A Connecticut antiques seller and public sale home proprietor pleaded responsible to a federal cash laundering cost Tuesday, based on the US Legal professional’s Workplace for the District of Connecticut, which alleges that the theft totaled some $2.1 million.
In response to the plea deal, David L. Johnson, a 66-year-old resident of Greenwich who operated the Stamford-based companies Vintage Treasures and Greenwich Public sale, “participated in a scheme to defraud W.L.,” whom the federal government identifies as “an aged, rich particular person who required intensive medical consideration” and over whom Johnson had energy of lawyer.
The scheme allegedly lasted from November 2018 till April 2023; W.L. died in August 2020. In his scope as energy of lawyer, enacted the month earlier than the scheme, Johnson was granted energy over W.L.’s “property, shares and bonds, banks, and different monetary establishments,” per the plea deal. However, that authorized contract included language that Johnson “MAY NOT use [W.L.’s] property to learn himself” and said that he act in W.L.’s greatest curiosity and never act past the scope of the facility of lawyer doc.
W.L.’s will was additionally drawn up concurrently the facility of lawyer and named Johnson the executor of his property, with all of his property being transferred to a belief, of which Johnson was not a beneficiary.
The depend that Johnson pleaded responsible to concerned Johnson allegedly cashing a federal tax refund test for the 2019 tax 12 months totaling greater than $436,000 that was issued to W.L.’s property in October 2020, about two months after his dying. In November, Johnson allegedly deposited that test into his private checking account, and the next month, he bought a cashier’s test value $87,580.00 made payable to Constancy Investments, which certified that transaction as interstate commerce.
“On the time Johnson bought the cashier’s test,” the plea deal reads, “he knew that the transaction was designed in entire and partly to hide and disguise the character, location, supply, possession, and management of the stolen funds. Johnson additionally knew that the property represented the proceeds of some type of illegal exercise.”
When he was indicted in December 2025, Johnson was additionally charged with one depend of interstate transport of stolen property and three counts of legal financial transactions. In response to the unsealed indictment, the stolen property cost concerned the sale of W.L.’s securities, value greater than $217,000. The financial transactions prices concerned the sale of W.L.’s artworks to a New York public sale home, with the proceeds of greater than $308,000 being deposited in a enterprise account belonging to Johnson’s Vintage Treasures.
After his sentencing, the federal government plans to file a movement to dismiss the extra counts Johnson was initially indicted on “as a result of the conduct underlying the dismissed counts could have been taken under consideration in figuring out the suitable sentence,” based on the deal.
Johnson’s responsible plea carries a most sentence of as much as 20 years in jail and a superb of as much as twice the quantity that he allegedly defrauded the sufferer, or $4.3 million. In response to submitting, Johnson has already restituted $1.1 million. Johnson might be sentenced on October 30. The federal government has really helpful a sentence of between 8 years, 1 month and 10 years, 1 month, in addition to a superb of $30,000 to $300,000.
