Trump frees Salem retirement home mogul convicted of multi-million dollar fraud
(The Center Square) — In President Donald Trump’s final days in the White House, he granted the early release of a Salem CEO convicted for cheating investors out of millions of dollars during the Great Recession.
Jon Michael Harder pled guilty in 2015 to two felony counts of mail fraud and money laundering for allegedly bilking 1,000 investors out of $130 million while heading retirement home giant Sunwest Management Inc.
Investigations led by the FBI and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reported Harder misrepresented Sunwest’s financial performance to investors and diverted millions of their money to his personal expenses. Between 2006 and 2008, Harder promised investors they would be pouring their money into specific assisted living facilities, according to court documents.
Federal investigators reported Harder was instead diverting that money towards a range of failing Sunwest facilities as well as himself.
As far back as 2006, Sunwest was losing millions of dollars despite Harder’s claims that Sunwest was financially sound. Presiding U.S. District Judge Michael Simon of Oregon said during Harder’s sentencing in 2015 that Sunwest was losing up to $20 million per month leading up to its demise in 2008.
The Salem-based organization and its subsidiaries owned some 300 assisted living facilities and served more than 15,000 senior residents nationwide at its height in 2007.
“As the national credit markets tightened in 2007 and 2008, the house of cards Harder had built came crashing down on unsuspecting investors,” the SEC’s complaint stated. “By June 2008, they operated Sunwest virtually as a Ponzi scheme: money raised in the final offerings (supposedly for new properties) was used to pay old investors their 10 percent return and otherwise fund operations at existing facilities. Despite Sunwest’s dire financial situation, Harder took tens of millions of dollars out of the enterprise.”
The FBI said in a statement at the time that Harder’s case was the largest case of fraud Oregon had ever seen, costing hundreds of investors their life savings.
“The scope of the defendant’s fraud is truly staggering, as are the effects it has had on the victims of his crime,” U.S. Attorney Amanda Marshall said. “This conviction demonstrates that no one – regardless of title or position – is above the law and that individuals who steal and defraud investors will be held accountable.”
Prior to receiving his nearly 15-year sentence in 2015, Harder was indicted on 56 counts of fraud, money laundering, and other financial crimes.
“There are so many things I should’ve done differently,” Harder said during his sentencing. His defense argued for a five-year stint in prison at the time.
Harder was slated for release on December 4, 2028, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons database, which pegs his present location at the Federal Correctional Institution in Sheridan, Oregon.
He was granted a three-year supervised release, effective immediately, under Trump’s commutation of his nine-year sentence on January 13.
“Mr. Harder fully accepted responsibility, pled guilty, and cooperated with the government’s civil and criminal actions against him at great personal cost,” then-Trump administration officials said in a statement.
Harder was one of 143 people to receive a presidential pardon or commutation from the now former president in the past week, including a number of political associates, celebrities, and high-profile entrepreneurs.
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