People v. Montecastro CA4/2

BACKGROUND

1. The circumstances leading to defendant’s conviction

For two years, defendant and his partner ran a Ponzi scheme that stole

approximately $30 million from would-be investors.

A jury convicted defendant of 304 counts involving 27 victims. The counts

covered a wide range of violations such as grant theft by false pretenses, securities fraud,

acting as a broker-dealer, as well as 93 enhancements relating to the taking of property.

In January 2014, the court sentenced him to a total of 81 years and 8 months in prison.

Defendant was also required to pay restitution in the amount of $6,041,800.18 as well as

court operations and facilities assessment fees. Defendant appealed.

On appeal, we agreed with defendant’s claim of insufficient evidence of the sale or

offer to sell a commodity to support seven counts of commodity fraud and reversed the

convictions on those counts. (People v. Montecastro (Oct 7, 2015, E060533) [nonpub.

opn.] pp. 2, 39 (“Montecastro I.).) Those reversals did not affect defendant’s aggregate

sentence but did entitle him to reduction in the court assessments fees, which are

calculated on a per-count basis. (Id., at p. 28.) We also agreed…