Basalt resident Ron Wallace, 68, was sentenced April 25. (Courtesy X)
On Friday afternoon, the convicted fraudster Ron Wallace remained seated for his remarks.
“Your honor, I am very, very sorry for what I did, and I take full responsibility, 100%. It falls on my shoulders,” he told U.S. District Judge Philip Brimmer in downtown Denver.
Wallace, a repeat offender who is 68 and whose health is ailing, then asked for a sentence of house arrest.
“I believe that I more than likely will not survive if I go to prison,” said Wallace, who suffers from several medical conditions. “I sincerely just know from being there before that the likelihood is very small I would survive. I hope that you please consider this. Thank you very much, your honor.”
In the early 2000s, Wallace sold European wine futures — ownership of a wine before it is bottled — to prominent businessmen and athletes. When he didn’t deliver the wine and made Ponzi payments instead, he was convicted of fraud and money laundering and ordered to pay $11 million in 2007. He initially avoided prison time because of his severe Crohn’s disease.
Wallace, of Basalt, had only paid $127,000 by 2012, when he violated his probation and was sentenced to 63 months in federal prison. But by 2017, he was back to defrauding people, this time investors in a CBD company. Three of them lost $313,000 to his scheme. Wallace also defrauded the Paycheck Protection Program out of $233,000, he admits now.
“Without Mr. Wallace’s medical issues, this would be a fairly straightforward sentencing, characterized by Mr. Wallace committing a new fraud crime, which is inexcusable and terrible. To be back here again is hard to believe,” Brimmer said at Friday’s hearing.
U.S. District Judge Philip Brimmer (Denver Post file)
“There is a degree of callousness and heartlessness that would make this sentencing easy — really easy — but we have this complication,” he said while peering at the defendant.
Wallace and his attorney, Ron Gainor, spoke bleakly about how the U.S. Bureau of Prisons would fatally fail to manage Wallace’s extensive medical problems, which cost $500,000 per year to treat, according to Gainor. The defense attorney repeatedly said, “We are playing with a man’s life” and “we are playing with fire” by possibly sending his client to prison.
“Regardless of one’s political beliefs, we live in an era of understaffing that existed before DOGE cuts, and then you have DOGE on top of it,” Gainor said of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency. (Brimmer, 66, is a Republican appointee.)
“Being on house arrest for two or three years is by no means a cakewalk; it is serious,” Gainor said. “It will be in addition to daily medical concerns that he will have to go through.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim Neff asked Brimmer to send Wallace to prison for two years.
“We’re playing with fire? The fire here was lit by the defendant,” the prosecutor told the judge. “He committed the crime; he did the offense that puts him in this predicament.”
Allowing Wallace to avoid prison in 2025, 18 years after he was allowed to avoid prison for the wine fraud in 2007, “would undermine” efforts to deter white-collar crime, Neff said.
“The defendant talks about his character. Well, he was ordered to pay $11 million in restitution, and he only paid $100,000 back. I would bet a lot of victims from that first case didn’t feel like that was a great show of character, paying them pennies on the dollar,” he said.
After some consideration, Brimmer sided with Neff. He noted that the Bureau of Prisons has a long list of geriatric and otherwise ill inmates that it cares for day in and day out.
“It’s not ideal, it’s not the Mayo Clinic,” the judge conceded. “At the same time, the Bureau of Prisons does a pretty good job of treating all sorts of different conditions.”
With that, he sentenced Wallace to two years in prison for wire fraud and bank fraud, three years of probation, and $546,000 in restitution. Wallace has until August to report. Brimmer will ask the Bureau of Prisons to place him in a medical center, but that decision rests with the bureau.
Wallace’s wife, Stace Wallace, was sentenced to probation Friday for failing to file tax returns for the couple’s CBD companies. When her husband was sentenced, Stace Wallace put her head in her hands and then sat with her face straight down atop the defense table.
Basalt resident Ron Wallace, 68, was sentenced April 25. (Courtesy X)
On Friday afternoon, the convicted fraudster Ron Wallace remained seated for his remarks.
“Your honor, I am very, very sorry for what I did, and I take full responsibility, 100%. It falls on my shoulders,” he told U.S. District Judge Philip Brimmer in downtown Denver.
Wallace, a repeat offender who is 68 and whose health is ailing, then asked for a sentence of house arrest.
“I believe that I more than likely will not survive if I go to prison,” said Wallace, who suffers from several medical conditions. “I sincerely just know from being there before that the likelihood is very small I would survive. I hope that you please consider this. Thank you very much, your honor.”
In the early 2000s, Wallace sold European wine futures — ownership of a wine before it is bottled — to prominent businessmen and athletes. When he didn’t deliver the wine and made Ponzi payments instead, he was convicted of fraud and money laundering and ordered to pay $11 million in 2007. He initially avoided prison time because of his severe Crohn’s disease.
Wallace, of Basalt, had only paid $127,000 by 2012, when he violated his probation and was sentenced to 63 months in federal prison. But by 2017, he was back to defrauding people, this time investors in a CBD company. Three of them lost $313,000 to his scheme. Wallace also defrauded the Paycheck Protection Program out of $233,000, he admits now.
“Without Mr. Wallace’s medical issues, this would be a fairly straightforward sentencing, characterized by Mr. Wallace committing a new fraud crime, which is inexcusable and terrible. To be back here again is hard to believe,” Brimmer said at Friday’s hearing.
U.S. District Judge Philip Brimmer (Denver Post file)
“There is a degree of callousness and heartlessness that would make this sentencing easy — really easy — but we have this complication,” he said while peering at the defendant.
Wallace and his attorney, Ron Gainor, spoke bleakly about how the U.S. Bureau of Prisons would fatally fail to manage Wallace’s extensive medical problems, which cost $500,000 per year to treat, according to Gainor. The defense attorney repeatedly said, “We are playing with a man’s life” and “we are playing with fire” by possibly sending his client to prison.
“Regardless of one’s political beliefs, we live in an era of understaffing that existed before DOGE cuts, and then you have DOGE on top of it,” Gainor said of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency. (Brimmer, 66, is a Republican appointee.)
“Being on house arrest for two or three years is by no means a cakewalk; it is serious,” Gainor said. “It will be in addition to daily medical concerns that he will have to go through.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim Neff asked Brimmer to send Wallace to prison for two years.
“We’re playing with fire? The fire here was lit by the defendant,” the prosecutor told the judge. “He committed the crime; he did the offense that puts him in this predicament.”
Allowing Wallace to avoid prison in 2025, 18 years after he was allowed to avoid prison for the wine fraud in 2007, “would undermine” efforts to deter white-collar crime, Neff said.
“The defendant talks about his character. Well, he was ordered to pay $11 million in restitution, and he only paid $100,000 back. I would bet a lot of victims from that first case didn’t feel like that was a great show of character, paying them pennies on the dollar,” he said.
After some consideration, Brimmer sided with Neff. He noted that the Bureau of Prisons has a long list of geriatric and otherwise ill inmates that it cares for day in and day out.
“It’s not ideal, it’s not the Mayo Clinic,” the judge conceded. “At the same time, the Bureau of Prisons does a pretty good job of treating all sorts of different conditions.”
With that, he sentenced Wallace to two years in prison for wire fraud and bank fraud, three years of probation, and $546,000 in restitution. Wallace has until August to report. Brimmer will ask the Bureau of Prisons to place him in a medical center, but that decision rests with the bureau.
Wallace’s wife, Stace Wallace, was sentenced to probation Friday for failing to file tax returns for the couple’s CBD companies. When her husband was sentenced, Stace Wallace put her head in her hands and then sat with her face straight down atop the defense table.
