Chicago Man Sentenced For Defrauding Northern NY Company

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) — The head of a Chicago investment firm has been sentenced to 57 months in prison for conspiring to defraud a northern New York company out of $2.5 million.

Debashis Ghosh also was ordered at his sentencing Monday in federal court in Syracuse to serve three years of supervised release.

The 54-year-old Ghosh and 58-year-old Keith Eric Jergensen of Salt Lake City, Utah, were convicted in October of wire fraud. The two were co-chief executive officers of Verdant Capital Group, which was hired by Plattsburgh-based Laurentian Aerospace Corp. to raise funds for construction of an airplane maintenance facility at the former Air Force base in Plattsburgh.

Prosecutors said Jergensen and Ghosh asked Laurentian Aerospace to invest $2.5 million as seed money for the project, then spent it on their company's expenses.