Ted James Johnson Jr. insisted until the moment of sentencing that he never meant to cheat anyone.

But U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Wilson said a different picture had emerged last year at the jury trial where the one-time Giles County commissioner of the revenue and circuit court clerk was convicted of dozens of fraud charges. He said Johnson's Giles County investment businesses were "predatory" and had targeted "the recently widowed, the emotionally vulnerable and frequently the unsophisticated," costing them millions of dollars.

The judge recalled how Johnson took money from lifelong friends, promised huge returns, but never invested the money.

Then Wilson sentenced Johnson, 59, to about 16¹₂ years in prison. His former partner, Frank Graham Farrier Jr., 64, was sentenced to about seven years.

The two men were ordered to repay $2.9 million to investors, although attorneys on both sides agreed there was little chance this would happen because neither defendant has substantial assets or income. Johnson must forfeit his large home in Pearisburg, but authorities have said liens on it exceed its value.

Johnson and Farrier ran Mountain Investments and later Dogwood Farms, companies that began as investment firms but quickly became classic Ponzi schemes, a swindle named for Charles Ponzi, who briefly became rich by cheating investors in 1920.

Starting soon after Mountain Investments' 1992 launch, Johnson and Farrier used money from new investors to make interest payments to earlier investors, as well as to pay their own expenses. They portrayed the payments to investors as returns on commodities trading and other investments, but in reality little of the money was actually being used for trading.

Farrier, who pleaded guilty to fraud charges last year and testified against Johnson, was described both by Wilson and by his attorney, Randy Cargill of the public defender's office, as having been led into illegal activities by his partner.

Virginia Tech psychology professor Scott Geller, the only victim to speak at Tuesday's hearing, said he appreciated Farrier's courage in admitting his wrongdoing -- but regretted that his longtime tennis partner and friend had not had the courage to actually contact him and apologize.

Earlier in the case, Geller said he invested and lost about $90,000 -- although like others, he received some interest payments for a time.

David Bybee, a trial attorney with the U.S. Justice Department who prosecuted the case with Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennie Waering, said the $2.9 million restitution figure reflected the amount that investors gave Johnson and Farrier minus the payments the two men returned.

Bybee said people likely will never recover the money they lost, but he said he hoped the sentence would leave them thinking some justice was done.

"I hope they can now move on with their lives. I hope they can achieve some closure," Bybee said.

Partway through the nearly four-hour hearing, attorney Tony Anderson, who represented Johnson, said his client's deeds paled beside those of the namesake of the Ponzi scheme, much less the more recent Bernard Madoff investment scandal.

Anderson asked the court to consider Johnson's contributions as a public official before starting his financial businesses.

"He's not Darth Vader," Anderson said.