Henry Ford, also known as Cleothus “Lefty” Jackson, was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for defrauding investors out of about $5 million. The announcement was made by United States Attorney David Metcalf. Ford, 51, from Port St. Lucie, Florida, will also serve three years of supervised release and must pay $2,095,480 in restitution. The sentence was handed down by United States District Judge Joel H. Slomsky.
Ford was indicted in March 2023 and pleaded guilty in May of the following year to one count of securities fraud and seven counts of wire fraud.
Court documents show that Ford founded Fallcatcher, a business intended to develop an electronic system to track medication use among addiction recovery patients. In May 2018, as Fallcatcher faced financial difficulties, Ford sought additional investors using an acquaintance based in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania who had access to potential backers.
According to the statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office: "Ford provided his acquaintance false and misleading information about the Fallcatcher investment proposal, so that the acquaintance would agree to send the information to his investor network."
Ford also made presentations directly to potential investors in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. During these events, he presented false information about the investment opportunity and showed a fraudulent letter claiming a major insurance company planned a pilot program with Fallcatcher’s system.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said: "During these presentations, Ford made false and misleading statements regarding the proposed investment opportunity and showed investors a fraudulent letter of interest, which falsely stated that a major insurance company had agreed to conduct a pilot program using Fallcatcher’s system." He further caused his acquaintance to share more false information after these meetings.
These actions led around 60 people to invest approximately $5 million into Fallcatcher.
In 2018, when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began investigating Ford’s acquaintance—resulting in document requests from Fallcatcher—Ford took steps to hide his fraud. "During the SEC investigation... Ford, through his counsel, produced to the SEC an email purporting to show that the fraudulent letter of interest described above was legitimate. In fact, the email produced to the SEC, like the letter of interest, was also shown to be false and fabricated," according to court records.
The case was investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Patrick J. Murray and Francis A. Weber. The SEC’s New York Regional Office handled related civil charges that formed part of this prosecution.
