A jury of six folks discovered former Olympus Swimming pools proprietor and New Tampa resident James Staten responsible on 35 of 36 counts of willingly defrauding prospects by accepting cash from them realizing he wouldn’t fulfill the contracts to construct their swimming pools.
Staten, who opened Olympus Swimming pools in 2013, shall be sentenced by Circuit Choose Mary Handsel on Might 7 and the minimal sentence he can obtain is 20 years, however Choose Handsel stated that, primarily based on sentencing pointers, she will be able to sentence Staten to as much as 285 years in jail.
Among the many felony costs Staten was discovered responsible of are fraud, misapplication of building funds of greater than $100,000, having an organized scheme to defraud and aggravated white-collar crime. The one cost he was not convicted of was one of many grand theft costs.
Investigators stated that Staten, who did take the stand in his personal protection on the final of ten days of testimony within the trial, stole greater than $1.5 million of his shoppers’ cash to fund a lavish way of life that included a number of journeys, jewellery and Tremendous Bowl tickets.
Prosecutors Stephanie Bergen and Panagiota Papakos of Florida Lawyer Common James Uthmeier’s workplace instructed the jury that Staten continued to instruct his gross sales folks to simply accept giant down funds from prospects regardless that he had no intention of constructing their swimming pools. Dozens of these prospects have been left with holes within the floor on their respective properties and plenty of had no work began in any respect.
The jurors have been apparently unimpressed with protection legal professional Dino Michaels’ argument that Staten didn’t intend to defraud his prospects: “When you have a marketing strategy, that’s simply not a scheme to defraud. It’s a marketing strategy. To promote extra swimming pools, sadly, is a nasty marketing strategy. And so, this firm failed.” It took solely 4 hours for the jury to achieve their verdict on all 36 counts, with 35 of these coming again as “responsible” verdicts.
In line with a press launch dated March 17, Uthmeier beforehand “took civil motion to close down Olympus Swimming pools, completely shuttering the corporate. On account of the civil motion, [Olympus] is enjoined completely from conducting enterprise, and Staten is banned for all times from working a pool firm in Florida.”
Clearly, Staten, 42, is dealing with a way more stringent penalty now, as he might spend the remainder of his life in jail, relying upon how lengthy Choose Handsel decides to condemn him to serve on Might 7. — GN
