SALT LAKE CITY — Five years in the making, Wayne Ogden’s trial on his second round of fraud charges was scheduled to begin today in federal court.
The 3-week trial will showcase what Ogden was doing from 2001 to 2003 instead of paying back the $9 million owed his Weber County victims from his late 1990s Ponzi scheme. He pleaded guilty to those charges, his first round of fraud, in Ogden 2nd District Court in 1998.
Upon his release from Utah State Prison in 2001, federal prosecutors allege he soon began another Ponzi scheme in Salt Lake County. After an FBI investigation spanning four years, those charges were filed in December 2007 in U.S. District Court for Utah in Salt Lake. After years of motions and depositions, the trial begins at 8:30 a.m. before Judge Clark Waddoups.
Ogden also was charged federally in 2011 with yet another alleged scam, set for trial in April in the same federal courthouse before Judge Ted Stewart, according to court files.
Brother Terry Ogden is a co-defendant in that case, which alleges Wayne Ogden masterminded yet another Ponzi scheme in St. George while running a credit counseling firm in 2005 and 2006. A Ponzi involves using funds from new investors to pay returns to prior investors.
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