An Arizona man, Robert Aguayo, was sentenced to five years in prison for stealing approximately $4.75 million in an oil investment scam. His victim investors were from Arizona, California, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Texas.
According to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, Aguayo operated a business called IGot Oil Co, LLC, which claimed to offer investment opportunities for oil wells in Oklahoma. Aguayo solicited investments from 48 individuals totaling $4.75 million between January 2016 to February 2018. The State alleged that the oil wells in Oklahoma were not in production or were not producing oil as Aguayo had represented to the investors.
The investigation conducted by the Attorney General’s Office and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) revealed that Aguayo used new investor money to pay earlier investors.
Aguayo, age 41, was sentenced to five years in the Arizona Department of Corrections, to be followed by a seven-year term of supervised probation.