Robert Christensen and Anthony Mattick spent investors’ money on casino trips, whiskey clubs, massages and cryotherapy.
Robert Christensen, a real estate investment advisor, mortgage loan officer and loan originator, and Anthony Mattick, a real estate agent, both of Portland, Oregon, were sentenced to prison for their roles in a Ponzi scheme that defrauded commercial lenders of more than $7 million and retail investors of more than $10 million.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon, the pair told investors they intended to use the funds to “purchase and renovate undervalued residential properties” and then rent them out to “refinance the properties to generate income and extract the increased value of the renovations.”
Investors were promised to repay their initial investment and pay 8% to 15% interest over a short period of 30 to 90 days.
When they were unable to pay early investors as promised, they used new investments to keep the business solvent. Unable to raise funds from new investors, they began “submitting loan applications containing false financial information to various commercial lenders and obtaining millions of dollars in loans based on those false statements.”
Christensen and Matic used investor funds to pay for “at least one vacation, gifts, casino trips, massages, personal expenses, whiskey club memberships, and cryotherapy,” according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
Christensen and Matic each pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Christensen pleaded guilty to additional charges of money laundering. Christensen was sentenced to 63 months in federal prison and Matic was sentenced to 33 months. The men were previously ordered to pay $5,374,482 and a $200,000 fine each in a separate SEC civil case in 2023.
Victim impact reports published by Realtor.com show the scale of the fraud, with investors saying they “live in fear of their financial future every day” and “will never be able to retire.”
One victim, identified only by her initials DP, said that after her husband’s death, Christensen, a personal friend of hers, contacted her and told her she could “double your money” if she invested with him. Her savings were then “stripped away”, resulting in “countless sleepless nights, depression and anxiety over the last few years”.
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