Florida woman sentenced in $190 million Ponzi scheme; what's missing?

CNBC is a really crappy source of news.  So with that said: several things are absent in their story below.  See if you can spot 'em.

Johanna Garcia, 41, pled guilty to running a Ponzi scheme that raked in $190 million from "investors."  On December 3rd she was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

She pled to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud.  As part of a deal, fed prosecutors dismissed another twenty-eight other counts from her indictment.

An unspecified amount of "restitution" will be determined, apparently by the judge, on March 3.

Garcia's company, "MJ Capital Funding," solicited investors to fund its purported business of providing short-term, high-interest loans to businesses, called merchant cash advances, or MCAs.

Garcia and her co-conspirators promised annual rates of return of 120%, according to the indictment.

But fed prosecutors said the company “made few loans and failed to earn anywhere near the profits needed to pay the investors the promised returns.”

Instead Garcia paid prior investors from money invested by new investors-- while also misappropriating millions of dollars for personal use.

Because of her promise of 120% rate of return, in the ten months between October 2020 and August 2021 the company netted at least $190.7 million. Investors ended up losing about $90 million of that.

Garcia’s partner, Pavel Ramon Ruiz Hernandez, was charged in August 2022 and pleaded guilty in April 2023 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He was sentenced in September 2023 to nine years and two months in prison.

Prosecutors said that after MJ Capital was shut down by the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission in August of 2021, Garcia, Ruiz Hernandez and others *launched a second, similar Ponzi scheme just a month later.*

Prosecutors said Garcia led this new scheme “until her arrest [in August 2023], and after, while in Bureau of Prisons custody.”

That's from a statement by federal prosecutors.

Now: Why isn't there a word in the story on how the fraudster was able to run the *second* ponzi scheme while in federal custody?

Why no mention of where the missing money is stashed?

Finally: this woman cost investors about $90 million and she got 20 years.  By contrast, Sam Bankman-Fried, son of two Stanford professors (one attorney) made off with $11 BILLION--120 times more--and got 25 years, of which he'll likely serve just five.  Seems like Sam got off much easier.
   Say, you don't think his relatively lighter sentence could have had anything to do with the fact that he'd funneled tens of millions into Democrat coffers, do ya? 

Source: useless CNBC

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/03/florida-prison-sentence-ponzi-scheme-business.html