A federal judge in Atlanta handed down the maximum prison term the law allows to the man behind what prosecutors call likely the largest Ponzi scheme in Georgia history. Todd Burkhalter is now serving 20 years for a fraud that took in roughly $380 million from more than 2,000 investors, many of whom, prosecutors say, he pushed to drain their children’s college funds and pull early from retirement accounts to chase a guaranteed return that never existed. The same court also ordered him to repay $233,777,763.82. Whether that number ever becomes real money in a victim’s hands is a separate question, and the record in cases like this one suggests the honest answer is probably not most of it.
A pitch built to drain retirement and college accounts
Between September 2020 and June 2024, Drive Planning LLC marketed two investment programs to the public under Todd Burkhalter’s direction: the “Real Estate Acceleration Loan,” or REAL, and the “Cash Out Real Estate Fund,” or CORE Fund. Neither required an investor to be accredited, and the pitch explicitly encouraged people to fund a stake with retirement savings, personal savings, or a new line of credit. REAL promised a guaranteed 10% return every three months, supposedly earned from short-term bridge loans to real estate developers. The CORE Fund promised 10% every six months, or 22% a year for up to three years, marketed as “100% Passive Income from Tax Liens” that was pooled, government-protected, and fully collateralized. None of it worked the way investors were told.
Prosecutors say Burkhalter ran REAL as a Ponzi scheme from its first dollar, according to the Justice Department’s account of the case. After Drive Planning took in its first $50,000 REAL investment in September 2020, Burkhalter used at least $21,000 of it to repay an earlier investor rather than fund any loan. To make the collateral claims look real, the government says Drive Planning generated fraudulent “collateral sheets” listing specific properties, some of which did not exist, attached to fabricated valuations. Even after the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into the company in March 2024, Burkhalter and others at Drive Planning kept soliciting tens of millions of dollars more from new investors.
Free retirement updates: Keep more of your Social Security and savings with plain-English updates on the changes, deadlines, and costly mistakes retirees miss. Subscribe free.
A $233.8 million number enters the court record
U.S. District Judge Tiffany R. Johnson sentenced Burkhalter, 55, of St. Petersburg, Florida, to 20 years in federal prison on August 14, 2026, followed by three years of supervised release, for the wire fraud charge he pleaded guilty to that January under a plea agreement in which prosecutors had conditionally promised to recommend a lighter term of 17 and a half years. The court went further than the government’s own recommendation. Judge Johnson also ordered Burkhalter to pay $233,777,763.82 in restitution to victims — a specific, individually calculated number, not a round estimate, and one that sits well below the roughly $380 million prosecutors say more than 2,000 investors put into the scheme overall.
Two other Drive Planning executives were sentenced the same week. David Bradford, the company’s chief operating officer, who had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud for his role in the CORE Fund scheme, received four years and three months and was ordered to pay $4,297,878.16 in restitution. Julie Edwards, the chief administrative officer, who had pleaded guilty to laundering the scheme’s proceeds, received two years and was ordered to pay $630,000. Both figures are far smaller than Burkhalter’s, reflecting each defendant’s more limited role in the fraud.
Why a restitution order is a promise, not a payment
A federal restitution order is a legal judgment, not a check written by the government. Collection depends entirely on what the person who owes it still has, or can be made to give up over time. The Government Accountability Office’s own review of the federal system shows how wide that gap usually runs: across fiscal years 2014 through 2016, federal courts ordered $33.9 billion in criminal restitution nationwide, but U.S. Attorney’s Offices collected just $2.95 billion of it during that same three-year window. By the end of fiscal year 2016, $110 billion in previously ordered restitution was still outstanding, and the government’s own accounting identified $100 billion of that as effectively uncollectible because the people who owed it did not have the money to pay.
Burkhalter’s restitution debt will be tracked and pursued for years through liens, wage garnishment, and interception of tax refunds, the standard tools U.S. Attorney’s Offices use to chase these debts long after sentencing. But those tools only work against money and property that still exist. Per that same Justice Department account, Burkhalter spent investor money on a yacht, a luxury condo in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, multiple luxury vehicles, chartered private jets, and roughly $320,000 on clothing, jewelry, and beauty treatments. Some of that property may eventually be located and sold. Much of the rest of the money — the cash paid out disguised as “returns” to earlier investors, the way a Ponzi scheme functions by definition — is not sitting anywhere waiting to be collected.
A separate, faster-moving case is trying to recover what’s left
A parallel civil case has been running since before Burkhalter was ever sentenced. The Securities and Exchange Commission sued Drive Planning and Burkhalter in August 2024, days after the fraud became public, and won an emergency asset freeze and a court-appointed receiver over the company. That receiver, Kenneth D. Murena, is responsible for locating, recovering, and selling off whatever Drive Planning assets remain, then distributing the proceeds back to investors — a process that runs independently of, and generally faster than, the criminal restitution Burkhalter now owes. But a receiver can only sell what still exists. Money a Ponzi scheme already paid out as fake “guaranteed returns” to earlier investors, or spent on a lifestyle that included a yacht and a Mexican vacation property, does not reappear simply because a receiver has legal authority to look for it.
For the investors prosecutors say Burkhalter pushed toward their children’s tuition accounts and their own retirement balances, the case now leaves two separate numbers on the table: the $233,777,763.82 a federal court has ordered him to repay, and whatever the receivership and the government’s collection efforts eventually turn into actual cash. Those two figures rarely match in cases this size. The Government Accountability Office was already documenting that exact gap, at a national scale, years before Drive Planning took in its first investor dollar.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
More Financial Reading
