Thomas Joseph Petters is a former American businessman and chairman and CEO of Petters Group Worldwide, a company which stole over $2 billion in a Ponzi scheme.
25 Facts About Tom Petters
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Tom Petters was convicted of massive business fraud in 2009 and is imprisoned at the United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth.
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Amid mounting criminal investigations, Tom Petters resigned as his company's CEO on September 29,2008.
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Tom Petters was convicted of numerous federal crimes for operating Petters Group Worldwide as a $3.65 billion Ponzi scheme and received a 50-year federal sentence.
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Tom Petters was raised with six siblings in St Cloud, Minnesota.
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Tom Petters worked at the tailor, fur and fabric shop founded by his great-grandfather and operated by his family for over 100 years.
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Tom Petters completed only one semester of college before dropping out to pursue a career.
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In 1988, Tom Petters moved back to Minnesota and founded Amicus Trading, a wholesale brokerage; the name was later changed to The Tom Petters Company, and it marketed consumer merchandise.
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Tom Petters teamed up with direct-mail merchandise company Fingerhut Companies Inc in 2001 to start a new online store, Redtagbiz.
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Between 1998 and 2008, Tom Petters created a series of investment funds through which he raised in excess of $4 billion through a variety of Ponzi schemes.
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Tom Petters used these funds to finance his big box and other acquisitions.
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Tom Petters then fabricated retail orders from those acquisitions and used them as collateral to borrow more money through the funds.
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When Fingerhut's owner, Federated Department Stores, decided to sell or close the company in 2002, Petters teamed with former Fingerhut chairman Ted Deikel to buy the Fingerhut name, customer list, and buildings in St Cloud, Minnetonka, and Plymouth, Minnesota and Tennessee.
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The acquisition closed in June 2002, and all of Tom Petters's operations moved into Fingerhut's former headquarters in Minnetonka.
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In 2003, Tom Petters invested in Nazca Solutions, whose CEO was Ted Mondale.
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The affidavit alleges that Tom Petters repeatedly admitted to the fraud scheme of providing false information to investors in the tapes; in addition, Tom Petters admitted to falsifying his tax returns.
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On December 2,2009, Tom Petters was found guilty in the US District Court in St Paul, Minnesota on 20 counts of conspiracy, wire and mail fraud.
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In May 2012, Tom Petters filed a petition asking the US Supreme Court to review his conviction and sentence.
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Tom Petters is incarcerated at United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth in Leavenworth, Kansas.
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Tom Petters was appointed to the board of trustees for the College of St Benedict in 2002; his mother had attended the school.
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In October 2007, Petters made a $5.3 million gift to the College of St Benedict to create the Thomas J Petters Center for Global Education.
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The foundation was formed to honor his son, John Thomas Tom Petters, who was killed on a visit in 2004 to Florence, Italy.
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Tom Petters later promised an additional $4 million, with the total to support two professorships and the John T Petters Center for Leadership, Ethics and Skills Development within the Farmer School of Business.
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Miami University has since returned Tom Petters' donation following his conviction.
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Tom Petters donated $12 million to Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, where he was a member of the Board of Trustees, to create two new faculty chairs in International Business.