A former VP of sales & marketing for a purported concert promotion company has been sentenced to three years in federal prison for his role in a conspiracy to defraud investors by faking involvement in concerts for artists such as Janet Jackson and Bruno Mars.
Photo Credit: Shutterstock
At the virtual sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Joan M. Azrack handed down the prison term to Kevin Carriker and also ordered him to pay $250,000 in restitution.
Prosecutors say Carriker and other conspirators, including co-defendant Mark Lomicka, were part of a scheme run through companies called Rio Vista Universal and Untouchable Management LLC. They used these organizations to con investors into funding tours and concerts for artists such as Jackson, Rihanna and Bruno Mars by falsely claiming the artists had agreed to perform, when in fact they had not.
Carriker was given an advisory sentencing guideline range of 33 to 41 months in prison, following his guilty plea last year to one count of wire fraud conspiracy.
This is not Carriker’s first experience with the New York judicial system. According to several criminal complaints filed in April 2019, Carriker has a long history of defrauding victims, including a 2003 grand larceny conviction for defrauding elderly victims of gold and silver coins and another incident that year when he embezzled $75,000 from his employer, stabbed his boss and threatened to kill a coworker. He served almost 13 years in prison for those offenses.
“What disturbs me about this case is this defendant seemed to be living a life of crime and fraud,” Judge Azrack said. “I can’t ignore the criminal history. You’re clearly smart enough to do something lawful.”
An attorney for Carriker, Randi Chavis, argued for a time-served sentence for her client, who has already been in custody for almost two years. While Carriker knowingly lied to investors, Chavis said he strongly believed that Lomicka had the Hollywood connections to put on a concert tour.
Chavis described Lomicka as “a very well-established con artist.”
According to the indictment, in 2017 and 2018, at least six victims invested a total of $550,000 in purported concerts. The scheme started to unravel in July 2018 after an attorney for a company representing Rihanna contacted the FBI about the scam. An undercover FBI agent later purportedly invested $25,000 to finance a tour featuring Janet Jackson, the indictment says, after Carriker and Lomicka claimed the tour was legitimate.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Treinis Gatz told Judge Azrack that Carriker had not learned that you just can’t lie to people about anything.
“I’ll take his word that he didn’t know everything that was going on, but he knew enough,” Gatz said.
In his sentencing hearing Carriker claimed he would never be in trouble with the law again.
“I apologize for everything that happened,” he said.
Read more articles from Haute Lawyer, visit https://hauteliving.com/hautelawyer/
Source: https://www.law360.com/articles/1371841
Attorney Talk
April 13, 2021Haute Lawyer Webinar - The Women Of Law
