A 66-year old former owner of a lighting fixtures company will spend 3.5 years in prison for stealing participant deferrals to fund country club dues, business expenses, and his daughter’s tuition.
Acting U.S. Attorney Gregory Brooker said Wallace David Gregerson was sentenced to 42 months in prison for embezzling more than $755,000 from his employees’ pension plans.
According to his guilty plea and documents filed in court, Gregerson was the president and sole owner of Lighting Affiliates, a Minnesota corporation that sold lighting fixtures and related products.
He used his position to withdraw funds from the plan and deposit those funds into Lighting Affiliates’ bank accounts.
In 26 separate transactions over the course of two years between February 2011 and July 2013, Gregerson drained approximately $675,233.55 from the profit-sharing portion of the plan. In August 2014, Lighting Affiliates closed.
Following the closure, between December 2014 and March 2015, he drained his former employees’ individual 401k accounts by withdrawing a total of approximately $80,667.23.
He further persuaded the financial institutions holding the plan’s assets to provide him with funds “by making false representations.”
Gregerson provided written statements falsely affirming that the funds would be re-invested in another qualified plan or that the withdrawals were made at employee requests.
According to his guilty plea and documents filed in court, he used the majority of the funds to either pay for Lighting Affiliates’ expenses or for personal expenses such as country club membership dues, tickets for sporting events, clothing purchases, and tuition payments for his daughter.
Assistant United States Attorney Kimberly A. Svendsen prosecuted the case and was the result of an investigation conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor Employee Benefits Security Administration and the U.S. Department of Labor Office of the Inspector General.
With more than 20 years serving financial markets, John Sullivan is the former editor-in-chief of Investment Advisor magazine and retirement editor of ThinkAdvisor.com. Sullivan is also the former editor of Boomer Market Advisor and Bank Advisor magazines, and has a background in the insurance and investment industries in addition to his journalism roots.
