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ST. GEORGE — A Kane County man who solicited money from elderly individuals by promising he was on the verge of receiving hundreds of millions of dollars was sentenced for his crimes Thursday.
Kurt Jurgens Bauer, 57, appeared in U.S. District Court in St. George via video and was sentenced on five convictions, including three counts of wire fraud and two counts of false impersonation of a federal employee – charges to which he pled guilty in December.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Dent said the government had agreed to a prison term of between 48-78 months to be served in a federal correctional facility. He had been potentially facing 65 years in prison had the maximum sentence been rendered on all five counts, but a plea deal was reached after months of negotiations that continued through the better part of 2020.
Bauer was indicted following an investigation into a scheme that ran from 2011 through April 2020, during which he defrauded his elderly targets out of money and property by telling them he was on the verge of receiving hundreds of millions of dollars – and in some cases, billions of dollars – in funds that were frozen by the District Court in Nevada and required a bond to release.
The defendant began soliciting payments, often weekly, under the guise that the payments would be used to satisfy the bond. He promised his victims a large return after the frozen funds were released by the court "in the near future," according to the indictment.
Read the full article at St. George News.
