A federal judge in Utah sentenced Matthew Shane Perkins to 180 months in prison this month after he spent more than two years posing as a self-taught trading prodigy who claimed he could consistently beat the stock market without a losing day. Perkins, 47, of Washington City, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in February after prosecutors said he took at least $89 million from roughly 200 investors, lost much of it in his own day trading, and hid the losses behind falsified account statements. The case is among the largest investment-fraud prosecutions the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Utah has brought, and it left retirees and ordinary savers among its victims with little realistic chance of getting their money back.
A ‘Brilliant Trader’ Who Rarely Lost, According to His Own Paperwork
Between August 2023 and November 2025, Perkins operated a company called Forged Oak LLC and struck a business arrangement with the principal of RentDue Capital LLC, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Utah. RentDue recruited investors into three separate funds through social media, its company website and in-person meetings, then forwarded the money it raised to Perkins to day trade on the funds’ behalf. Perkins marketed himself to RentDue, and through it to investors, as a trader who rarely suffered losing days, backing up that image with regular performance reports showing steady gains. Prosecutors say the reports were fiction almost from the start.
Free retirement updates: A quiet rule change can shrink your Social Security or Medicare check, and no one warns you. The free Retirement Shield newsletter catches these early and tells you what to do. Get it free.
An Altered Statement Claimed $133 Million When Less Than $13 Million Remained
Court documents describe a pattern of falsified daily trading records and doctored brokerage statements that Perkins used to keep RentDue and its investors from learning how badly the funds were performing. In early November 2025, Perkins gave RentDue an altered brokerage statement representing that the funds held more than $133 million — at a time when the real balance had fallen below $13 million. Unbeknownst to investors sending in fresh money, Perkins had already lost tens of millions of dollars trading and had diverted millions more for personal use. The gap between the fabricated $133 million balance and the actual sum on hand gives some sense of how far the scheme had already collapsed before it became public.
More than 200 investors ultimately lost money in the scheme, and many of them, prosecutors said, lost their life savings funding a lifestyle built on other people’s investments. U.S. District Judge Ann Marie McIff Allen ordered Perkins to pay $77,683,091.96 in restitution — just over $77.6 million — reflecting the outstanding victim losses investigators could document, on top of the 180-month prison term and three years of supervised release that follow it.
A Down Payment, a Cabin, an Airplane and an $80,000 Hunting Trip
Rather than trading his way out of the losses, Perkins spent misappropriated investor money on a down payment for a home, a cabin, luxury vehicles, an airplane and an $80,000 hunting trip in British Columbia, among other personal expenses, according to court documents. U.S. Attorney Melissa Holyoak, whose office prosecuted the case alongside the FBI’s Salt Lake City Field Office, IRS Criminal Investigation and the Utah Division of Securities, said the sentence was meant to reflect the scale of harm to hundreds of victims who financed that lifestyle without knowing it. Investigators from the FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation, who worked the case for more than a year, both noted after sentencing that no prison term or restitution order can fully undo the financial damage to families who trusted Perkins with their savings.
Restitution orders of this size are rarely collected in full, since defendants who have already spent the money on depreciating assets like vehicles and travel typically have little left to seize. What is recoverable — the home, the cabin, the airplane and any remaining vehicles — will likely go through forfeiture or civil recovery proceedings separate from the criminal case, a process that can take years and often returns victims only a fraction of what the $77,683,091.96 restitution order formally awards them.
Why Self-Reported ‘No Losing Days’ Track Records Warrant Scrutiny
Perkins’s pitch to RentDue, and through it to investors, rested on a claim that fraud examiners consistently flag as a warning sign: a trading record showing steady gains with essentially no losing stretches over more than two years. Real markets produce losing days and losing months even for skilled professional traders, and a strategy that reports none, quarter after quarter, is the kind of pattern the Utah Division of Securities, the FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation say they scrutinize closely once a complaint or referral reaches them. The Utah Division of Securities, which investigated the case alongside the two federal agencies, oversees registration and enforcement for investment activity within the state.
The three RentDue Capital funds that channeled money to Perkins operated for more than two years before the fraud became public, a run that let losses compound well past the point any single investor’s initial stake could plausibly have been recovered had the scheme been caught earlier. Many of the roughly 200 investors were drawn in through the same social media presence and company website RentDue used to recruit for all three funds, meaning new money kept arriving even as Perkins’s real trading balance was already collapsing well below what his falsified statements showed.
Inside the guide
A 5-tab Excel tracker pre-filled with all 51 state unclaimed-property offices, the source vault of 12 official places money sits, and a step-by-step filing walkthrough.
The Settlement & Refund Recovery System includes a 36-page guide, a 5-tab Excel tracker pre-filled with all 51 state unclaimed-property offices and the four-date rule for reading a settlement notice.
Open The Settlement & Refund Recovery System.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by The Financial Wire editorial team.
Warren Cohen is a finance writer based in Phoenix, Arizona, covering personal finance topics including credit, banking, and beginner investing. He earned his degree in business administration from Arizona State University and began his career working in consumer finance, where he gained direct experience with lending and credit systems. He now writes for personal finance websites and fintech platforms, focusing on clear, practical content that helps readers make informed financial decisions.
