Colorado Ponzi Schemer Receives Five Year Prison Sentence

A federal judge sentenced a 72-year old man to five years in prison for operating a Ponzi scheme that stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from investors, some of whom were solicited at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Richard Horace Mayfield, 72, was arrested in April 2011 and initially charged with ten felonies in connection with the scheme.  He later entered a guilty plea to one felony charge of theft in July.  

From the mid-1990s to 2010, Mayfield operated the Maverick Sales Group and Richard H. Mayfield and Associates.  During the lifetime of the scheme, Mayfield took in nearly half-a-million dollars from twenty-two investors, who were promised a no-risk investing opportunity.  At least some of the victims were solicited by Mayfield at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.  Mayfield paid out nearly half of investor funds in the form of interest payments to investors, resulting in a total net loss to investors exceeding $271,000.

At the time of his arrest, Mayfield had been on probation for an unrelated misdemeanor theft case from 2008.  He was sentenced to serve a one-year sentence for the probation violation, which will be served concurrently with his five-year sentence.  He is scheduled to serve his sentence at the Colorado Department of Corrections.