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Investors in a proposed Midvale luxury hotel and golf course that never materialized took more than a monetary hit.
Along with losing almost $4 million, the 32 victims saw their reputations stained and their careers derailed.
One woman invested her graduate school money into Angelo Degenhardt's enterprise, losing the opportunity to become a physical therapist. A builder saw his reputation in the construction industry decline. A golf professional who left a good job to help construct the resort - and put $120,000 of his own money into the project - never found comparable employment after Degenhardt allegedly squandered the investments.
"Their lives have been wrecked," Mark Hirata, an assistant U.S. attorney, said Friday at Degenhardt's sentencing on one count of securities fraud.
But despite the destruction, he said, the best resolution that could be arranged was a plea bargain calling for six months of home confinement and restitution of $3,840,500. Hirata said problems with evidence in the case and the desire to have Degenhardt working to pay back his victims prompted the deal.
The prosecutor acknowledged that the victims are outraged. However, he said, "That is justice as best as it can get under the circumstances."
U.S. District Judge Paul Cassell agreed and meted out the sentence.
The judge tacked five years of probation at the end of the home confinement and warned that "if I find he's hiding so much as a dollar from the victims," he would send Degenhardt to prison.
The judge ordered Degenhardt, who now lives in San Francisco, to begin making restitution payments of $500 a month beginning Jan. 1. He refused to allow a delay until the defendant recovers from back surgery scheduled for Monday.
Cassell suggested that Degenhardt come up with the restitution payments by taking the bus so he can get rid of an $800 a month car loan, canceling his $100 a month cable television agreement and getting rid of his $150 a month cell phone.
"I'm really sorry about this," Degenhardt said. "I lost my shirt, too. I lost my house. I lost everything."
Degenhardt, whose ventures included Ganter USA, a company that held a license from a German beer maker to brew and distribute its products in the United States, was indicted in 2003 on mail and securities fraud charges.
Prosecutors say he claimed he was acquiring or developing golf course projects, as well as a development that would include a convention center, hotel and 18-hole golf course on a Superfund site in Midvale.
Instead, Degenhardt allegedly used the money for personal expenses and public relations and falsely claimed that investors could get refunds under certain conditions.
Kent Danjanovich, who had been a club professional at a golf course in the St. George area for years, said Degenhardt's actions ruined his career. His construction company had been given the go-ahead to cap the Midvale Superfund site with dirt in preparation for a golf course when the job was canceled in favor of Degenhardt's resort project, Danjanovich said.
Trying to save what he had already invested in the site, Danjanovich quit his club job and joined with Degenhardt. In the end, he said, the site was never developed.
"It not only hurt from the investment side, it hurt from the professional side," Danjanovich said.