A California man who took part in a billion-dollar Ponzi scheme through a fake solar power supply company has been sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to pay $624 million in restitution, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced.
Robert A. Karmann, 55, a certified public accountant, was hired by DC Solar, a company based in Benicia in the San Francisco Bay Area that manufactured mobile solar generator (MSG) units—solar panels mounted on trailers—as its controller in 2014, and he later became the company’s chief financial officer.
According to the Justice Department, the MSGs were sold to investors who were “given generous federal tax credits” and who were falsely made to believe that the demand from third parties to lease the MSGs was huge and would create a fortune.
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