March 10 will be a day of destiny for Wayzata businessman Tom Petters.
U.S. District Judge Richard Kyle served notice in federal court Monday that Petters will be sentenced on that date.
Petters was found guilty in early December on 20 counts of fraud, money laundering and conspiracy for engineering a $3.65 billion Ponzi scheme. Federal sentencing guidelines call for a sentence from 30 years to life in prison.
Petters, 52, also faces potential fines and forfeiture issues with the government. His business and personal assets are controlled by a court-appointed receiver.
Attorneys for Petters have said they intend to appeal his conviction.
Petters, whose business empire ranged from Sun County Airlines to the catalog-based retailer Fingerhut, has been in jail since October 2008 after law enforcement raided his corporate campus and his home, looking for evidence of the decade-long investment fraud.
Five co-defendants who earlier pleaded guilty for their involvement with Petters and cooperated with the government investigation also await sentencing.
Exhibits from the trial of Tom Petters to go online.
A couple of days after he'd won the biggest case of his career against Tom Petters, and the largest fraud case in state history, I met Joe Dixon, assistant U.S. attorney, for coffee and asked him how he was doing.