A South Florida woman will spend the next 20 years in prison for leading a nearly $200 million Ponzi scheme that defrauded several investors.
On Tuesday, a judge sentenced 41-year-old Johanna Garcia to 20 years in prison. Garcia, the former CEO of MJ Capital Funding, LLC pled guilty for her role in a $190,700,000 Ponzi scheme that defrauded several investors.
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A Ponzi scheme often starts when a person offers to invest someone else's money, and investors are promised a consistent high return.
The scam pays early investors with money taken from later investors to create an illusion of big profits. The indictment says Garcia and her co-conspirators falsely promised returns of 120%.
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Prosecutors said the scheme lasted from October 2020 through August 2021. The company didn't earn the profits it needed to pay investors back, so Garcia used the money raised to pay off previous investors while stealing millions of dollars for her own personal benefit, prosecutors said.
Steven Shulman was one of those investors.
“I researched her and she came onto me with her story and her background,” Shulman said. “I was blind-sided, I was devastated, I was crying, I was sad, I realized, what am I going to do?”
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Shulman is the CEO and founder of Animal Care Now, a nonprofit that provides emergency funding for animals in distress. He said trusted Garcia with $50,000.
“The money I lost was going to save the lives of animals in distress,” Shulman said. “My insurance business faltered, Covid killed it, and my real estate business killed it, so this came along at an opportune time.”
Shulman knows he can't go back in time, but he's satisfied knowing there's some justice.
“I wasn't going to get any money back, I lost everything, but at least she won't be able to harm anybody and her nefarious ways of doing things is over,” Shulman said.
Garcia was sentenced to three years of supervised release and additional restitution that will be determined in a couple of months.
