Sevier County realtor sentenced to two years in fraud scheme

Defense attorney Joe Baker argued McCarter has spent most of his life serving the community through sporting events and charitable deeds before succumbing to a gambling addiction that drained his finances.

"Mr. McCarter is before the court with half a century of law-abiding behavior," Baker said.



Sevier County realtor sentenced to two years in fraud scheme
By Jamie Satterfield

A high-rolling Sevier County realtor thought the odds were good he would pay back his unsuspecting victims before his crimes were discovered.

He lost that bet.

Now, Jacky Randall McCarter, a confessed gambling addict who once ruled as a "million-dollar producer" in the real estate market in Sevier County and enjoyed social prominence as well, is headed to federal prison for two years.

"It wasn't set out to be a scheme I honestly thought, somehow, someway, it would be repaid," McCarter said Friday of the money he stole in what IRS Criminal Investigator Susanne Lee called a real estate version of a Ponzi scheme. "They were my friends, they really were, and I didn't think in no certain terms this would happen."

U.S. District Judge Thomas Phillips was unmoved.

"He did this (thievery) not once but several times, obtaining fraudulent loans to pay off other fraudulent loans," Phillips said. "The defendant also derived money from embezzling from two local youth sports organizations."

McCarter's financial crimes have landed him in legal hot water in both state and federal court. Last year, he confessed in Sevier County Circuit Court to a slew of fraud and theft charges for bilking more than $500,000 from friends and business partners who gave him money to invest in real estate transactions he never made and stealing $25,000 from the English Mountain Youth Football Conference. He was sentenced to 10 years of probation.

He also pleaded guilty last year in U.S. District Court to five counts of mortgage fraud and money laundering. Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Morris said those charges involved a scheme to draw up fake quit claim deeds on various properties he did not own and use them as collateral to garner loans from Tennessee State Bank in Sevierville.

Lee testified McCarter also ripped off friends and business associates by taking money for properties he promised to buy for them but didn't. To avoid detection, he then would concoct fictitious buyers for those same properties, using money stolen from one victim via fraud to repay another.

She estimated that, from 2004 through 2008, McCarter's crimes netted him at least $713,000. The IRS launched its probe in 2009.

Defense attorney Joe Baker argued McCarter has spent most of his life serving the community through sporting events and charitable deeds before succumbing to a gambling addiction that drained his finances.

"Mr. McCarter is before the court with half a century of law-abiding behavior," Baker said.

But Phillips noted McCarter squandered the "advantages" he enjoyed as a member of a family whose name was both well-known and respected in Sevier County for decades now.