Oxford attorney Tyler Smith sentenced to 51 months in prison for fraud
Published 5:09 pm Monday, October 24, 2016
An Oxford attorney will spend more than four years in prison for scamming lenders to provide loans on false representations.
Tyler Smith, 47, was indicted in January on wire fraud charges by a grand jury and in June, he pleaded guilty to devising a scheme to defraud and to obtain money by means of false and fraudulent pretenses, representations and promises.
He was sentenced Monday at the U.S. Federal Court in Oxford by Senior Judge Neal B. Biggers to serve 51 months in prison and three years of supervised probation after his release. He must report to the Federal Bureau of Prisons on Dec. 15 to start his sentence.
He was also sentenced to pay restitution in the amount of $1,573,351.
According to court records, Smith would get wealthy lenders to lend him money by claiming to have cash coming in from BP claims resulting from the 2010 oil spill, when in fact, those claims did not exist.
He managed to receive almost $700,000 from five different lenders and then he failed to repay the loans.