Fake Counter-Terrorist Tech Company CEO Sentenced

CHICAGO, IL — After claiming he had technology to detect terrorist attacks and people on the terrorism watch list and fraudulently raising more than $9 million from hundreds of investors, the founder of a northwest suburban company was sentenced Wednesday to nine years in federal prison, according to the Department of Justice.

Formerly of Arlington Heights, Gregory Webb, 71, founded and was CEO of the now-defunct Elk Grove Village-based InfrAegis Inc. He now lives in Texas, according to DOJ.

Between 2007 and 2012, he convinced more than 200 investors InfrAegis was a successful and growing technology and counter-terrorism company. Last July, he was convicted on nine counts of mail and wire fraud after the government dropped two of its original charges, according to court documents.

Webb told investors his company's products could recognize people from terrorist watch lists and instantaneously detect biological, chemical or radiological threats.

InfrAegis also purported to be able to identify harmful bacteria and other threats to the world’s food and water supply, according to prosecutors.

This was all quite impossible, prosecutors said, because the technology had never been fully developed or tested.

Despite Webb's claims that he had deals with Chicago and Washington D.C. to deploy his unproven anti-terror kiosks, the company had never even come close to signing contracts to sell its products to those cities.

“Defendant engaged in a multi-year, multi-million-dollar fraud scheme designed to extract as much money as he could from trusting investors by lying to them,” federal prosecutors Kruti Trivedi and Rick Young wrote in the government’s sentencing memorandum last month.

“Defendant’s actions have had and will continue to have long-term consequences for many of these victims.”

Chicago firefighters and other first responders were among those victims. They never received any return on their investment in the company.

Webb and his spouse, on the other hand, were paid more than $500,000, and the company spent more than $800,000 to pay off Webb's credit cards, according to evidence presented at trial.

Judge Virginia M. Kendall imposed the 108-month sentence Wednesday in federal court in Chicago, noting it was “heartbreaking” to read letters from victims and calling Webb's fraud “egregious," prosecutors said.

Webb's attorney said his client was just a bad businessman.

"Webb did not take a salary and he even lent the company $1.3 million of his own money. He didn't get half of that back," Webb's attorney, Michael Monico, told The Daily Herald after last year's guilty verdict.

"It's unfortunate but he was an optimist and believed his company could make it."