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Sixty-five-year-old Robert Tringham recently was convicted in federal court of mail and wire fraud, tax evasion, obstruction and making false statements to federal investors.
Tringham took about $7.3 million from people in an investment scam in which he promised his clients that he would maintain their money in safe accounts and it only for backing bonds.
The ten felony charges Tringham was convicted on stems from a Rancho Cucamonga-based scheme in which he set up the First National Bancorp to solicit leveraged funds to trade in discounted Grade A bonds that would provide investors with guaranteed profits at high rates of return when the bonds were sold.
Federal prosecutors presented evidence that Tringham told investors that their money would be with a registered broker-dealer and that he did not
complete the bond trades he promised.
Instead, Tringham transferred millions of dollars of investor funds to himself to finance purchases such as a house in Diamond Bar, California and a Land Rover.
Tringham also did not disclose to investors that he had previously been convicted of deception, forgery and theft in the United Kingdom.
He took more than $7 million from investors in 2005 and 2006. For the 2005 tax year, Tringham failed to pay about $480,000 in income tax he owed to the Internal Revenue Service.
He faces a maximum statutory sentence of 170 years in federal prison and is scheduled for sentencing on June 7.
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