A former Duluth mortgage broker who took $2.765 million from 22 "friends and neighbors" in a fraudulent investment scheme was sentenced today in federal court to 11 years and four months in prison and was ordered to repay his investor victims.
Daniel TePoel, 55, of Barnes, Wis., along with Gary Milosevich solicited funds from people they knew in a "no-risk" investment that was "only a figment of your imagination," District Judge Barbara Crabb said before sentencing Tepoel.
"You had no intention of returning their funds and had no way to do so ... because they were never invested," Crabb said.
Instead, TePoel spent the investors' money lavishly, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Meredith Duchemin, buying himself a house in Barnes in another person's name so that the government couldn't seize it. TePoel also bought two condominiums and wrote many checks to "cash," which created no specific record of where the money went, said Duchemin.
"These people are revictimized every time at Christmas or when they can't take a vacation because they don't have the funds they gave him," Duchemin said.
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TePoel, who operated Interstate Mortgage Co., and Milosevich, promised investors safe, high-yield returns. Instead the money was deposited in Republic Bank of Duluth and withdrawn to purchase a condo project in Grenada, where Milosevich relocated.
Milosevich, formerly of Superior, was indicted with TePoel on nine fraud counts in April 2007 but authorities have been unable to locate Milosevich.
As he did at trial in March, TePoel refused to have an attorney represent Wednesday at sentencing. He declined Crabb's first offer to make a statement and, when she offered a second time, he said only: "Facts don't cease to be facts just because the prosecution says they aren't."
Duchemin asked that TePoel be given a lengthy sentence because he continues to blame everyone else for his actions and feels he is a victim because "he didn't scam as much money as he thought he should."
The "callousness" of TePoel's theft was most apparent when Marion Barnes told TePoel she only dealt with him because she wanted the investment to "take care of her parents," said Duchemin.
"Instead, he had no qualms about taking the money and just spending it," Duchemin said.
When the investors began to ask when they would receive a return, TePoel "strung them along" for years, she said.
