Wednesday, May 13, 1998
What ever happened to Richard Garcia of the Agretech fraud case? A large group of us who invested together met with him and were convinced he was on the level. Is he still in prison or out on parole? Ex-senator served
his time for fraudFormer state Sen. Richard Garcia was granted an early termination of his federal parole on April 15, 1996.
At that time, he was living in the Kaneohe area, according to Wayne Wong, senior probation officer for the U.S. District Court in Hawaii. Wong did not know where Garcia is now.
Garcia served four years of an eight-year sentence in federal prisons in Los Angeles, Phoenix and Oregon. He returned to Hawaii on Oct. 4, 1993, and was placed in the Miller Hale halfway house for two months. On Dec. 3, 1993, he was placed under federal parole until granted the early termination 2-1/2 years later.
Garcia was imprisoned for securities fraud and failing to file tax returns. He operated a phony tropical plant company called Agriculture Research & Technology Groups Inc., also known as Agretech. He worked with FP Industries Inc., which sold partnerships in Agretech. The operation deteriorated into a Ponzi scheme, in which money raised by new investors was used to pay earlier investors.
Garcia's company took in possibly as much as $60 million from investors. Of that, $38 million went to pay back early investors; $2.5 million went to Garcia and his family; $5.7 million went to the Plant Jungle, run by Garcia's family; and $400,000 went to buy Garcia's private boat. He was sentenced in May 1989.
At 22, Garcia was the youngest person ever to be voted into office in Hawaii, taking a seat in the Legislature in 1970 and serving for a decade before he went into private business.
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