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SALT LAKE CITY — A Bountiful man accused of running a federal Ponzi scheme was sentenced to prison Monday for disobeying a court order by giving a sailboat to his brother-in-law.
Roger Stanley Bliss, 57, will serve one year and one day in prison for obstruction of justice and a false declaration before a federal court. He pleaded guilty to the charges in September.
The federal Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against Bliss in February, naming several causes of action against him saying he engaged in securities fraud, fraudulently acted as an investment adviser and engaged in an ongoing scheme to defraud others. In that case, which is still ongoing, Bliss violated a court order to freeze his assets and lied to U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby to "conceal the conduct," U.S. Attorney's Office spokeswoman Melodie Rydalch said.
The order required Bliss to freeze any assets obtained using money originating from any of his bank accounts. But Bliss instead gave his sailboat to his brother-in-law, Kevin Carl Fortney, even though the boat had been bought using funds from one of his accounts, Rydalch said.
"Bliss admitted he transferred the sailboat so it could be liquidated by (Fortney) and the proceeds used to reduce a debt he owed to (Fortney)," the spokeswoman said in a statement.
As part of his guilty plea, Bliss admitted to knowingly lying under oath about violating the order. Fortney, 55, of Washington, Utah, also helped Bliss mislead the court and may face prosecution, according to Rydalch.
"Asset freeze orders, like the one violated in the Bliss case, serve to prevent the unfair dissipation of assets and ensure the availability of funds for restitution to victims," Rydalch said.
The SEC lawsuit alleges Bliss promised investors he would double, triple or even quadruple their returns on Apple stock through day-trading. Despite raising several million dollars from investors, the agency's attorneys say, he failed multiple times to invest those funds.
Bliss also sustained more than $3 million of investment losses between 2012 and early 2015, court documents say, despite allegedly lying to investors about his profits, including a claim that he had not lost money on a single day of stock trading over a period of six years.
"Bliss lacks the resources to repay the investor-victims of his Ponzi scheme," assistant U.S. attorney Jacob Strain wrote in one court document. "Bliss victimized them yet again by recruiting his brother-in-law … to liquidate Bliss' catamaran sailboat and then to lie about it to the court and to investigators. … Bliss circumvented the (Security Exchange Commission's) efforts to protect investors."
