It’s a different jury, in a different courthouse, but otherwise the situation before onetime radio star Marty Tirrell is strikingly familiar.
Tirrell, who reigned on the airwaves for two decades beginning with the region’s first sports talk program in 1995, is on trial this week for federal wire fraud charges.
Prosecutors allege the former self-described “Mouth of the Midwest” encouraged investors to give him money for a luxury ticket-flipping scheme, which he used for personal expenses and gambling, costing them $1.5 million.
The indictment, filed in October, comes after Tirrell pleaded guilty in 2021 to similar wire fraud charges, again claiming $1.5 million in damages for a fraudulent ticket-flipping scheme. Tirrell was sentenced to nearly 3.5 years in prison in that case before being granted supervised release in 2023.
This time, Tirrell is taking has case to trial. During opening statements Monday, July 13, prosecutor Joseph Lubben described Tirrell’s actions as “a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme” in which Tirrell claimed to have discounted access to desirable event tickets and to have guaranteed buyers lined up, including companies such as Geico and American Express.
Witnesses will include investors who counted Tirrell as a friend and who gave, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide capital for his scheme, Lubben said.
“The evidence will show the defendant betrayed their trust, lied to them, that the ticket deals didn’t exist,” he said.
Instead, he said, evidence will show Tirrell spent hundreds of thousands to cover sports gambling losses — another commonality with his prior case — and other personal expenses. To keep the money coming, he used money from new investors to pay supposed profits on older investments until, ultimately, he ran out of additional investors and the scheme faltered.
The only tickets Tirrell actually bought, Lubben said, were a handful that he gave directly to investors, supposedly as a demonstration of the ongoing business.
Defense attorney Jessica Donels, in her opening, acknowledged that investors had suffered losses, but she described them as high-stakes gamblers who fronted money knowing “risk is the name of the game.”
Donels said the government’s case will be hampered by sloppy bookkeeping and witnesses’ conflicts of interest, but that, ultimately, the people who gave Tirrell money knew what they were getting into.
“At the end of the day, they each lost money,” she said. “But can the goverment prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Mr. Tirrell wasn’t doing, wasn’t trying to do, what he promised, and wasn’t acting in good faith?”
Tirrell’s trial will continue with testimony this week. He faces 11 separate wire fraud charges and, potentially, multiple years in prison if convicted.
William Morris covers courts for the Des Moines Register. He can be contacted at wrmorris2@registermedia.com or 715-573-8166.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Former radio star Marty Tirrell begins second federal fraud trial
Reporting by William Morris, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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By William Morris, Des Moines Register | USA TODAY Network
