Fallcatcher scammer has been sentenced to 5+ years
Henry Ford, also known as Cleothus “Lefty” Jackson, fooled 60 investors into paying $5 million for an anti-addiction system called Fallcatcher that he didn't build.
A Florida fraudster who fooled 60 mostly Philadelphia-area investors into contributing $5 million to develop biometric anti-addiction systems, then fled investigators and spent five years as a multinational fugitive before surrendering, was sentenced Wednesday to 5½ years in federal prison.
Henry Ford, also known as Cleothus “Lefty” Jackson, had pleaded guilty to securities fraud and seven counts of wire fraud for forging documents from insurance companies to inflate the prospects of Fallcatcher, a company he said was developing to track people in recovery and reduce the risk they would fall back into addiction.
At his plea hearing last year, Ford insisted his idea for a platform that would track people in recovery was legitimate but admitted that he had falsified claims that insurers and state agencies supported the project and would soon make it profitable. The goal had been to sell the company at a big profit for its investors.
He was sentenced Wednesday by Judge Joel H. Slomsky to the prison term, plus three years supervised release and $2.1 million in restitution.
Ford started the business in Florida in 2017 but by 2018 was running out of money, according to prosecutors. He then incorporated the company in Delaware and hired managers and a board. He paid Montgomery County insurance salesman Dean Vagnozzi to recruit private investors from Vagnozzi’s network with email pitches and free meals in Montgomery County and South Jersey. But he gave Vagnozzi and the investors false information about Fallcatcher’s prospects.
Ford fled Philadelphia in 2019 after giving SEC investigators phony documents in an attempt to disprove allegations that he was exaggerating Fallcatcher’s prospects and after learning that he and Fallcatcher were subjects of a criminal investigation.
He went to Miami, then flew to Morocco, according to federal investigators. Ford later told officials lived and worked in the United Arab Emirates; Thailand; Malaysia; Indonesia; Tunisia; Guinea; and Mexico.
Ford filed a Freedom of Information Act request from Mexico with the U.S. Marshals Service to see if they were still looking for him.
Ford crossed the border into Arizona in April 2024, where he was arrested on a warrant for the Fallcatcher case. He was sent to Philadelphia for trial and detained in the federal jail as a flight risk. In 2011, he had been convicted of mortgage fraud in federal court in Arizona as Cleothus “Lefty” Jackson and served a prison term before starting Fallcatcher.
Part of the money Ford raised for Fallcatcher has been collected for investors from business and personal accounts seized from him in 2019 after Scott Bennett, a company executive, became suspicious that Ford was collecting improper payments from the company and reported him to the SEC.
According to prosecutors, Ford gave salesman Vagnozzi and investors “false and misleading information” about Fallcatcher and showed them phony documents about an insurer’s promise to fund a pilot Fallcatcher program. Ford paid Vagnozzi $500,000, which Vagnozzi refunded as part of a civil settlement with the SEC, plus 4 million shares of Fallcatcher stock, which proved worthless.
Vagnozzi is suing that agency, alleging that federal officials improperly seized his former business, A Better Financial Plan, as part of the 2020 court-ordered government takeover of Par Funding, a Ponzi scheme whose unregistered securities Vagnozzi also sold to clients. He later sued his lawyer, former Eckerd Seamans partner John Pauciulo, who Vagnozzi said gave him bad advice about Par, Fallcatcher and other investments.
The case against Ford was investigated by the FBI and the SEC’s New York regional office.