A Florida con artist who promised hundreds of families their kids would hit home runs at his phantom sports camps got thrown a curveball by the justice system instead, sentenced to 30 months in prison for his foul play. Mehdi Belhassan, 53, from Tampa, will also face two years of supervised release, and has been ordered to pay up over half a million dollars in restitution to his victims, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Massachusetts.
Boston caught wind of his scheme and shut him down, Belhassan's scam had already cashed out around $575,427 from over 300 hapless families who thought they'd scored a summer slam dunk for their kids in the process he even tried to pull a fast one on a financing company, using a bogus contract with a college to secure operational dough for his invented camps. The funds, instead of nurturing young athletic prowess, fueled Belhassan’s high rolling lifestyle, court evidence showed—and soon, with no permits and no place to play, the whole deceitful game went south.
Back in October 2023, after a six-day trial that saw jurors bat around the evidence, Belhassan was found guilty on two counts of wire fraud. The outcome: he's now facing his own kind of lock-up, far from the sunny fields of any sports camp or Las Vegas casino, as reported by the office of Acting United States Attorney Joshua S. Levy and Special Agent in Charge Jodi Cohen of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Boston Division, the case was handled by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kriss Basil and Alathea E. Porter.
While Belhassan might have thought he’d hit the jackpot, spending ill-gotten funds on Sin City's glittering temptations rather than the sports camps he promised, justice was not willing to gamble on leniency, the court's clear message is one that cheats, and fraudsters don't simply walk off the field scot-free, but instead, they find themselves in a whole different ballgame—one with strict rules, serious penalties, and where the only running done is running out of luck.
