Iley sentenced to 13 years in federal prison

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Clayton Iley, the former owner of Texas Legacy Insurance Group, recently pled guilty to federal wire fraud and identity theft, and was sentenced to more than 13 years in prison.

The sentence was handed down Oct. 1 by U.S. Judge Mark Pittman.

Iley faced a maximum of up to 20 years in federal prison for the wire fraud offense, and a mandatory two years for the aggravated identity theft.

On count one, Iley received 136 months and on count two, he received 24 months (consecutively) for a total of 160 months.

He must also pay $6,715,132.90 in restitution to his victims.

These offenses arose from a scheme wherein he illegally obtained credit cards and offered a scam loan program to victims.

"My office will not stand by and allow criminals to scam Americans out of their hard-earned money without consequence," said U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould. "Fraud doesn't just harm an individual — it disrupts families and communities across all 100 counties of the Northern District of Texas. Its effects are felt most deeply by those who are vulnerable, including elderly residents who are too often targeted by schemes designed to exploit their trust. Protecting every community in this district is my unwavering commitment, and we will aggressively pursue anyone who preys on the innocent and work to ensure victims receive the justice and restitution they deserve."

"This plea demonstrates the lengths these criminals will go to defraud members of our communities," said FBI Dallas Special Agent in Charge R. Joseph Rothrock. "The FBI and our partners remain committed to identifying and investigating the perpetrators of these fraudulent schemes and encourage the public to notify the FBI if they suspect they are the victims of fraud."

According to court records, Iley operated an insurance brokerage business named Clayton Texas Legacy Insurance Group, LLC from its headquarters in Cross Plains, Texas and offered home, auto, life, health, farm & ranch, and commercial insurance policies to the public.

Court documents show that from January 2020 through May 2026, Iley used at least two entities he controlled, Texas Legacy Holdings and Enterprises, LLC and Spartan Global Security, LLC dba as "Black Eagle PMC," to conduct financial transactions. Texas Legacy Holdings operated as a holding company and was used to conduct financial transactions. Spartan Global purported to offer private security services, commercial security services, corporate security services, and private military contracting services.

Iley reportedly defrauded victims by, among other things: falsely represented to victims that he could invest their funds in a "Bonded Note" loan program he claimed was provided by the U.S. Department of Defense to private military contractors, when in reality, Iley knew the relevant loan program did not exist.

During the relevant time period, Iley collected over $2 million based on this misrepresentation. He used the funds to pay his own personal expenses and to execute other parts of his fraudulent scheme. He falsely represented to specific Texas Legacy Insurance clients that he would accept client funds and cause Texas Legacy Insurance to initiate requested insurance policies on their behalf, when in reality, Iley knew he would accept their insurance premium payment funds, fail to open requested insurance policies, and instead intended to use their funds to pay his own personal expenses and to fund the relevant fraudulent scheme. He provided the victims' personal identifying information (e.g., first name, last name, etc.) to financial institutions to fraudulently secure credit cards bearing the names of those specific victims without their knowledge or authority and then used the resulting credit cards to deposit funds into Spartan Global bank accounts and claim the transactions were gross receipts for the business. He also charged personal expenses and payments towards the purchase of the vehicles.

As part of his plea agreement, Iley agreed to forfeit property of over 90 exotic collector vehicles obtained with funds from his fraudulent scheme. To date, federal investigators have seized the vehicles which have been sold to fund restitution owed to the victims of Iley's fraud scheme.

The FBI's Fort Worth Resident Agency, the Texas Rangers, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and the Stephenville Police Department conducted the investigation.

Once Iley gets out of prison, he will be on supervised release for two years. Typically for federal charges at least 85% of the time must be served before someone is eligible for supervised release.

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