BOISE, Idaho (AP) - A jet-boat maker has agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud and bank fraud.
The plea agreement filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Boise came just weeks before Christopher Bohnenkamp’s trial was set to begin on charges he took millions of dollars from customers but never delivered their boats, The Idaho Statesman reported (https://bit.ly/2p7rM1N).
The charges stem from Bohnenkamp’s Whitewater Customs and Treasure Valley Marine, authorities said. Bohnenkamp closed the shop in Boise before moving to Youngstown, New York, in 2015.
Bohnenkamp in October 2016 denied 21 counts of wire fraud totaling about $1.7 million and six counts of bank fraud totaling more than $1 million. Prosecutors said he used the money for a lavish lifestyle and gambling trips.
According to the plea agreement, Bohnenkamp came up with the scheme in 2014 to get the money and property from customers and suppliers “by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations and promises, and to misappropriate” that money and property.
Prosecutors also planned to show that Bohnenkamp intended to bleed money from the jet-boat company until it was broke.
Dismayed customers who said they would sue, prosecutors said, were told by Bohnenkamp that he’d “give those customers who sued him ’nothing,’ while rewarding those who did not sue him with a completed boat.”
Bohnenkamp is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday.
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Information from: Idaho Statesman, https://www.idahostatesman.com
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