Wednesday, August 11, 2010, 4:58pm EDT

Dayton Business Journal

http://dayton.bizjournals.com/dayton/stories/2010/08/09/daily24.html

MCSi Inc.’s former chief executive officer pleaded guilty in United States District Court in Cincinnati to conspiracy, securities fraud and money laundering for improperly reporting company revenues as part of a scheme to inflate the company’s stock price.

Officials announced the plea was entered by Michael Peppel, 43, Wednesday prior to the start of his trail.

In December, 2006, Peppel was indicted following a four-year investigation that included the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, FBI, IRS, U.S. Postal Service.

MCSi once was a technology darling in the Dayton community, landing contracts with major local companies and nonprofits. It grew quickly in the 1990s by purchasing other audio-visual companies across the country. But in 2002, its sales nosedived about 40 percent, it faced an investigation by the SEC that sparked several shareholder lawsuits, and it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy before moving its headquarters from Kettering to Atlanta.

According to court documents, Peppel conspired with other company employees and officers between January 2000 and April 2003 to falsify company accounting records and financial statements. Peppel admitted that he willfully filed an SEC Form 10-Q containing the fraudulent information with the SEC in August 2002 that violated key provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. In the plea, he also admitted trying to hide the fraud proceeds by making a complex series of transfers of more than $2.7 million from one personal investment account to another.

Peppel agreed to pay restitution and to forfeit three pieces of property, the contents of bank and investment accounts, a $20,000 oil painting and a $9,000 bronze sculpture that represent the proceeds traceable to the crimes. The court will determine the exact amount to be forfeited prior to sentencing.

The maximum penalty for conspiracy to commit securities, mail and wire fraud and for willful false certification of a financial report by a corporate officer is 20 years imprisonment, a maximum fine of $5 million up to three years of supervised release. Money laundering is punishable by up to ten years imprisonment, a $250,000 fine or twice the value of the property involved, and three years of supervised release.

MCSi was traded on NASDAQ until it was delisted in April 2003.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Dwight Keller and Brent Tabacchi, both of whom are in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Dayton, are prosecuting the case.