Leader of 'Gifting Tables' Scheme Receives Reduced Prison Sentence: Report

GUILFORD, CT — Donna Bello was sentenced Wednesday to serve 48 months in prison for her role as a leader in the Shoreline "gifting tables" pyramid scheme, said U.S. Department of Justice spokesman Thomas Carson.

Jill Platt was sentenced earlier this week to serve 30 months in prison, according to Carson. The Hartford Courant reports that in 2013 Bello was sentenced to serve six years in prison but her sentence was overturned resulting in a new sentence Wednesday. Bello ended up receiving two years less on her revised sentence.

Bello said she has been unfairly portrayed as a "rich, privileged suburbanite," the Courant reports.

“In my mind, in my heart, I was doing a good thing,” Bello said Wednesday, according to the New Haven Register. “It brought women together and gave people more self-confidence.”

Bello, who served part of her sentence already, said Wednesday that “Prison is such a horrible place. It’s like living in the ghetto," according to the New Haven Register.

In 2013 a federal jury found Bello, and Platt both Guilford, guilty of conspiracy, tax and wire fraud offenses related to their involvement in a pyramid scheme known as “Gifting Tables.”

According to the evidence presented during the trial, a Gifting Table is configured as a four-level pyramid, with eight participants assigned to the bottom row, four participants assigned to the third row, two participants assigned to the second row, and one participant assigned to the top row, federal officials said previously.

The top row participant is referred to as the “Dessert,” the two participants on the second row as “Entrees,” the four participants on the third row as “Soup and Salads,” and the eight participants on the bottom row as “Appetizers.”

To join a Gifting Table, new participants were required to pay $5,000, typically cash, to the Dessert, that is, the participant occupying the top position on the pyramid, officials said back in 2013. The $5,000 payment, which was fraudulently characterized as a gift, secured the new participant a position as an Appetizer on the bottom row.

Participants moved from the bottom row of the pyramid and progressed through a Gifting Table by recruiting additional people to join. When eight new participants joined a Gifting Table, each having made a $5,000 “gift” to the person occupying the Dessert position at the top of the pyramid, the Dessert left the Gifting Table and kept the $40,000 paid by the eight new participants.

That particular Gifting Table was then split, with the two participants occupying the Entree position on the second row moving to the top position (Dessert) of two new pyramids. The other incumbent members of the Gifting Table moved up a row on one of the two newly-formed pyramids, and the search for 16 new participants began. The success of the Gifting Tables depended on new participants joining and making the $5,000 “gift.”

From approximately 2008 to 2011, Bello and Platt oversaw and profited from this Gifting Tables pyramid scheme, federal officials said in a news release. The defendants recruited individuals to join the scheme, prepared and distributed materials to recruits that contained false representations, and misrepresented to recruits and participants that Gifting Tables was not a pyramid scheme, the statement reads. Also, in May 2010, the defendants attempted to intimidate a participant who had questioned the legality of the Gifting Table scheme, officials said.

Bello and Platt also conspired to defraud the Internal Revenue Service by misrepresenting to recruits and participants that monies given and received during the scheme were legally considered tax-free “gifts” under the IRS code and that lawyers and accountants had approved Gifting Tables as legal ventures that generated tax-free proceeds, federal authorities said in a prepared statement. In addition, Bello and Platt filed false tax returns that failed to report income generated from the scheme, officials said.

Evidence at trial, the news release states, included several emails, including an email sent by Platt in March 2009 that told a participant: “It’s sort of a joke that I refer to our freezer as the ATM.” Later in March 2009, Bello complained to Hopkins and another individual about two recruits, stating: “They have had enough parties. Its [sic] costing us a small fortune in their food and wine delights. No more parties until they commit with the cash," the news release states.

In June 2009, Bello sent an email that said “I am not a . . . saint . . . . I’m teaching you all how to make an extra 80 grand a year . . . . Isn’t that enough?” federal authorities have said.

Later in October 2009, Bello emailed a participant, according to federal officials, and indicated “as women we like our own stash. Keep it in a safe. Keep it quiet because rather not have red flags raised. Hiring accountants and atterneys [sic] is costly.”

The jury found Bello and Platt guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit to defraud the IRS, and 11 counts and four counts of wire fraud, respectively.

Finally, Bello was found guilty of two counts and Platt of one count of filing a false tax return.