Woman scammed 5 million from victims to stay at the Ritz.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/she-scammed-dozens-into-giving-up-their-savings-so-she-could-stay-at-the-ritz/ar-BBSuIw9?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=U452DHP

Who is more stupid, the educated Keisha Williams who thinks she would not be caught--or the victims who tossed her their life savings? With a degree in 2 fields, so much she could have gained, instead of..prison. And to see her posing as an every-woman in front of the Ritz in Venice.
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Keisha Williams lived large. When she stayed at the Ritz-Carlton in the Bahamas, her cabana had to have a balcony, and her shrimp could not be jumbo — “too tough.” At the Cavalieri in Rome, she complained that the Mercedes that picked her up was “too small” — not her “vision of luxury.” In Bora Bora, she bragged that she spotted actor Tracy Morgan, but “I have the biggest Villa on the island.”

For the next 15½ years, Williams will live in a federal prison after admitting that the millions she spent on luxury vacations, cars, restaurants and in high-end shops came from a fraudulent health-care software scheme that fleeced more than 50 people out of their savings.

The way in which you spent this money . . . is appalling,” Judge Leonie M. Brinkema told her before imposing the sentence Friday in federal court in Alexandria. “It was one of the worst [cases] I’ve seen.”

Williams, 43, of Ashburn, Va., pleaded guilty to 14 fraud-related charges several days into a trial this past fall, after 20 people had testified against her.

During the trial and at her sentencing, prosecutors noted, Williams carried an $1,800 leather portfolio she bought for her trip to Italy with money from one of the victims who testified, a special needs teacher and recent widow.

“The gall [of] that act speaks volumes,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Grace Hill said in court.

After sentencing Williams, Brinkema ordered her to surrender the Bottega Veneta portfolio. She also had to forfeit a car, gun, watches and other items.

“You’re not going to be able to take it with you to prison anyway,” the judge said.

For four years, Williams claimed she had purchased Austrian software that would allow doctors to remotely examine and talk with patients and needed cash to pay taxes and fees on the product.

She convinced a successful California businessman named Christian D’Andrade to partner with her to raise $4 million, including $1.4 million of his own money. She raised over $1 million more from other victims.

In fact, Williams never fully purchased the health-care software, spending less than $300,000 of the total $5.4 million she had gotten from investors. Most of the rest she spent on herself and her girlfriend, according to court records.

“This is a being without a heart or soul; no human can do what she has knowingly done to so many of us,” one victim wrote in a letter to the court.

D’Andrade, 70, lost his business, two houses, a car and all his savings, according to court papers, along with the savings of his girlfriend, his ex-wife and a business mentee. He admitted lying to several victims himself about where the money was going and how quickly it would be paid back, while believing Williams would make good on her promises. He is serving a probationary sentence.

Along with D’Andrade, three others admitted getting sucked into Williams’s scam as semi-unwitting co-conspirators. Prosecutors say that when D’Andrade’s network started to run dry, Williams turned to Carla McPhun, a Maryland real estate investor who met Williams through D’Andrade. McPhun admitted that she lied to one investor about where the money was going, thinking she would be able to repay it soon. She did not realize the entire project was a fraud until she saw on the news in February that Williams had been arrested.