Yahoo Finance Former CEO with University of Kentucky connection sentenced in $65M fraud case
A former University of Kentucky student convicted of misappropriating more than $25 million and living a flashy lifestyle that included a private jet and a Rolls Royce has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.
A judge also ordered Christopher Kirchner to pay $65.4 million in restitution, based on what federal authorities said he fraudulently raised from investors.
U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman did not order a fine for Kirchner, finding he didn’t have the money “or future earning capacity” to pay a fine, according to the court docket.
Kirchner, 37, attended Tates Creek High School in Lexington and also was a student at UK for a time, majoring in marketing and communications, according to a profile in Forbes magazine and his LinkedIn page.
He left UK before obtaining a degree, but worked in Lexington for several years, including at Best Buy and a label-making company.
Forbes reported through his job, Kirchner met a man named Raj Patel who was then working for a vendor, and they came up with an idea to start a company that would use software to manage supply chains.
Kirchner was the initial chief executive officer of the company, called Slync, founded in 2017.
Federal authorities charged that Kirchner lied about the company’s finances and how much business it had in order to lure in investors, providing “fantastical” revenue projections.
In reality, Slync struggled to pay employees at times when Kirchner was CEO.
Kirchner fired an employee who who raised concerns about the company’s finances and gave false documents to the payroll manager to cover thefts, federal authorities said.
Between April 2020 and March 2022, Kirchner moved money from Slync’s account to a company account only he could access, then switched the money to his personal accounts. He also moved $20 million from the company directly to his personal checking account.
Kirchner lived in a home in the Dallas-Fort Worth area valued at more than $2 million. He bought a $16 million Gulfstream jet, a suite at AT&T Stadium that cost nearly $500,000 and tried to buy a soccer club in England, according to court records.
“Even as his company was circling the drain, Chris Kirchner was spending millions of his investors’ money on himself. Apparently, projecting personal prosperity was more important to him than making payroll,” U.S. Attorney Leigha Simonton said in a news release.
The company board of directors ultimately fired Kirchner in August 2022, and he was indicted in February 2023.
A jury in federal court convicted him last January on four charges of wire fraud and seven charges of money laundering.
Pittman sentenced him July 11. Kirchner had been in custody since the end of his trial.
The judge said federal authorities could forfeit several million dollars worth of assets to apply toward the judgment against Kirchner, including the 2022 Rolls Royce Cullinan he and his wife bought for $478,274, several luxury watches, a Cartier necklace and 57 bottles of wine, according to court records.
When Kirchner is released, he will be required to pay at least $200 a month toward the remaining balance of the $65.4 million.
There is no parole in the federal court system, so he will have to serve at least 85 percent of the 20-year sentence.
