Michael Winans feels the jury never heard the truth during his trial that accused him of running a 8 million dollar ponzi scheme.
Embarrassing one of Gospel’s first families, Winans was sentenced to 14 years in jail and left on the hook for money generated from a fake oil investment bond scheme.
In the first video below, Winans accepts some blame but said he never committed wire fraud and much of the money was taken by middle men. In the second video, Winans released a song about his case and his strength in God.
Say’s Winans,
“There are numerous stories out there that claim I stole millions of dollars from innocent people. That is not true.
Now, I’m not blameless. And I’m willing to take responsibility for my mistakes. But I am not willing to take responsibility for what others did in my name. Let it be clear: I did not start this investment. My name was used without my permission to solicit money by a lot of people – including Tim Hunt, the creator of the fraudulent oil investment.
“Much of the money that was collected by others that was supposedly going to me never even came to me. I didn’t even get the money. And if that’s not enough, to make matters worse, my attorney failed to do his job for me. He told me not to comment at all on the case – even though that I wanted to explain that i paid back a lot of people.
My attorney…he failed to make an objection to the claim I was responsible for losses by people I didn’t know and money that I never even received. He failed to tell the court about the 75 percent – actually more than that – that I paid back to investors. And in order to do that, I had to use my own money from the music business at the time.”
Michael Winans is due to report to prison soon, but his new attorneys are trying to get him a new trial.
Song – “My Side of the Story” by: Mike Winans from Mike Winans on Vimeo.
