Two Crawford County residents who mailed out more than a million work-from-home solicitation letters were convicted Thursday of bilking more than $3.2 million from more than 21,000 victims.
After a four-day trial before U.S. District Judge P.K. Holmes III, a jury in Fort Smith returned guilty verdicts against Sharon Jeannette Henningsen and Timothy Shawn Donavan on all 18 counts of mail fraud and a single count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud.
Henningsen, 67, and Donavan, 63, both of Rudy, face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 on each count, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas.
"The Defendants in this case bilked thousands of victims out of millions of dollars, including people who thought they were participating in a legitimate business in order to earn money for their children’s college tuition, for personal retirement, or for medical bills," U.S. Attorney Conner Eldridge said in a news release. "In fact, they were victims in the Defendants’ fraudulent enterprise that was designed to generate profits for their own personal greed."
Henningsen and Donavan were originally indicted on 15 counts by a federal grand jury in Fort Smith in February 2011. But that indicted was replaced with the 19-count indictment in January.
According to Eldridge, evidence in the trial showed that Henningsen and Donavan persuaded more than 21,000 people to pay between $59 and $149 each for materials that were supposed to allow them to earn up to $5,000 a week by stuffing envelopes at home. Thirteen of 18 victims identified by initial in the ultimate indictment were from Arkansas, but other were from as far away as Mesa, Ariz., and Gloucester, Mass.