May 14, 2021
Laws gets 7 years, must pay $4M to victims Written by Geoffrey Plant on May 14, 2021
Former certified public accountant and investment broker Tom Laws has been sentenced to 81 months at a federal prison camp followed by three years’ probation, after pleading guilty in U.S. District Court last April to four counts of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft, stemming from a Ponzi scheme he ran out of his business in Silver City.
Laws was also ordered to pay $4,087,172.44 in restitution.
The offenses occurred from 2014 to 2018. Laws was indicted in mid- August 2019, and arrested at his office on Hudson Street later that month.
Hallelujah! 2020 in Review - Missing person, mysterious bodies highlighted year in crime
2020 was a year full of stories about shootings in Silver City, while human remains kept turning up in the forests of Grant County.
2020’s missing and dead
In late May, Silver City resident John Waters was reported missing by his wife, Amelia Waters; in August, Waters’ skull and only his skull was discovered by a hiker in the forest outside Pinos Altos. Authorities believed at the time that Waters may have been consumed by bears, but hadn’t determined a cause of death. Amelia Waters did not respond to an inquiry from the Daily Press last week regarding the current status of the investigation into the fate of her husband.