Stokes re-indicted on a raft of new charges

Numerous new victims named in court filing, including Tennessee Democratic Party; more than $15 mil said to have been embezzled

Email | Print By E. Thomas Wood

Barry Stokes

Fallen financier Barry Stokes was looking at a potential five-year prison sentence when he was arrested last October for charges related to the collapse of his employee-benefit company, 1Point Solutions. Now he's staring down the prospect of a much stiffer penalty — in part for another crime allegedly committed from his jail cell.

A federal grand jury yesterday returned a broad-ranging new indictment against Stokes (available at this link), taking the place of the six-count indictment that he had been facing for embezzling benefit funds. The new charges include:

• 29 counts of violating the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA, involving over $15 million in embezzlements;
• 21 counts of mail fraud for sending false quarterly statements to beneficiaries;
• 11 counts of wire fraud, for illicit money transfers that took place between 2002 and 2005;
• 11 counts of money laundering, for buying jewelry, artwork and real estate with embezzled funds;
• Four counts of criminal contempt, for cashing company checks after a bankruptcy court judge had ordered him not to do so; and
  
• Two counts of bankruptcy fraud — one regarding the original filing, and a second for fabricating a receipt in March of this year in an effort to prevent the seizure of a car from Gale Carrier, Stokes' personal psychic.

The indictment names many more victims of the alleged malfeasances than had been known before. They include a number of organizations from Middle Tennessee facing losses, such as the Tennessee Association of Broadcasters ($130,000 missing from two employee accounts), the Tennessee Democratic Party ($23,000 missing) and the Tennessee Hotel Lodging Association (also $23,000).

Attempts today to reach bankruptcy trustee John McLemore, prosecuting attorney Courtney Trombly and defense attorney David Baker of the Federal Public Defender's Office have been unsuccessful. Federal sentencing guidelines do not spell out exactly what potential sentence Stokes faces if convicted on all counts, but they make clear that he could be sent up for far more than the five years and $250,000 fine that his original charges carried.

Stokes was arrested on October 13 of last year, several weeks after NashvillePost.com broke the first news of 1Point's downward spiral. He has been in jail ever since, denied bail after investigators found that he had downloaded a manual to changing personal identities.

Last week, Stokes asked to be let out of prison pending trial, arguing that a variety of personal woes he has suffered since first being incarcerated all tend to make him less of a flight risk. Earlier this week, attorneys for both Stokes and the government asked the judge to put off his trial, currently scheduled to begin May 22, until October.