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Ponzi scheme artist gets 5-year sentence Bay Area woman must pay $2.5 million to investors she fleeced
Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, March 27, 2004
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A Fremont woman was sentenced to nearly five years in prison Friday for fleecing 23 investors out of millions of dollars in a Ponzi scheme by promising extravagant profits on the sales of discount airline tickets.
Nimfa Montes Beredo, 40, also known as Patricia Beredo, was also ordered by U.S. District Judge Lowell Jensen in Oakland to pay more than $2.5 million in restitution to her victims.
"It's a very serious offense," Jensen said. "The victims make that clear."
Beredo, clad in a yellow jail jumpsuit and blue denim jacket, apologized in court. "I am deeply distressed and very sorry for my actions," she said. "I hope they can find it in their hearts to forgive me. I have learned greatly from this experience."
In October, Beredo pleaded guilty to charges of wire fraud, credit card fraud and money laundering. In exchange, Jensen on Friday formally dismissed 10 other counts she had been facing from a grand jury indictment.
Beredo, who has been in jail since her February 2003 arrest at her Fremont home, is expected to get credit for time served.
Beredo, who worked at World Destiny Travel in Fremont, used her position to seek investors to put up funds for bulk ticket purchases at discounted prices, authorities said.
As part of a classic Ponzi scheme, Beredo would then use the investment money to pay earlier investors who had been promised very high rates of return, according to the Internal Revenue Service.
Most of her victims were from the Bay Area, but some hailed from as far away as New York and the Philippines, said assistant U.S. attorney Douglas Sprague.
"The defendant promised the victims between 5 percent and 10 percent rate of return per day or per week or per month as the profit on this investment or loan," IRS Special Agent Cecilia Braga wrote in an affidavit filed in the case.
Between 1997 and her arrest, Beredo had held herself as a consolidator of airline tickets for numerous airlines -- including Lufthansa, Northwest, Singapore, British Airways and Cathay Pacific -- and large Bay Area corporations such as Oracle, Bechtel and New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., the IRS said. In fact, she did not have any contracts with those companies, the IRS said.
Beredo also admitted obtaining credit cards from some of her investors and using them to run up charges of more than $120,000 for such things as food, clothing, airline tickets, cash advances and entertainment.
E-mail Henry K. Lee at hlee@sfchronicle.com.