A Spokane man convicted of stealing money from a homeless woman who gave him her savings to rent a home is headed to prison. But it wasn’t the theft that earned Unters “Chuck” Love, 58, a 27-month sentence. It was a bail-jumping charge he accrued after he bonded out of jail on his theft charges.

Dale Edward Lowell just needed a bit more money. A few dollars here and there – anything to help him make another investment in a stock market he was sure he could figure out. It never worked. That’s what the former North Idaho real estate agent told a federal judge Wednesday when he was sentenced to three years in prison for a Ponzi scheme that collected more than $2 million from duped investors in the Sandpoint and Coeur d’Alene area.

A man who authorities say used his connections as a real estate agent and church pianist in North Idaho to dupe investors out of $2.2 million has been sentenced to three years in federal prison.

A man accused of stealing from the Davenport Hotel after being hired under a stolen identity has been sentenced in federal court in Louisiana for a similar scheme. William Joseph Johnson Jr., 55, is to serve about five years in prison for charges related to a $77,000 fraud he perpetrated against a hotel chain based in Natchitoches, La., between October 2006 and January 2007.

A former Sandpoint real estate agent has pleaded guilty to six federal felonies for a Ponzi scheme that bilked investors out of $2 million. Dale Edward Lowell, 59, now of Colbert, faces up to 20 years in prison when he’s sentenced in October, but a plea deal approved Tuesday in U.S. District Court calls for prosecutors to ask for a low sentence and $1.7 million in restitution.

A former Washington legislative candidate and convicted conman will spend five years in prison for a scheme that bilked a Coeur d’Alene woman out of her high-end riverside home and drew the wrath of a federal judge. “I think the bottom line in all reality is that you’re a con artist,” U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge said to Travis “T.J.” Sneed before sentencing him Tuesday in Coeur d’Alene to 63 months in prison. “You say one thing and you do something different. And it’s not a one-time situation.”