From a distance, Orange County's Daniel Clyde Hunter III seemed to be a superbly decent person.
Hunter's history includes: successful businessman, church bishop, sports enthusiast, college student body president, loving older brother of nine siblings, contributor to the Southern California Special Olympics as well as beloved husband and father of six good kids.
But, sadly, despite those impressive facts, Hunter was also a greedy criminal, who concocted and then executed a multi-year plot to steal millions of dollars from innocent investors while guaranteeing 30 percent annual returns for his proposed Clearwater Waterpark Development.
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That assertion isn't a guess. After federal agents arrested him in 2013, Hunter eventually admitted the truth. He'd funneled investor funds away from the business project and into his own pocket to bolster his lifestyle.
Nowadays, the defendant asserts he “regrets” his cheating.
Hunter's defense lawyer sought a soft punishment because, he claimed, his 67-year-old client “led an exemplary life” and suffers medical woes.
Assistant United States Attorney Ann Luotto Wolf argued the crimes required a 33-month prison trip in accordance with federal sentencing guidelines.
This week inside the Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse in Santa Ana, U.S. District Court Judge Andrew J. Guilford determined the appropriate punishment is a term of 30 months, $922,500 in restitution and, when the defendant emerges from custody, supervised probation for five years.
Hunter must self-surrender to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons by noon on April 11.
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Email: rs**********@oc******.com. Twitter: @RScottMoxley.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.