Florida Man Sentenced for $100M Surety Bond Fraud Scheme

ATLANTA – Eric Campbell, a 57-year-old man from Orange Park, Florida, has been sentenced to four years, nine months in prison for operating a multi-million dollar surety bond fraud scheme. Campbell’s scheme caused financial losses, construction delays, and compromised bids resulting in some contracts being awarded to unqualified construction companies.

According to Acting U.S. Attorney John Horn, Campbell used several corporations to sell fraudulent surety bonds on construction projects from August 2012 until July 2013. Surety bonds are three-party bonding agreements in construction projects where a surety company assures the project owner that a contractor will perform a construction contract.

Campbell caused fraudulent surety bonds to be submitted to various government agencies and construction projects across the country, including DeKalb County, Georgia; the U.S. Veterans Administration; Palo Alto, California; the Commonwealth of Kentucky; American Samoa; the Army Corps of Engineers; Nogales, Arizona; and several United States military bases.

To perpetuate the scheme, Campbell created fraudulent surety bonds, embossed the bonds using a counterfeit seal, and forged the signatures of Chubb group officials. Campbell and his associates issued bonds with a face value of more than $100 million and received premium payments of more than $2.2 million during the course of the fraud.

The scheme caused delays in several construction projects and compromised the construction bidding process because contracts were sometimes awarded to unqualified construction companies. Campbell was convicted on this charge on October 20, 2014, after he pleaded guilty.

U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Thrash, Jr., sentenced Campbell to four years, nine months in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered him to pay restitution in the amount of $1,904,376.67. The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Brown prosecuted the case.

According to the authorities, Campbell’s scheme was costly in many ways to those doing business with him, and the sentencing of Campbell will send a clear message to others that these types of criminal schemes to defraud are destined to fail and those involved will be held accountable.

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