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A Draper businessman pleaded guilty on Monday to charges related to the $25 million that he stole from retirement accounts of his clients and he agreed to a 10-year sentence in federal prison.
Curtis DeYoung, 60, pleaded guilty to mail fraud and making a false statement to a court linked to stealing monies from clients of American Pension Services, his company that administered self-directed Individual Retirement Accounts.
U.S. District Judge David Nuffer said he would accept the plea agreement negotiated by DeYoung's attorneys and prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office for Utah.
Nuffer set sentencing for Dec. 14, though DeYoung's attorney Jamie Zenger told Nuffer that DeYoung wanted to be sentenced at the Monday hearing. Nuffer instead ordered a presentence report but said the sentencing hearing could be moved up if the report is finished early.
DeYoung was accused of taking $25 million from the cash deposits in some 5,500 accounts administered by his American Pension Services over about a 10-year period. He used the money for high-risk investments, made loans to friends that were not repaid and gave himself and his then-wife Michelle high yearly salaries.
One of his victims, Harry Segura, who also is DeYoung's neighbor, attended the change of plea hearing and called the plea deal "far too lenient."
"Would it be too much to ask that Curtis serve one single day for each investor that was victimized by his scheme?" Segura asked, saying such a sentence would work out about 15 years in prison.
Segura had prepared the remarks in expectation that he could address Nuffer. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob Strain said victims are usually allowed to address the court at a sentencing hearing.
Segura said DeYoung had destroyed the savings and retirements of thousands of victims and their families.
He pointed to his daughter, Maj. Holly Bryant, who had served two deployments to Iraq and, Segura said, invested all her combat and hazardous duty pay with DeYoung "only to have it misappropriated by him." A son and his father-in-law also saw their monies disappear, Segura said.
Melodie Rydalch, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office, said the sentence was significant for a white-collar-crime case.
"We believe a 10-year federal prison sentence and restitution of $24,998,422.65 is a substantial sentence," Rydalch said in an email that also said Segura could make his feelings known at the sentencing hearing.
The charge of making a false statement to a court concerned DeYoung's submission of a statement of his assets in the civil lawsuit brought against him and American Pension Services by the Securities and Exchange Commission. DeYoung admitted he had not reported about $50,000 of gems, jewelry, gold coins and other items worth about $50,000 that he had hidden in the false ceiling of a building at a business where his ex-wife was working.
For the mail fraud charge, DeYoung admitted to sending an account statement in 2013 to a client with a cash balance that did not reflect the monies that DeYoung had taken from cash deposited into the APS' central bank account.