John Robert Leake, 43, pleaded guilty in September to one count of wire fraud and one count of transactional money laundering, authorities said.
DALLAS — A former NFL linebacker from Plano has been sentenced to prison in a Ponzi scheme involving claims of luxury real estate and gold mines, federal authorities in California announced.
John Robert Leake, 43, pleaded guilty in September to one count of wire fraud and one count of transactional money laundering, according to a news release from the Department of Justice.
Leake, a Plano native, played two seasons in the NFL for the Atlanta Falcons and Green Bay Packers after playing college football at Clemson.
A federal judge in California sentenced Leake to 30 months in federal prison and ordered him to pay back $5,314,059 to victims, authorities said.
Authorities alleged that Leake, from June 2015 to March 2020, solicited more than $8 million from six people by claiming that he was “participating in multiple lucrative business ventures, including subletting luxury real estate properties and real estate investing,” the release said.
The purported ventures Leake lied about also included gold mines in Alaska and Ghana, according to the release.
Authorities said Leake offered people the chance to loan him money to invest in the ventures “in exchange for a high rate of return.”
But Leake knew the investment opportunities didn’t exist, authorities said. Instead, authorities said, Leake “duped” victims by saying he had invested large amounts of his own money into the ventures when he rarely did.
Leake used the victims’ investment money on his own expenses, including credit card debt, car payments, rent and gambling expenses, the release said.
The Internal Revenue Service investigated the case.