A former Chapel Hill transportation engineer was sentenced to nearly four years in prison and was ordered to pay almost $1 million to his victims Tuesday after pleading guilty in federal court to a Ponzi investment-fraud scheme.
Kumar Arun Neppalli, 57, pleaded guilty in September to 17 counts of wire fraud, committed between December 2017 and May 2021, according to court documents. He resigned from his traffic planning job with the town of Chapel Hill in November 2021, after filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
“Neppalli was a conman running a classic ‘affinity fraud,’ targeting Indian-American investors in the Triangle for their hard-earned savings,” U.S. Attorney Michael Easley said. “It was a pure Ponzi scheme — stoking false hopes of financial success, but using new investor money to pay off earlier investors, while masquerading those payments as legitimate profits.”
Neppalli had worked for the town since 2000 and was a widely regarded member of the Triangle’s Indian American community, previously serving as vice president and president of the Triangle Area Telugu Association, and as a former board member with the Hindu Society of North Carolina. He also served for 11 years as president of his Twin Lakes Master Association in Cary.