A locally well-known Brigham City insurance agent has been sentenced to prison for taking his friends and neighbors and other investors for millions of dollars in a long-running Ponzi scheme.
As R. Dean Udy, 71, sits in a prison cell, he also is contemplating new cases pending since June from a federal grand jury indictment charging him and his son, Cameron, with $11.4 million in bank fraud in Clark County, Nev.
Udy was sentenced to one-to-15 years in Utah State Prison last week on securities fraud charges to which he pleaded guilty earlier this year. The case was filed by the Utah Attorney General's Office because the victims were located statewide in Utah, and in Idaho and Nevada.
Judge William A. Barrett of 3rd District Court in Salt Lake City initially sentenced Udy to a year in jail in May, according to court records, on condition he make good on promises to pay back his victims.
Barrett on Aug. 3 opted for prison instead for Udy because of the apparent lack of progress in making restitution to the victims.
One of them, D.A. Olsen, of Brigham City, said Udy failed to pay any of the victims in the 90 days Barrett allowed him, according to a letter to victims Olsen received from the attorney general's office. It describes the Ponzi scheme as stretching back 12 years or more.
Olsen said Udy's victims total 1,500, with an estimated loss of $20 million, according to prosecutors. "He says it's only $10 million," Olsen said of his former friend Udy.
Udy sold promissory notes to investors from a company he formed -- Strategic Assets LLC -- for development projects, officials said.
Olsen said Udy traded on his positions in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which included membership in a stake presidency and as a regional representative in Box Elder County.
"People felt Brother Udy would never do anything wrong," Olsen said.
"I had friends who'd been with him for a while ... they always got their money. It wasn't until the economy went south that he couldn't make his interest payments."
"I lost the minimum, $10,000," Olsen said, describing Udy's basic unit of operation as $10,000 promissory notes that paid 10 percent interest in 30 days.
Olsen, a popular Box Elder High School teacher, now retired, said he knew of several of his fellow former teachers who may have lost all of their retirement savings to Udy, in one case $250,000.
The allegations in the Nevada grand jury indictment allege Udy took kickbacks from home sellers, which he and co-conspirators then used for "personal and unauthorized uses," according to court documents.
In one case, he bought a house in Henderson, Nev., just outside Las Vegas, for $6.2 million and arranged for the seller to pay him $1.43 million, reads the indictment.
The sum was for an alleged decorator allowance "when Dean Udy then and there well knew that the decorator allowance agreement was a means to fraudulently conceal the diversion of loan proceeds for personal and unauthorized uses."
He and son Cameron are scheduled for trial Oct. 18 in federal court in Las Vegas on the federal indictment.
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