Oologah resident and former Claremore American Legion baseball coach, William Todd Bingham, is facing federal prison time for taking $7 million from investors in a fraud and money laundering scheme.

Bingham, 42, coached the Claremore-based Rogers County Rangers for three seasons. He was head coach for two seasons and assistant coach during the just-completed season. He resigned his position on Aug. 1, two days after entering a guilty plea in the U.S. District Court case in Connecticut.

Bingham was indicted in federal court in Connecticut July 24, entered a guilty plea July 30 and is set for sentencing Oct. 17.

According to the indictment, Bingham persuaded 42 Connecticut investors to give him millions of dollars between May 2001 and June 2007. Bingham said he was using the money to finance a car-buying and resale business. According to documents filed in the federal court case, he had told investors that he purchased large volumes of vehicles at auctions and resold the vehicles to national car rental companies for profit.

Investors were told Bingham had been selling vehicles to the companies for 10 years, making $200 to $300 profit per vehicle. However, court records show that Bingham never had any such agreement with a car rental company.

The indictment states that Bingham provided investors fictitious documents, some which showed he had purchased 7,497 vehicles and made a gross profit of more than $2 million in 2002.

Connecticut investors provided $1.8 million to finance Bingham’s false business. That money came via wire from bank accounts in Connecticut to bank accounts in Oklahoma which were controlled by Bingham, the indictment states.

On July 27, 2005, court records show that Bingham convinced an investor to wire $59,990 from California to Lakeside State Bank in Oologah. On the same day, Bingham drew a cashier’s check for $15,000 from the bank account and transferred it to a person, T.B., who deposited the check into an account at RCB Bank.

Investors provided Bingham with approximately $7 million to finance his alleged businesses, for which Bingham promised 50 percent of the profits from the resale of the cars and their principal investment would be returned at the end of the term.

Some of the funds were returned to investors, according to court documents, which led investors to believe they were receiving “profits” earned on their investment. The government alleged that the funds returned to investors as profits were actually new funds from new investors.

No investment funds were used to purchase vehicles for resale, but were used for Bingham’s own personal expenses, including car loan and mortgage payments, credit card bills and checks made out to himself for cash.