MIAMI – Former Miami-Dade County resident Judith Dianne Paris-Pinder, 49, has been sentenced to 48 months in prison for defrauding more than 500 people out of $2.4 million through a Ponzi investment fraud scheme.

A Ponzi scheme is a form of fraud where belief is created in a nonexistent venture by paying strong returns to initial investors using money paid in by later investors.

According to facts admitted during her guilty plea, Paris-Pinder was president of Pinder Associates Inc. and from November 2019 to August 2021 she obtained money from investors by lying to them. She told them she worked with or for lawyers who represented litigation plaintiffs. She told investors these plaintiffs had settled claims and were just awaiting payouts from insurance companies.

Paris-Pinder told investors she was looking for “hard money lenders” to finance payments to the attorneys’ clients. Investor funds would be used to loan plaintiffs a portion of their settlement amounts and in exchange the plaintiffs would provide their full settlement money to Paris-Pinder. Then, once the settlement checks were received from the insurance companies, Paris-Pinder supposedly would distribute to investors their initial contributions plus any returns–which could be as high as 50 percent. 

According to her plea, the entire investment was a scam. Paris-Pinder did not work for or with lawyers with litigation clients and there were no settlement agreements. It is alleged that Paris-Pinder…