A Concord man will spend six years in federal prison for stealing more than $650,000 from five Granite Staters, three of whom were also victims of the state’s biggest Ponzi scheme.
Ronald Mason, 47, was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Concord on three counts of mail fraud. Mason had previously entered guilty pleas to the charges in June after reaching a deal with the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Prosecutors say Mason, who has an extensive criminal history, had absconded from supervised release in Massachusetts before moving to Concord sometime around 2010. As he settled in New Hampshire’s capital, Mason assumed the last name Budalucci to conceal his status as a fugitive, according to court documents.
Mason was previously convicted in 2004 for a securities fraud offense he committed in Texas. He received a 33-month federal prison sentence followed by three years of supervised release, and was ordered to pay $76,500 in restitution to his victims.
While Mason was in prison for that crime, the owner of Financial Resources Management, Scott Farrar, and Farrar’s business partner, Donald Dodge, pleaded guilty to duping investors of more than $30 million in a Ponzi scheme. The firm’s investors included more than 100 people who were falsely promised that their money would be used to build Abbott Village condominiums in Concord, prosecutors said.
Mason would ultimately send those 100 people letters in mid-2010 about his plans for moving the project forward to fruition, as well as his desire to help fund it. By that time he was out of prison, although not off federal authorities’ radar.
While he targeted Farrar’s and Dodge’s victims,U.S. District Court in Massachusetts had issed a warrant for Mason’s arrest in January 2010 after he absconded from the supervised release portion of his sentence.
Ultimately, three of the 100 people who had previously invested in the condominium project responded to Mason’s letter and agreed to meet him.
“When the defendant met with them, he lied about his personal wealth, his experience as a real estate developer, and his association with other wealthy people who were willing to provide the money that was needed to complete Abbott Village,” according to a state sentencing memorandum. He also said financing would not be provided unless the three people “relinquished their security interests in the unsold condominiums in exchange for a share of the profits when they were sold.”
Further, Mason told his victims he would repay the full amount each lost in the Ponzi scheme, totaling nearly $600,000.
Mason lied to those three people over several months, while also obtaining fraudulent loans from a realtor in Laconia and a real estate developer. The realtor lost $114,500 and the developer lost $25,000 in the scheme, prosecutors said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Kinsella said Mason had no ties to Farrar or the Financial Resources Management scheme. He said it’s unclear why Mason chose to revictimize those people, but called it “particularly egregious and unconscionable.”
Mason is in federal custody, although it’s not yet known where he will serve out his sentence.
Kinsella said the attorney general’s office is not prosecuting anyone else on charges releated to Mason’s case. He called the matter closed.