A former California solar company executive was sentenced Tuesday to 6 1/2 years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $620 million in restitution for his role in a $1 billion fraud scheme, federal prosecutors said.
Ryan Guidry, 45, of Pleasant Hill, pleaded guilty in 2020 to charges of conspiracy and money laundering, the US Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
Guidry was once vice president of operations for DC Solar, based in Benicia, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Between 2011 and 2018, the company commercialized mobile solar generating units. The firm touted the trailer-mounted units as capable of providing emergency power for cell phone companies or lighting at sporting and other events.
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But executives began telling investors they could take advantage of federal tax credits by buying the generators and leasing them from DC Solar, which would then provide them to other companies for their use, prosecutors said.
In reality, DC Solar sold more generators than it manufactured, used false financial statements and lease agreements to hide the fraud and, in a classic Ponzi scheme, paid early investors with money from later investors, prosecutors said.
Former DC Solar executive Ryan Guidry, 45, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and money laundering charges in 2020. He was sentenced to more than six years in prison on Tuesday.
(FoxNews)
Some 9,000 of the roughly 17,000 generators that DC Solar claimed to have made did not exist, according to the US Attorney’s Office.
Among those duped by the deal were Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
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DC Solar founder Jeff Carpoff was sentenced in 2021 to 30 years in prison and ordered to pay $790.6 million in restitution for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering.
In 2021 and 2022, four other people, including Carpoff’s wife, Paulette Carpoff, were sentenced to prison in connection with the fraud, while Ronald J. Roach of Walnut Creek could face up to 10 years in prison when he is sentenced in March, prosecutors said.
