A jury of six people found former Olympus Pools owner and New Tampa resident James Staten guilty on 35 of 36 counts of willingly defrauding customers by accepting money from them knowing he would not fulfill the contracts to build their pools.
Staten, who opened Olympus Pools in 2013, will be sentenced by Circuit Judge Mary Handsel on May 7 and the minimum sentence he can receive is 20 years, but Judge Handsel said that, based on sentencing guidelines, she can sentence Staten to up to 285 years in prison.
Among the felony charges Staten was found guilty of are fraud, misapplication of construction funds of more than $100,000, having an organized scheme to defraud and aggravated white-collar crime. The only charge he was not convicted of was one of the grand theft charges.
Investigators said that Staten, who did take the stand in his own defense on the last of ten days of testimony in the trial, stole more than $1.5 million of his clientsâ money to fund a lavish lifestyle that included multiple trips, jewelry and Super Bowl tickets.
Prosecutors Stephanie Bergen and Panagiota Papakos of Florida Attorney General James Uthmeierâs office told the jury that Staten continued to instruct his sales people to accept large down payments from customers even though he had no intention of building their pools. Dozens of those customers were left with holes in the ground on their respective properties and many had no work started at all.
The jurors were apparently unimpressed with defense attorney Dino Michaelsâ argument that Staten didnât intend to defraud his customers: âIf you have a business plan, thatâs just not a scheme to defraud. Itâs a business plan. To sell more pools, unfortunately, is a bad business plan. And so, this company failed.â It took only four hours for the jury to reach their verdict on all 36 counts, with 35 of those coming back as âguiltyâ verdicts.
According to a press release dated March 17, Uthmeier previously âtook civil action to shut down Olympus Pools, permanently shuttering the company. As a result of the civil action, [Olympus] is enjoined permanently from conducting business, and Staten is banned for life from operating a pool company in Florida.â
Obviously, Staten, 42, is facing a much more stringent penalty now, as he could spend the rest of his life in prison, depending upon how long Judge Handsel decides to sentence him to serve on May 7. â GN