A member of one of Minnesota's most prominent horse-racing families has received a prison term topping four years after admitting he ran a Ponzi scheme that bilked millions of dollars from dozens of investors.
Jason D. Bullard, 59, of Shakopee, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis after pleading guilty to wire fraud in connection with the scheme that cheated investors out of more than $3 million from 2014 to 2021.
Judge Katherine Menendez's sentence of 4 1⁄4 years in prison includes an order that Bullard repay what he stole from his victims.
In a court filing before the sentencing, prosecutors had argued for Bullard to receive a five-year prison term.
Many of the investors, some of them Bullard's friends, "suffered life-altering consequences," the filing read, "from the loss of a child's educational savings, delaying or foregoing a planned home purchase [to] one of the people who trusted Bullard to resorting to selling personal property in order to heat their house."
The defense, seeking a much lighter sentence, argued that Bullard has already been seriously punished by "media articles eviscerating him over his misconduct" along with the consequences of being a convicted felon and the order that he make restitution.
Shortly before the scheme came to an end, the federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Bullard and his wife, 51-year-old Angela Romero-Bullard, alleging their fraudulent investment business operated from 2007 to 2021 and bilked investors out of $18 million.
According to the SEC suit, the Bullards told investors they could earn 10% to 12% annually by investing in two family-controlled funds used to trade foreign currencies. However, the SEC said, Jason Bullard had "not traded foreign currencies with investor funds since approximately 2015."
