Ponzi scheme leader who preyed on vets sentenced to 10 years

The ringleader of a $300 million Ponzi scheme that targeted veterans and the elderly pleaded guilty and was sentenced Thursday to 10 years in prison.

Scott A. Kohn, a 68-year-old from Newport, California, was indicted in 2019 in South Carolina for a nationwide fraud conspiracy operated through his corporation Future Income Payments LLC from 2011 to 2018.

“Kohn and his co-conspirators reached across the country to steal from veterans and seniors who desperately needed their money,” said U.S. Attorney Adair F. Boroughs for the District of South Carolina in a statement Thursday. “These hundreds of millions in losses will reverberate through the victims’ lives long after the defendants serve well-deserved federal prison sentences.”

Kohn and his co-conspirators recruited pension holders — most of them veterans — in dire financial circumstances and offered them lump-sum payments in exchange for the rights to their monthly pensions and disability benefits, according to court documents.