Nebraska judge sentences Florida man for his role in $55M investment scam

A Nebraska judge has sentenced a Florida man to six years in prison for his role marketing a $55 million internet fraud that conned more than 10,000 people.

Michael "Mike G" Glaspie, 72, of Palm City, pleaded guilty to wire fraud earlier this year.

At his sentencing Monday in U.S. District Court in Lincoln, Donna Pepper, whose 86-year-old father fell victim to the scam, asked the judge to send a strong message to Glaspie and future scammers that this type of fraud won't be tolerated and there will be a hefty price to pay.

"Michael Glaspie willingly chose to become part of this scam, lie, fraud," said Pepper, who came to Lincoln from Illinois for Monday's hearing. "Michael Glaspie was the spokesperson, he was the salesman, he was the mouth of this fraud."

She said Glaspie cultivated the victims, groomed, manipulated and persuaded them to give their life savings.

A 70-year-old from a small central Nebraska town, who asked not to be named, said he and family members were victims, too. He had a dream of using the money to build houses for wounded warriors "and just like that it was gone."

He said he believes Glaspie probably got snookered, just like he did, but if he were to get home confinement he would be "very disgusted with Uncle Sam."

Glaspie's attorney, Jeff Gorman, offered testimony from doctors in arguing for home confinement, given Glaspie's numerous health issues, which includes a recent diagnosis of dementia that may have had an affect on his ability to make decisions and think morally.

He said he wasn't saying Glaspie was incompetent or didn't know right from wrong. But he is a 72-year-old man in decline.

"He is a salesman. That is in his nature. And it is very difficult to say when puffery, when salesmanship, when does that cross the line into fraud?" Gorman said.

To which Senior U.S. District Judge John Gerrard interjected it wasn't very difficult in this case.

Prosecutors with the U.S. Department of Justice said Glaspie marketed CoinDeal as an investment opportunity and claimed it would yield extremely high returns on the premise that a group of billionaires were about to buy one or more technology companies that Neil Suresh Chandran allegedly owned and operated as ViRSE, which purported to develop virtual-world technologies, including its own cryptocurrency.

Chandran, 51, of Las Vegas, was indicted last year for his alleged role in the same scheme. He is awaiting trial.

To entice investors to put money into CoinDeal, Glaspie falsely promised them if the returns from CoinDeal failed to materialize, he would repay investors with 7% annual interest over three years.

But Glaspie had no way of making good on it, he admitted in court Monday.

He said this has weighed heavily on him and that getting involved with Chandran "has been the biggest mistake of my life."

"I believed in this deal as much as you did," Glaspie said, turning to look at the victims in the courtroom.

Glaspie said that when he was first approached about the CoinDeal, he believed in it and in Chandran's companies and thought, once sold, they could generate hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars. But after investing his own money for six months, he came to realize the deal was never going to happen.

"I would've never put my own money in it if I'd known it was a scam," he said.

Glaspie said he added to Chandran's fraud, and he should not have done that.

"I made a promise that was fraudulent, and I know that was criminal. I take responsibility for this promise that may have induced victims to invest in Chandran's scheme," he said.

Glaspie said only $2.4 million of the proceeds of the fraud went into accounts that he controlled.

The scam went on from March 2020 through July 2022, with Glaspie making false claims to investors about exclusive and lucrative contracts with AT&T for phones and an app for the Better Business Bureau.

When some investors began to question Glaspie's claims, like whether the central bank of South Korea was involved, Glaspie came back with continued false claims, prosecutors said.

The case was filed in Nebraska because a Lincoln resident, who hasn't been charged, helped Glaspie raise money for CoinDeal and transfer it to the Chandran Companies through his bank accounts.

On Monday, Gorman argued the federal Bureau of Prisons wasn't adequately able to care for Glaspie, who takes 10 prescriptions a day and sees six doctors.

"He's not a violent criminal. This is not a violent crime," he said.

On the other side, Tian Huang, an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, pointed to testimony from a regional medical director for the Bureau of Prisons as evidence there are more than adequate facilities to care for Glaspie's health conditions.

"Mr. Glaspie's role here wasn't a passive role. Hew as an active participant and leader in this fraud," she said.

In the end, Gerrard said he had gone through over 500 pages of victim impact statements, with losses ranging from $200 or less to over a million, from people across the country, from Australia, Great Britain and Germany.

"Many of the victims reported significant financial hardship after spending down savings or borrowing money to invest in the deal," the judge said.

Many reported significant emotional and mental health impacts, depression and guilt, he said.

"This scheme was a combination of both a multi-level marketing scheme and in other ways it was a Ponzi scheme to get others to sign up friends and family members, church members," Gerrard said.

He said many felt personal betrayal that Glaspie had represented himself as a man of faith who wanted to help build generational wealth among Christians who could use the wealth to do good in the world.

"That was just another way of the enticement," Gerrard said before sentencing him to the federal prison term, which he'll have to report for and start serving in February. Glaspie also forfeited $2,424,971 he had that was tied to the scam.

Outside the courtroom, Pepper said she was happy Glaspie didn't get house arrest.

"He did that to us. But now it's up to us to keep doing the good things that we did and looking out for the people who couldn't help themselves during this," she said, talking with another of the victims.

This is what Glaspie gets for his legacy, Pepper said.

A restitution hearing will be set at a later date, where Glaspie could be ordered to pay restitution of $54,647,930, along with Chandran should he be convicted.

In a press release, the Department of Justice encouraged all potential investor victims of the fraud to visit www.justice.gov/criminal-vns/united-states-v-chandran to identify themselves and obtain information on their rights.