An Ohio man who defrauded investors of $2.5 million by posing as a multimillion-dollar lottery winner has been sentenced to 13 years in federal prison.
Stephan Kuljko Jr., 61, of Stow, Ohio, conducted the scam over a period of more than 10 years and used the fruits of his fraud to hoard luxury cars, with a Porsche, Jaguar, Hummer and several Corvettes among his illicit collection, prosecutors said.
He was sentenced yesterday by a U.S. District Court judge in Boston after a jury, at the conclusion of a two-week trial, found him guilty in August of wire fraud and obstruction of justice charges, according to a press release by the U.S. Attorney's Office in the District of Massachusetts.
Kuljko defrauded 40 investors from 2006 to 2017 by telling them he won millions in the Ohio lottery and then made millions more by investing in a Texas oil business and casinos, prosecutors said.
"Kuljko solicited money from people by telling them that his vast fortune had been frozen in a bank account because of problems with the IRS, and that he needed money to pay for lawyers and to travel around the world to try to free up those funds," the press release said.
Investors were promised huge returns for assisting Kuljko, in some cases more than a million dollars for investments of tens of thousands of dollars, prosecutors said.
The scheme also involved Kuljko soliciting money for what he described as an extremely valuable, large uncut emerald.
But all of the so-called investments, as well as the story about the IRS tying up his funds, were completely false, prosecutors said.
"Kuljko instead worked out of his home, buying and selling things like used snowblowers and rototillers," the press release said.
Kuljko was also sentenced to three years of supervised release after he's released from prison and ordered to pay $2,772,160 in restitution.