The founder of business incubator who pleaded guilty to scamming residents of an Alabama city was sentenced Tuesday to more than five years in prison and ordered to return $1.9 million to investors.
Kyle Sandler, 43, opened the Round House in 2014 as a launching pad for new tech companies in the east Alabama town of Opelika, raising about $1.9 million from more than 70 investors. He pleaded guilty last year to fraud.
U.S. Attorney Louis Franklin said Sandler “violated the trust of his investors with lies and deception.”
FILE – This file photo provided by the Brazos County Sheriff’s Office in Bryan, Texas, shows Kyle Sandler after his arrest on June 21, 2018. Sandler, who pleaded guilty to scamming an Alabama town for nearly $2 million is due in federal court to find out how long he will go to prison. A judge scheduled sentencing for 43-year-old Sandler for Tuesday, March 26, 2019, in Montgomery, Ala. (Brazos County Sheriff’s Office via AP, File)“They trusted him with their hard-earned money, and he used it as his personal piggybank,” Franklin said.
Sandler told The Associated Press in a series of telephone interviews from jail that he falsely portrayed himself as a one-time Google executive and acted out of greed. He said he used John McAfee, who developed early internet security software, and Taylor Rosenthal, a teen who had an idea for a new kind of first aid vending machine, to help gain publicity for his operation.