{"id":171412,"date":"2026-02-10T05:08:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T05:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/171412\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T05:08:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T05:08:12","slug":"fresno-real-estate-investor-guilty-of-running-9-million-ponzi-scheme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/171412\/","title":{"rendered":"Fresno real estate investor guilty of running $9 million Ponzi scheme\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Fresno real estate investor has pleaded guilty to running a $9 million Ponzi scheme.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday that Matthew Campbell, 43, pleaded guilty in federal court to wire fraud.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Driving the news: Campbell operated Preferred Property LLC and Ampez Rehab Investments LLC since 2012.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He used the companies to buy and sell real estate, build, renovate properties and to solicit investments.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In 2018, Campbell started to conduct a Ponzi scheme by making false representations about the companies\u2019 finances in order to attract new investors. He used new investment money to pay off earlier investors.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Campbell obtained more than $9.1 million in investment money from January 2018 to October 2025. He used nearly $2.3 million of that money to pay off old investors.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>What we\u2019re watching: U.S. District Judge Jennifer Thurston is scheduled to sentence Campbell on May 11.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Fresno real estate investor has pleaded guilty to running a $9 million Ponzi scheme.\u00a0 The U.S. Department&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85768,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":{"0":"post-171412","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fresno","8":"tag-fresno","9":"tag-fresno-headlines","10":"tag-fresno-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}