Robert Allen Pooley, Wire Fraud and Aggravated Identity Theft, California 2024

Robert Allen Pooley, a 49-year-old skydiving instructor from Acampo, California, has been found guilty of running unauthorized tandem skydiving instructor courses, committing wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in the process.

A federal jury delivered the verdict after a seven-day trial in Sacramento, California, according to U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert. Pooley had been conducting training courses for candidates seeking to obtain their USPA Tandem Instructor ratings and/or their certifications to use UPT tandem parachute systems.

Pooley obtained ratings as a “tandem examiner” with the U.S. Parachute Association (USPA) and with Uninsured United Parachute Technologies LLC (UPT) in 2010, but began conducting unauthorized training courses in 2015 after his ratings were suspended. He falsely told students that he was a tandem examiner, led them to believe they could obtain USPA and UPT tandem ratings through his courses, and concealed his suspensions from tandem instructor candidates.

As part of the scheme, Pooley used a digital image of the signature of another properly rated USPA and UPT tandem examiner to sign off on training that Pooley himself had conducted. He accepted numerous students from around the world, including the Republic of Korea, Chile, and Mexico, and charged each student approximately $1,100 for these courses.

On August 6, 2016, one of Pooley’s students fell to his death in a tandem skydiving accident with a customer who also perished. After those deaths, numerous victims of Pooley’s scheme asked for their money back, but he did not repay them, and several students had to pay for entirely new tandem instructor courses at other locations.

Pooley is scheduled to be sentenced on August 26, 2024, by U.S. District Judge William B. Shubb. He faces a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each count of wire fraud and a mandatory two-year sentence for aggravated identity theft. The actual sentence will be determined at the discretion of the court after consideration of any applicable statutory factors and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.

The investigation was led by the Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Katherine T. Lydon and Dhruv M. Sharma are prosecuting the case.