That has heads turning is the prison sentence Rick Dryer received from a judge following his conviction on 44 felony counts of theft, securities fraud, conspiracy and racketeering: 132 years. That’s right: one hundred thirty-two years

The name Frederic “Rick” Dryer’s has not made headlines like Bernard Madoff and Robert Allan Stanford. And his Ponzi scheme, upwards of $34 million from 1,250 investors, is certainly small potatoes compared to the billions that Madoff and Stanford are reported to have fleeced their investors. But what has heads turning is the prison sentence Rick Dryer received from a judge following his conviction on 44 felony counts of theft, securities fraud, conspiracy and racketeering: 132 years. That’s right: one hundred thirty-two years, that’s what Denver District Court Judge Anne Mansfield imposed on Dryer.
Dryer was the founder of Mile High Capital Group. His pitch to investors was that his firm would make money by investing in residential duplexes, conducting real estate investing seminars in Colorado and other states. His prior felonies were for bank robbery in 1971 and two other securities fraud cases in the 1980s. Because of that, he was not eligible for a sentence of probation.

Dryer failed to inform his investors that he had been twice convicted of felonies and that he was in reality using their money to pay earlier investors. The investors ranged from blue-collar workers, Chinese immigrants, flight attendants and attorneys and were recruited from presentations held a fancy hotels across the U.S. Predictably, some of those investors have lost their life’s savings, suffered marital problems, lost their homes and had to file bankruptcy. This was the group that received the judge’s concern as she meted out Dryer’s sentence.

In exchange for testifying against him, co-defendant Richard Darrow was sentenced to two years in the Denver County Jail, 10 years of probation and must make $1.15 million in restitution. Fellow squealer Jeffrey Dietz was sentenced to 2 years probation and order to make restitution of $990,406. Dryer himself was ordered to pay his victims $3.43 million in restitution.