A former laundromat proprietor has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for orchestrating a Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors and friends out of millions.

Chris Marco, aged 67, was convicted on 43 counts of fraud after unlawfully acquiring over $34 million from six individuals, promising them lucrative returns from non-existent investment opportunities.

On Thursday, Western Australia’s Supreme Court handed down the 14-year sentence, with Marco eligible for parole after serving 12 years.

Over nearly eight years up to 2018, Marco collected a staggering $253 million from investors, repaying nearly $200 million before authorities intervened and he filed for bankruptcy.

Justice Natalie Whitby noted that Marco invested less than five percent of the funds and failed to generate any profits, despite assuring investors of high returns from supposedly exclusive schemes not accessible to the general public.

“Your offending involved a gross abuse of trust that the victims had placed in you and that you fostered,” she said.

“You developed friendships with many of your victims, and your reputation and standing in the community were factors that enabled you to gain their trust.

“Then you defrauded each of them of large sums of money.”

Whitby said he knew what he told his victims was untrue, and he paid returns from their own and other investors’ funds.

This was done to enable him to continue his fraudulent scheme, as was Marco’s claims about future investment opportunities to induce his victims to roll over their funds and remain in the scheme, she said.

He told his victims he was a successful private investor and that through decades of investing, he had developed relationships that enabled him to gain access to risk-free and exclusive private placement programs, Whitby said.

He also claimed to be a high-wealth businessman who had made large sums of money from investing.

In reality, he was an “unremarkable” country boy who owned and operated 16 businesses, including video shops, laundromats and newspaper rounds, before turning his hand to financial services and fraud.

“You spent the money … which you obtained from the victims on repaying victims and other investors, on real estate, cars, collectibles, shares and personal expenditure,” Whitby said.

“You did not receive any returns from any purported investments that were deposited into your bank accounts in the entire period.”

Outside court, Marco’s lawyer, Luka Margaretic, was scathing of the sentence and said his client would appeal against it and his convictions.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in 35 years of practice,” he told reporters.

“After a sentence like that, he’s obviously not doing very well.

“There’s going to be an appeal against sentence as well as conviction.”