A man stole from hundreds of parents who paid thousands in tuition to send their children to his “non-existent” summer camp, federal prosecutors said. Now he’s going to prison.
Mehdi Belhassan, 53, of Tampa, Florida, went gambling with the families’ tuition money in Las Vegas — a trip funded with their payments and funds he stole from a financing company, according to sentencing documents.
Belhassan splurged on hotel stays and entertainment and used some of the money for plastic surgery, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts said Oct. 20, when prosecutors announced his conviction in connection with the case.
At least 303 families paid more than $380,000 for their children to attend his MB Sports Camps at a Boston area college in 2019, according to prosecutors.
Belhassan actually hosted MB Sports Camps in previous years, but the city of Boston didn’t allow him to do so in the summer of 2019 since he didn’t have proper permits, prosecutors said.
Despite this, he promoted the camp to parents to get money, according to prosecutors.
“Families arranged summers for their children based on his lies,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum. “Families were sending their children, in many cases from out of state or out of the country to attend his nonexistent camp.”
“He knew there was no money for refunds or any prospect for getting money for refunds. He did not care,” the sentencing memo says.
A judge sentenced Belhassan to two years and six months in prison on Jan. 29 after he was convicted of two counts of wire fraud, the attorney’s office announced in a Jan. 30 news release.
Ahead of his sentencing, prosecutors said he “continues to protest that lying to get money is not wrong, let alone criminal.”
Belhassan must pay $575,427 in restitution and forfeit $443,346, prosecutors said.
His defense attorney, Jennifer McKinnon, told McClatchy News on Jan. 31 that he “operated successful and popular summer camps for kids for over twenty years” and that evidence showed “how he poured his heart into the camps.”
Before the judge issued Belhassan’s sentence, prosecutors sought a sentence of five years and three months in prison for him.
“The judge in the case rejected the Government’s recommendation” and instead imposed one “well beneath the federal sentencing guidelines range,” McKinnon said.
Victims ‘left with losses’ as he flew to Las Vegas
With his fake sports camp scheme, Belhassan stole more than $600,000, according to prosecutors.
After Boston city officials told Belhassan he couldn’t host his camp in the city in 2019, his business was “effectively dead in the water in Massachusetts,” the sentencing memo says.
With no venue for his camp, no staff or funds to operate it, “his solution was to lie to get money,” according to prosecutors.
“When the fraud scheme ended, the defendant left his victims with the losses, and he flew to Las Vegas for a vacation,” prosecutors wrote in the sentencing memo.
Parents who have yet to receive refunds were owed more than $180,000 when the sentencing memo was filed on Jan. 5.
The government has tried to alert all victims of Belhassan’s scheme, but officials haven’t heard from the majority of parents, according to prosecutors.
Belhassan’s prison sentence will be followed by two years of supervised release.
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