Michigan man sentenced to 41 months in prison for timber fraud scheme

(CBS DETROIT) —  A 40-year-old Michigan man will spend more than three years in prison after he orchestrated a multi-year wire fraud scheme to defraud investors. 

A U.S. district court judge sentenced Trent William Witteveen, of Montague, to 41 months in prison on Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a release. 

Between June 2018 and January 2021, Witteveen operated a Ponzi-like scheme involving his timber business, according to court documents cited by the department. During that time, he told investors he secured timber harvesting rights from landowners and promised significant returns if they provided money to pay the landowner for the rights. 

Federal officials say, on most occasions, no current contracts for timber harvesting existed because Witteveen had already harvested timber from the landowner's property at an earlier time. 

To make the contract with the landowner appear genuine to investors, Witteveen would show cashier's checks or money orders payable to the landowners. He would later deposit those funds back into his own bank account, federal officials say.

Witteveen would also purposely inflate the value to timber to get more money from investors. 

After getting money from an investor, Witteveen used it repay all or some of what he owed to prior investors, or repay the same investor with their money to give the appearance he was paying the promised returns. Federal officials say this allowed Witteveen to keep the scheme going. 

Witteveen obtained over $2 million from investors over the span of 31 months and used most of that money to pay for his own personal expenses, according to the department.

In addition to the prison sentence, the judge ordered Witteveen to pay $844,282 in restitution to his victims. 

The 40-year-old operated the business under the names Titan Timber and Titans Timber LLC. 

The FBI investigated this case with help from Michigan State Police.