Joel Tucker was ordered to immediately begin serving a prison term of 12.5 years yesterday and ordered to pay more than $12 million in unpaid taxes, penalties, and interest after being sentenced by a federal judge after pleading guilty to selling fake debt portfolios that earned him more than $7 million.
Tucker, the brother of Scott Tucker who was previously sentenced to 17 years in prison for allegedly running an illegal payday lending operation, missed his original sentencing hearing last week and was brought into the courtroom yesterday with his hands and ankles bound, according to a published report.
Prosecutors had been seeking 11 years in prison for Joel Tucker, but Judge Roseann Ketchmark bumped up the term, possibly because of her feelings stemming from the disclosure that Joel Tucker received a $20,000 loan from the Paycheck Protection Program even though he owed millions of dollars in unpaid taxes. Tucker lied on his application form, saying he was not the subject of a criminal indictment, when in fact he was. Tucker’s attorney said the loan was repaid.
“After raking in millions of dollars from the victims of his fraud scheme, the defendant lied repeatedly and used every trick in the book to hide his ill-gotten gain from the IRS,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Teresa A. Moore, in a statement. “He spent lavishly on jet travel and luxury cars, but hasn’t voluntarily paid a dime in taxes owed for more than a decade. Adding insult to injury, he even fraudulently obtained a Paycheck Protection Program loan from the government after working for so many years to cheat U.S. taxpayers.”
Joel Tucker operated a number of companies which acted as lead generators for payday lenders. He would collect information from individuals and then sell that information to a network of 70 payday lenders. After selling the company and retaining a file of nearly 8 million leads, Tucker began to use that information and instead sell fake portfolios of debt, prosecutors allege. He would create fake contracts to make it look like he owned the portfolios and then sell them through debt brokers as a means of distancing himself from the transaction. He pleaded guilty last year to 12 counts of interstate transportation of stolen money, two counts of bankruptcy fraud, and one count of falsification of a record in bankruptcy last week pleaded guilty to one count of interstate transportation of stolen money, one count of bankruptcy fraud, and one count of tax evasion.
Tucker used his ill-gotten gains to fund a lavish lifestyle, including private jets, luxury automobiles, memberships in private clubs, and a credit card balance of nearly $700,000.
