Widowed teacher scammed out of $228,000 for North Carolina solar farm, feds say
A retired teacher and recent widow lost a significant chunk of her income to a renewable energy executive who promised to build a solar farm on property she owned in North Carolina, according to federal court documents.
But he never developed the property, prosecutors said, and he took the money for himself, using the woman as his “personal piggy bank.”.
David Pharr, 46, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison on Thursday after he pleaded guilty to mail fraud last year, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia said in a news release. He was also ordered to pay $228,340 in restitution and serve three years of supervised release.
“This defendant cruelly tricked a vulnerable widow out of her retirement income as a result of his elaborate lies and deception,” U.S. Attorney Raj Parekh said in the release.
Pharr lives in Virginia and was the owner and manager of Global Wind Management, a renewable energy company that purportedly specializes in solar farms, according to a criminal indictment filed in August. A defense attorney representing Pharr declined to comment Thursday.
The alleged fraud dates from March 2014 to May 2018, prosecutors said.
During that time, Pharr is accused of targeting a woman from Bradenton, Florida, who was in her late 70s and had recently lost her husband. The woman — identified in court filings only as “CH” — owned 32 acres in Sampson County, North Carolina, just east of Fayetteville, the indictment states.
Prosecutors said Pharr “took advantage of CH’s vulnerable circumstances,” including her “advanced age, her status as a widow, and her physical location in Florida” when he approached her about building a solar farm on the property.
Under the terms of the deal, Pharr reportedly promised to develop the property and pay the woman a portion of the money earned from selling the energy. The up-front investment was $62,500, prosecutors said.
In return, CH was assured at least $17,500 from the profits per year for the next 15 years, the indictment states.
Pharr kept the alleged scheme going by first claiming he needed more money up front to cover the cost of installation, prosecutors said. He later told the woman “local residents” had vandalized the property and he needed funds to cover the cost of damages, security cameras, an insurance claim and litigation.
According to the indictment, Pharr is also accused of faking a conference call with someone from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help “convince her of the legitimacy of her investment in the solar farm.”
He even met with the woman and her son in Virginia at one point to provide her with an “update” and show her two checks he claimed to have written relating to project expenses, the indictment states.
In total, the woman reportedly sent Pharr more than $228,000. But Pharr never installed the solar farm or provided the woman with a return on her investment.
“After losing all of her retirement income for a four-year period to the defendant, CH must now live under extremely modest means,” prosecutors said in a bid for a lengthier prison sentence. “In order to make ends meet under her new financial circumstances, CH drives a vehicle that is over two decades old and frequently eats peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”
Prosecutors requested a federal judge sentence Pharr at the top end of the recommended guidelines, saying his alleged crime “was not an aberration or uncharacteristic lapse of judgment, but rather a textbook example of the way he lived his life.”
But a defense attorney representing Pharr requested a sentence of three years’ probation and 30 months of home detention with electronic monitoring.
“Mr. Pharr presents an objectively low risk to re-offend based upon almost every possible applicable factor, including his age, his good mental health, his lack of history of substance abuse, his positive family relationships and his stable housing,” his attorney wrote in court filings.
The judge settled ultimately required Pharr serve some time in federal prison but at the low end of the recommended guidelines.
This story was originally published March 18, 2021 at 3:44 PM with the headline "Widowed teacher scammed out of $228,000 for North Carolina solar farm, feds say."
