Ex-Bay Area Lawyer Sentenced In Billion-Dollar Ponzi Scheme: DOJ

LAFAYETTE, CA — A former Bay Area-based attorney has been sentenced to just over 11 years in prison for his role in a massive Ponzi scheme involving a solar company, authorities said.

Ari Jonathan Lauer, 61, of Lafayette, pleaded guilty to 12 counts of bank fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud affecting a financial institution and one count of conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud in connection with the scheme, one week before his case was supposed to go to trial in October 2025.

"As the only attorney involved, he should have been the first person to recognize the fraud and stop it," U.S. Attorney Eric Grant said in a statement. "Instead, he was the last person to accept responsibility, only doing so on the eve of trial."

Federal prosecutors say Lauer was the outside counsel to Benicia-based DC Solar and provided the company with legal and business advice from 2009 to 2019.

During this time, DC Solar produced mobile solar generators that were mounted on trailers, claiming they were able to provide emergency power to cellphone towers and lighting at sporting events, according to authorities.

Two Bay Area residents during this time and other co-conspirators convinced people to invest in the generators using a "variety of fraudulent techniques," authorities said.

"A key part of the fraud was that investors would never actually take possession of the generators," federal prosecutors said. "Instead, DC Solar typically leased those generators back from the investors and claimed to sublease them to third parties to generate revenue."

Their scheme failed to generate enough revenue, however, to meet their financial obligations to investors. In 2012, Lauer and members of DC Solar met and agreed to hide the lack of revenue from current and prospective investors, authorities said.

They did this by periodically making transfers of investor money from one account to another and claiming it was revenue, authorities said.

The company bilked nearly $912 million from investors between March 2011 and Dec. 2018, who thought they were buying generators, federal prosecutors said. The transactions DC Solar and investors, authorities said, were purported to involve approximately 17,000 generators, valued at $2.5 billion.

“Without the participation of Lauer, the DC Solar fraud scheme would never have been operational," Grant said. " Lauer used his skill as a corporate lawyer to execute a sophisticated tax scheme to that enabled the largest criminal fraud in the history of the Eastern District of California."

The California State Bar placed Lauer on involuntary inactive status, meaning he is not eligible to practice law in California at this time. DC Solar was shut down by the FBI in 2018.