A former laundromat owner who turned to fraudulent financial schemes has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for defrauding millions from unsuspecting investors, including friends.

Chris Marco, aged 67, was convicted on 43 counts of fraud after he illegally obtained over $34 million from six individuals. He had falsely promised them lucrative returns from fictitious investment plans.

The sentencing took place in the Supreme Court of Western Australia, where Marco learned he would be eligible for parole after serving 12 years of his 14-year sentence.

In total, Marco collected $253 million from investors over nearly eight years until 2018, returning nearly $200 million before authorities intervened and he declared bankruptcy.

Justice Natalie Whitby pointed out that Marco invested less than five percent of the funds and failed to generate any profits, despite assuring investors of high returns from supposedly exclusive schemes.

“Your actions constituted a severe betrayal of the trust that your victims placed in you, trust that you deliberately cultivated,” Justice Whitby remarked.

“You developed friendships with many of your victims, and your reputation and standing in the community were factors that enabled you to gain their trust.

“Then you defrauded each of them of large sums of money.”

Whitby said he knew what he told his victims was untrue, and he paid returns from their own and other investors’ funds.

This was done to enable him to continue his fraudulent scheme, as was Marco’s claims about future investment opportunities to induce his victims to roll over their funds and remain in the scheme, she said.

He told his victims he was a successful private investor and that through decades of investing, he had developed relationships that enabled him to gain access to risk-free and exclusive private placement programs, Whitby said.

He also claimed to be a high-wealth businessman who had made large sums of money from investing.

In reality, he was an “unremarkable” country boy who owned and operated 16 businesses, including video shops, laundromats and newspaper rounds, before turning his hand to financial services and fraud.

“You spent the money … which you obtained from the victims on repaying victims and other investors, on real estate, cars, collectibles, shares and personal expenditure,” Whitby said.

“You did not receive any returns from any purported investments that were deposited into your bank accounts in the entire period.”

Outside court, Marco’s lawyer, Luka Margaretic, was scathing of the sentence and said his client would appeal against it and his convictions.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in 35 years of practice,” he told reporters.

“After a sentence like that, he’s obviously not doing very well.

“There’s going to be an appeal against sentence as well as conviction.”