Trio sentenced in possibly the biggest Ponzi scheme in Georgia history

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A Florida man will spend 20 years in federal prison after pleading guilty in connection with a Ponzi scheme that bilked more than 2,000 investors out of about $380 million.

U.S. District Judge Tiffany R. Johnson sentenced Todd Burkhalter, 55, to the maximum allowed in federal court in Atlanta on Friday after he pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in January.

Two of his associates had already been sentenced in connection with the scam, which Marlo Graham, the special agent in charge of the FBI in Atlanta, described as likely the largest Ponzi scheme in Georgia history.

Burkhalter, who is from St. Petersburg, Fla., founded and led a Georgia-based financial advisory group called Drive Planning LLC.

He and his associates used the firm to defraud investors between September 2020 and June 2024, according to a federal charging document filed in January.

“Burkhalter operated a massive Ponzi scheme in which investor funds were being used to finance a luxury lifestyle, pay off other Drive Planning investors, and make commission payments to Drive Planning’s agents,” said the document, a criminal information filed on Jan. 21 that accused Burkhalter of one count of wire fraud.

Drive Planning offered two investment vehicles purportedly backed by wholly owned real estate. The firm claimed that the plans used investor money to make secured loans to developers, with promises of substantial returns.

The biggest such vehicle, the Real Estate Acceleration Loan, promised quarterly returns of 10%, according to the federal court filing.

The firm had loaned less than $2 million to one well-known developer and then leveraged that to tell investors it had an enduring relationship with the developer, the charging document says.

Upon discovering this, the developer, who is not identified, sent a cease-and-desist letter to Drive Planning in June 2023 and then sued two months later.

Burkhalter and his firm failed to disclose this to investors. Instead, they used money from one investor to pay off the next, encouraging people to deplete their children’s college funds, take early retirement account distributions and borrow money at high interest rates to invest in Drive Planning, Theodore S. Hertzberg, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, said in a statement Friday.

“Todd Burkhalter lured investors to send millions of dollars to Drive Planning for investments that he knew didn’t actually exist,” Hertzberg said.

The act that landed Burkhalter in prison was clicking send on an email on Nov. 28, 2022.

The wire fraud charge involved a message from Burkhalter to the owner of a Maryland-based financial services company in which Burkhalter mischaracterized his firm’s relationship with that developer, claiming that there existed “wholly owned real estate which serves as a collateral.”

Before he was caught, Burkhalter skimmed enough to finance a lavish lifestyle. According to the criminal charging document, he used at least $2 million of his investors’ funds to buy a yacht called Stillwater, which he renamed Live More.

He also used more than $2 million in investor money to buy a $4.2 million condominium in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. He chartered private jets and luxury cars, bought a motorcoach for about $614,000, two Land Rovers for nearly a quarter million dollars, and at least $320,000 in clothing, jewelry, and beauty treatments.

As part of his sentence, Burkhalter was ordered to repay his victims nearly $234 million.

The court appointed a receiver to try to recover funds and sell assets to repay victims, according to Hertzberg’s office.

Earlier this week, Judge Johnson sentenced two Drive Planning employees: David Bradford, 53, of Peachtree Corners; and Julie Edwards, 59, of Cumming.

Bradford, the chief operating officer, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and the judge sentenced him to four years and three months in prison. He was ordered to pay $4.3 million to victims.

Edwards, the chief administrative officer, pleaded guilty to laundering proceeds from the Ponzi scheme and will serve two years in prison. She was ordered to pay $630,000 to the victims.

All three were also sentenced to three years of supervised release after completing their prison terms, which will be served without the possibility of parole.

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