Ariel Quiros, whom authorities describe as the “mastermind” behind the largest fraud case in Vermont history, is asking a judge to reconsider the five-year sentence handed down to him earlier this year after serving a little less than five months.
The former owner of Jay Peak Resort was one of three men who admitted to crimes in a massive EB-5 investor fraud scandal that rocked Vermont. The EB-5 program offers green cards — good for permanent U.S. residency — to foreign investors who put up at least $500,000 apiece for job-creating projects.
Quiros’ former business partners, Bill Stenger, Jay Peak’s former CEO and president, and William Kelly, a key advisor to Quiros, both received 18-month prison terms.
Neil Taylor, a Florida attorney representing Quiros, filed the motion for sentence reconsideration Tuesday in federal court in Burlington. In the motion, the defense lawyer highlighted that Quiros was the first of the three men to reach a plea deal with prosecutors and provided information to authorities that assisted in the prosecutions of the others.
Despite that, Taylor wrote, his client still received the longest sentence of the three.
Taylor added that, over his long career as a former prosecutor and current defense attorney, Quiros’ sentence was “by far” the “most disproportional and inscrutable sentence the undersigned has ever experienced on behalf of a cooperating client.”
Taylor also wrote that it appeared that Judge Geoffrey Crawford — “a resident of Vermont” — took “umbrage” at Quiros’ participation in the crime and seemed influenced by the media’s portrayal of his client as the “outsider” who “masterminded” the fraud scheme.
“The undersigned respectfully submits that the media’s knowledge of the facts pales in comparison to that of the agents and prosecutors assigned to the case by the government,” Taylor wrote.
Taylor did not propose a specific sentence reduction.
Quiros, however, submitted his own two-page letter as an exhibit to his attorney’s motion stating he was “begging” the judge to allow him to serve the remainder of his sentence on home confinement.
“I was sentenced to nearly twice as much time as my other two co-defendants COMBINED,” Quiros wrote.
“My sorrow and my shame is more than I can bare(sic), and all I want is to be given an opportunity at redemption,” he continued.
Quiros, 66, ended the letter by writing, “I pray for mercy, and I pray for grace.”
He is currently serving his sentence at FPC Pensacola, a minimum-security federal prison camp in Florida. According to the Federal Bureau of Prison’s online listing for incarcerated individuals, Quiros’s release date is set for Oct. 17, 2026.
He pleaded guilty in federal court in Vermont to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering and concealing material information.
Quiros was indicted in May 2019 along with Stenger and Kelly. All were charged in connection with a proposal to build a $110 million biomedical research center in Newport, known as AnC Bio Vermont.
Though the project raised more than $80 million from over 160 foreign investors through the federal EB-5 program, the project never got off the ground and was termed by regulators “nearly a complete fraud.”
Neither Taylor, nor federal prosecutors in Vermont who handled the case, could immediately be reached Tuesday afternoon for comment.
