Energy

Solar Power Ponzi Couple Pleads Guilty In Billion-Dollar Fraud


The masterminds of a billion-dollar solar panel Ponzi scheme pled guilty on Friday to wire fraud and money laundering. Jeff Carpoff, 49, and Paulette Carpoff, 46, founders of DC Solar, face 15 years in prison for defrauding dozens of investors, including Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. 

Their scam, the “biggest criminal fraud scheme” ever seen in the U.S. Eastern District of California, involved manufacturing and leasing portable solar-powered lighting and communications towers, for sporting events. The Carpoffs, between 2011 and 2018, attracted billions of investments from financiers with the promise of juicy federal investment tax credits. 

But although DC claimed to have built 17,000 of these solar systems, only 6,000 existed. Using what investigators claims was “smoke and mirrors,” they sold the same equipment again and again to new buyers, reportedly scraping old VIN stickers and replacing them with new ones. 

Because DC couldn’t lease out equipment that didn’t actually exist, the Carpoffs paid proceeds to old investors from new investor cash. Progressive Insurance Co., East West Bancorp and Valley National Bancorp were all victims. Berkshire Hathaway took a $377 million charge tied to DC Solar to reverse the value of tax credits it had claimed against assets that turned out not to have been real. 

The couple enjoyed the Ponzi life while it lasted. A federal investigation turned up cars, jets, real estate and jewels. An auction of the Carpoffs’ collection of more than 140 cars fetched $8.3 million. The highlights included a 1969 Plymouth Road Runner and a 1978 Pontiac Trans-Am once owned by Burt Reynolds. 

The Carpoffs owned a semipro baseball team, stake in a Napa Valley winery, the Seagrape Villa at the Four Seasons Resort of St. Kitts, for which they paid $5.375 million cash. And they hired Pitbull for a holiday party

The Carpoffs’ biggest unsecured creditor is racing driver Chip Ganassi, whose Nascar team is owed $4.3 million by onetime sponsor DC Solar. 

More than 700 of DC’s mobile solar units were auctioned off last year. The federal investigation has so far seized $120 million in assets and returned $500 million to the U.S. Treasury. Sentencing is in May.



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