CRIME DEVISED BEHIND BARS EARNS MAN ANOTHER 27 YEARS

KANSAS CITY, Kan. – A man who devised and executed a wire fraud scheme while he was an inmate in the United States Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kan., has been sentenced to an additional 27 years behind bars.

Montgomery Carl Akers, 47, formerly of San Francisco, Calif., was sentenced to 327 months in federal prison when he appeared Tuesday before U.S. District Court Judge Kathryn Vratil.

“In the winter of 2000, Mr. Akers began corresponding from the prison with a woman outside the prison. He told her he was a wealthy businessman who had been wrongly convicted and needed her assistance starting a new mortgage brokerage business,” said U.S. Attorney Eric Melgren. “When that scheme was discovered, he was moved to another facility, where he devised and executed yet other fraudulent schemes.”

Akers pleaded guilty in September 2005 to one count of wire fraud. In his plea, he admitted that in early 2000, while he was incarcerated, he directed a woman with whom he was corresponding to obtain software for her computer that would allow her to create checks and to open an account in the name of Phoenix Financial Group at the First Union Bank in Charlotte, N.C. He then directed her to create fraudulent checks as part of a scheme to have unlawfully obtained funds wire transferred to the Phoenix Financial Group’s account.

On June 23, 2004, Akers was indicted on fraud charges involving the Phoenix Financial Group. As a result he was moved to a facility operated by the Corrections Corporation of America in Leavenworth. Beginning in December 2004 while he was being held at CCA he met another inmate named Donald Mixan. Akers devised another fraud scheme and recruited Mixan to assist him. Communicating by mail and telephone, Akers worked with Mixan and Mixan’s girlfriend. At Aker’s direction, Mixan’s girlfriend used computer software to generate two checks a day for two weeks drawn on accounts at Wells Fargo, Bank of America and J.P. Morgan. Akers provided her with account numbers and routing numbers for the checks. Akers then directed her to send the checks via Federal Express to Bank of the West Center Office in Salt Lake City, Utah. None of the checks presented to the various financial institutions as part of the scheme was a legitimate check with sufficient funds to support it.

After Mixan was released from custody, he continued participating in the fraudulent scheme, along with his girlfriend.
Evidence presented to the court showed that even after pleading guilty to the initial fraud, Akers continued his criminal conduct, which included at least three fraudulent schemes. The intended loss to a variety of financial institutions was more than $2 million.

Melgren commended the work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which investigated the case, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Kim Martin, who is prosecuting.

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