Idaho’s largest-ever fraud case ends with jail
Four Idaho men were ordered to jail and to immediately pay back millions of dollars after a hearing in U.S. District Court in Boise.
United States Magistrate Judge Candy W. Dale ordered Douglas Swenson, Mark Ellison, Jeremy Swenson and David Swenson to be immediately detained and assigned to federal correctional facilities after a hearing Tuesday morning.
The judge ruled that the former executives of Diversified Business Services and Investments, Inc.(DBSI) of Meridian, had exhausted their appellate rights, that the Bail Reform Act no longer applied, and that the interests of justice would not be served by their continued release.
A 45-day trial for the men ended on April 14, 2014, when a federal jury found the four men guilty on 44 counts of securities fraud. The jury also found Douglas Swenson guilty of 34 counts of wire fraud.
In August of 2014, Judge B. Lynn Winmill sentenced Douglas Swenson to 20 years in prison and ordered him to pay $180,632,025 in restitution. Mark Ellison, Jeremy Swenson, and David Swenson were each ordered to spend 3 years in prison and pay $32,158,501 in restitution. It was the largest fraud case in the history of the District of Idaho.
In 2014, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the defendants to remain released from prison pending their appeal. The U.S. Supreme Court denied their petition for a writ of certiorari, ending their appeal, on June 25, 2018.
United States Attorney for the District of Idaho Bart M. Davis stated, “We are gratified by Judge Dale’s decision to immediately detain the DBSI Defendants, pending their designation to the Bureau of Prisons facilities that will house them for the terms of their incarceration. After four years of freedom and pursuit of their appeal all the way to the United States Supreme Court, that appeal is now over and there was no basis in law for the DBSI Defendants to remain released. We hope that the incarceration of the DBSI Defendants provides the victims of their crimes some degree of closure, and that restitution payments by the Defendants to the victims may now commence.”
