The long federal trial of a former Giles County official-turned-financier ended Thursday with the word "guilty" recited 37 times, the sobs of family members, and Ted James Johnson Jr. turning to a marshal and holding out his hands for the cuffs.

Johnson, 58, was convicted of taking the life savings of friends and members of his church. He was convicted after a 2 ¹₂-week trial in which his former partner testified that money investors thought would be traded in commodities or futures markets was actually used for the men's personal expenses.

Johnson's businesses, Mountain Investments and Dogwood Farms, operated in what is often called a Ponzi scheme, named for Charles Ponzi, a swindler who made millions in 1920 in Boston. The scheme involves telling investors their money is being used for some profit-generating purpose but actually making payments to them with money taken from new investors.

The arrangement can only work as long as enough new investors are found. Johnson's former partner, Frank Graham Farrier Jr., testified that the search for new money became increasingly frantic as the years went on.

Johnson, who was a commissioner of the revenue and circuit court clerk in Giles County before starting Mountain Investments in 1992, took the witness stand Tuesday. He insisted that he did not mean to defraud anyone and that he just couldn't find a reliable computer system to use in market trading.

"I always thought the money would come. ... I had all these different ideas I thought would be successful," Johnson said.

He argued that the money people gave him should be seen as loans rather than investments, and that he used whatever money was at hand to make promised payments.

Prosecutors showed that a relatively small amount of the money Johnson received ever went to trading accounts, and that he posted a loss from trading each year.

Johnson said he wanted to repay investors by selling land he owned. But in 2004, he, Farrier and Dogwood Farms declared bankruptcy and listed debts to investors of more than $8 million. The land sold for just $1.3 million.

Jurors convicted Johnson on 37 charges: 18 counts of mail fraud, two of wire fraud, one of securities fraud, 13 of money laundering, and one each of being an unregistered commodities pool operator, embezzling commodity pool funds and commodity pool fraud.

He was found not guilty on one count of mail fraud and two counts of lying during a bankruptcy proceeding.

Farrier pleaded guilty to six charges last month.

Dates have not been set for either man's sentencing. Farrier remains free. Johnson was taken into custody immediately after the jury's verdict. U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Wilson ordered that a mental evaluation be part of Johnson's pre-sentencing report.

Still undecided is a forfeiture action that would take Johnson's 8,000-square-foot home in Pearisburg.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennie Waering and David Bybee, a Justice Department trial attorney who came from Washington, said the case rested on years of work by the FBI, U.S. Postal Service and Virginia State Corporation Commission.

Reached by telephone Thursday night, Charles Wayne Gentry, a former Giles County resident who sold his home and business to invest with Johnson, and who testified against him, said he is disappointed in a man he still considers a friend.

"I'm not happy that he's going to serve time, but I guess that's the only thing that can happen," Gentry said.