Martin Tirrell, known to many in Iowa as the “Mouth of the Midwest”, has pleaded guilty to a federal charge of mail fraud.
Tirrell, a former sports radio host, was originally charged in January on six counts, but a superseding indictment filed in May added four charges.
Tirrell told investors they could make money by financing Tirrell’s brokering of sporting event tickets, claiming he could make profits by buying and reselling the tickets.
However, Tirrell was accused of using money paid to him by investors for personal use despite claiming he “needed more time” to pay back investors, including mailing insufficient funds checks and transmitting false money wire information “to place the Investors temporarily at ease”.
In April 2017, Tirrell allegedly solicited a $7,500 check from an investor in Massachusetts via FedEx “by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses”, with prosecutors saying Tirrell offered to buy sporting event tickets for his investors with the intent to defraud, a violation of federal law.
Tirrell hosted sports talk radio shows on 1460 KXNO and 1700 The Champ.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office detailed three additional instances in which they said Tirrell knowingly executed payments from investors “by means of wire in interstate commerce” via wire fraud:
• November 8, 2017: Two checks are provided to Tirrell totaling $12,265.76 drawn from an investor’s bank account in West Des Moines. Both checks are deposited to Tirrell’s bank account. In processing the deposit, Tirrell’s bank electronically transmits the checks to a processing center in Minnesota.
• January 24, 2018: Tirrell texts an investor, “Everything is in order – I’m sorry I lost the check – call you this morning.”
• January 28, 2018: Tirrell texts an investor, “Check your email about noon and you’ll be very happy. Waiting on my Credentials before I come back They did distribution in groupings and were in the S group. I don’t set rules and they are swamped…I convey exactly what they tell me – grateful getting tickets a week out. Never been able to do that.”
In a plea agreement filed Wednesday, prosecutors agreed to drop nine of the 10 charges from the superseding indictment in exchange for a guilty plea to a single count of mail fraud.
“From at least on or about September 2016, and continuing through at least on or about December 2017 … [Tirrell] knowingly devised a scheme to defraud Investors and obtain money by means of materially false and fraudulent representations,” the agreement reads.
Tirrell presented investors the opportunity to make money by financing his purchase of sporting event tickets, but kept funds for “unauthorized purposes”, personal use and “repaying other Investors”, according to the plea agreement.
In November 2016, prosecutors write that Tirrell mailed a letter with four insufficient funds checks via FedEx totaling $335,522 to Burlington “to defraud exceeded $550,000 in losses to Investors.”
Tirrell signed off on the plea agreement, and appeared in federal court Friday morning to formalize his guilty plea to the single count of mail fraud. A sentencing hearing has been scheduled for April 7, 2020.
The maximum penalty for mail fraud is 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release, plus any amount of restitution imposed by a judge.
