the information presented to investors by Lucas was not authentic and that Disney never had any intention of opening a Disney resort and theme park in North Texas.
Prosecutors said Lucas profited from his lie about a “Frontier Disney DFW” theme park, forging official-looking Disney letters and altered maps and photographs that he claimed were given to him by his secret Disney source. Investors included former SMU basketball star Jon Koncak. The trip cost more than $37,000.
Reports say that much of the money lost was due to risky option contracts. In court, the value of the land purchased was subtracted to determine the overall loss which was approximately $20 million. But the draw all along, he said, was Disney.
But that didn’t happen instead, he got the maximum and will have to pay $8,456,360 in restitution to victims that invested in options to purchase land. Lucas was indicted by a federal grand jury on September.
One of those victims was James Dean, he spoke at the sentencing Tuesday about what he and all other victims have gone through.
Such information, she said, would “tend to support a defense theory that Beau Lucas was the architect of a scheme to defraud investors in order to enrich himself”. “He has no remorse”.
When the FBI questioned Lucas about the source in 2013, he gave agents the name of a dead man, named Michael Watson Sr., prosecutors said.
“We’re talking millions and millions of dollars that victims have lost”, he said.
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