CA investment adviser who fled by sea scooter pleads guilty in Ponzi scheme
A Redding man pleaded guilty on Thursday to swindling investors in a $35 million Ponzi scheme that used fake financial products and an existing medical business to persuade customers to trust him with their money.
Matthew Piercey, who was 44 at the time of his arrest in 2020, admitted to the scheme in federal court in Sacramento, pleading guilty to 27 counts of wire fraud, money laundering and witness tampering. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 4.
Piercey’s arrest in the scheme made headlines after he tried to flee the FBI on a “sea scooter,” plowing into California’s Lake Shasta on a cold November day on a Yamaha 350Li submersible device before emerging a half hour later, according to previous Bee reporting.
A co-conspirator, Kenneth Winton, has already pleaded guilty to a single charge in the case but has not yet been sentenced.
Piercey was accused of persuading investors to trust him and co-conspirators with about $35 million in funds in a scheme that ran from 2016 to 2020, a grand jury indictment against him shows. About $8.8 million was returned to investors, but $26 million was missing at the time of his arrest in 2020, the indictment said.
Among Piercey’s victims were members of Bethel Church in Redding, where he was a parishioner. Of the proceeds, he used about $1 million to buy a boat and another $1 million to buy and renovate two houses in the north state, the indictment said.
Piercey was not offered a plea deal by prosecutors, but after Acting U.S. Attorney Michele Beckwith dropped four of the original 31 counts against him last week, he told Chief District Judge Troy L. Nunley he would plead guilty “straight up” to the remaining charges.
In a statement filed with the court earlier this month, Piercey admitted to lying to investors and intending to defraud them. He also admitted that he had illegally used interstate wire communication to carry out the scheme. He confessed to trying to persuade another witness to withhold testimony and admitted to money laundering.
Piercey faces up to 20 years in prison for each set of charges, according to the indictment, along with fines of $250,000 or an amount equal to twice the money he gained. Prosecutors this week also asked the court to require Piercey to pay restitution in the case.
