Metro Display Founder Gets Prison Sentence

Jean Claude Leroyer, founder of an Orange County bus stop advertising firm that defrauded more than 1,100 investors of $46.4 million between 1986 and 1991, was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison. Also sentenced in federal court in Santa Ana were three salesmen recently convicted of marketing fraudulent investments in the Irvine-based company, Metro Display Advertising, and the company’s former chief financial officer. Leroyer, 54, of Fountain Valley, had pleaded guilty in October 1996 to multiple counts of mail fraud and filing false tax returns. His wife, Karen Leroyer, 47, had pleaded guilty at the same time to charges of fling false tax returns. She is scheduled to be sentenced next month. Leroyer began selling investments in bus stop advertising in 1986. He marketed bus stop shelters for $10,000 each and told investors that they would receive a 20% annual return on their investments from the proceeds that the firm received from selling advertising space. Only about half of the shelters sold to investors were ever installed, government investigators said.