A federal jury has convicted a former executive of a South Dakota company accused of defrauding investors in a scheme to build an $11 million fish farm.
The jury on April 29 found the official guilty of five charges of wire fraud for his role in soliciting investors for a company in Brookings. He will be sentenced later.
Burns was the one-time chief operating officer of the company, which sought investors to build an indoor fish farm and hydroponics facility.
But the Argus Leader reports construction on the fish farm never started. Investors who put a minimum of $25,000 each in the project lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.