Real Estate Development Scammer Sentenced to Prison (Button)

NEWS RELEASE –

June 21, 2018

Contact: Ken Lane, 720-913-9025

REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT SCAMMER SENTENCED TO PRISON

A real estate development scammer was sentenced in Denver District Court today to prison.

Robert Button (dob: 10-14-1963) was indicted by a Denver grand jury in November 2016 and charged with one count of violation of the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act-COCCA (F2), along with several counts of theft, money laundering, securities fraud, identity theft, and forgery.

Button pleaded guilty in April this year to the racketeering charge and to one count of identity theft (F4) and was sentenced today to 20 years in prison for the COCCA conviction, and to 6 years in prison for the identity theft conviction, the sentences to run concurrently.  He was also ordered to pay $2,765,658 in restitution.

The November 2016 indictment alleged that between May 2014 and November 2016 Button used multiple entities to take out multi-million dollar construction loans from two area banks on three Denver townhome developments, and using money from those loans for his own personal benefit rather than paying for the developments. Button accomplished the theft by submitting forged invoices from the general contractor and submitting them to the banks for construction draws.  Button would then deposit the checks into an account under his own control and divert the funds to other accounts unrelated to any of the three development projects.  In addition, Button solicited hundreds of thousands of dollars from individual investors into the three projects, as well as a project overseas, with those investors losing over a million dollars when the projects were not completed or completed at a loss.

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