Tech billionaire gets 9 years in prison for fraud
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) _ A one time dot-com billionaire from Las Vegas has been sentenced to nine years in prison for defrauding investors in his software company in 2001.
Prosecutors had sought a much longer sentence for Charles “Junior” Johnson, founder and CEO of the now-defunct PurchasePro.
Johnson was the ringleader of a scheme to falsely inflate PurchasePro’s revenue in the first three months of 2001, as the high-tech economy was in freefall.
Seven people were convicted in the long-running investigation, which also exposed improper accounting practices at America Online, which had been PurchasePro’s business partner.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
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