Enforcement Actions Criminal Civil

Minor Vargas Calvo , a Costa Rican businessman with interests ranging from media to insurance to professional soccer, was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison on Oct. 23 for perpetrating a $485 million bond fraud. Vargas was the president of Provident Capital Indemnity Ltd., which sold...

Richard M. Plato , a disbarred lawyer with three prior criminal convictions, was convicted Sept. 24 in U.S. District Court in Houston on five counts of mail fraud and one count of conspiracy related to an oil and gas scam. Plato owned Momentum Production Corp. in Baytown, which sold approximately $6...

Michael D. Alexander was indicted Aug. 22 for securities fraud in Rockwall County for allegedly selling investors shares in timber harvesting operation in the Amazon. Alexander, a Rockwall resident, sold shares in Ecowood Recuperdore De Toras and Ecowood Resources International Inc. The indictment...

John Arthur Mertens of Austin, who allegedly defrauded investors in a trading scheme, was indicted Aug. 9 in Bexar County district court on one count of securities fraud and one count of fiduciary misapplication. According to the indictment, Mertens misrepresented to investors that he was a...

Three defendants in the wide-ranging AmeriFirst companies' fraud were sentenced to federal prison on July 20 in U.S. District Court in Dallas. Dennis Woods Bowden of Farmers Branch, the chief operations officer of AmeriFirst, was sentenced to 16 years in prison and ordered to pay $23 million in...

Fred Howard was sentenced to five years in federal prison on July 18 after pleading guilty to one count of securities fraud in U.S. District Court in Dallas. Howard, a Florida resident at the time of his crime, was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release after prison and to pay...

Robert Joseph Mangiafico Jr. of Dallas was indicted June 19 on a charge of tampering with a government record. The indictment is related to the March 2011 indictment of Mangiafico on charges of theft, money laundering, and engaging in organized criminal activity. Mangiafico and a business partner...

A federal grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on June 5 indicted three North Texas men on securities fraud and other charges related to an oil and gas scheme. Bruce Kyle Griffith of Dallas, David Kevin Lewis (a/k/a David Shane Lewis) of Rockwall, and Thomas A...

Kelly Gordon Rogers , an attorney in Frisco, was indicted May 1 in Collin County state District Court on two counts of aggregated theft, two counts of money laundering, and one count of securities fraud. The charges stem from Rogers' alleged theft of $2.8 million from investors in two separate oil...

Mary Alice Monteza and Alan Keith Nelsen of San Antonio were sentenced to state prison terms on April 24 and April 2, respectively, after being convicted on charges related to a fraudulent overseas trading investment. Monteza and Nelsen created a company called Castro International, which supposedly...