Fayetteville man, 3 others sentenced in $18M fraud scheme

John Nock, a Fayetteville businessman who once owned the former Cosmopolitan Hotel in downtown Fayetteville, was one of four men sentenced last week in Fayetteville for participating in an eight-year investment fraud and money laundering scheme that defrauded over a dozen victims around the world out of more than $18 million.

According to a press release Monday (March 18) from the Department of Justice, Nock, 55, was sentenced on March 14 to 20 years and 10 months in prison; Brian Brittsan, 67, of Boise, Idaho, was sentenced on March 14 to 10 years in jail; Kevin Griffith, 68, of Orem, Utah, was sentenced on March 15 to 12 years and six months in prison; and Alexander Ituma, 57, of Lehi, Utah, was sentenced on March 15 to eight years and four months in jail.

Between 2013 and 2021, Nock, Brittsan, Griffith and Ituma colluded in an investment fraud operation under The Brittingham Group, an Arkansas-based company. The scheme falsely claimed access to exclusive investment opportunities, including deals involving the monetization of foreign bank guarantees.

Victims were deceived through misrepresented investment offerings and false assurances of fund safety. Promises of high returns within a short timeframe were made but never fulfilled. To cover their tracks, Nock and Brittsan directed victims to transfer funds to controlled bank accounts and fabricated documents to maintain the illusion of legitimacy. The ill-gotten funds were then funneled through a complex network of global bank accounts.

“For nearly a decade, the defendants brazenly and repeatedly lied to investors, defrauding them out of more than $18 million and laundering the proceeds of their crime through a complex web of bank accounts around the world,” Nicole M. Argentieri, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said in the release. “The defendants have now been held to account for their crimes. The sentences imposed last week reflect the Justice Department’s commitment to rooting out investment fraud and protecting Americans’ financial security.”

The four men were indicted two years ago. In August 2023, they were convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, multiple counts of wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Nock was also convicted of money laundering for using victim funds to pay a prior debt.

DEVELOPMENT RESUME
Nock was formerly a real estate developer in Northwest Arkansas. In 2006, Nock and business partner Richard Alexander bought the former Radisson hotel in downtown Fayetteville and renamed it The Cosmopolitan. The 15-story hotel passed into receivership and was acquired in December 2010 by ANB Ventures LLC, a company created by the FDIC to sort through the loans made by Bentonville bank ANB Financial NA.

Federal regulators shut down the lender in May 2008, halting Nock and Alexander’s multimillion-dollar effort to renovate the property. The hotel has changed hands multiple times since. It was later named The Chancellor and is known today as Graduate Fayetteville.

In the late 2000s, Nock was part of a development group that proposed an 840-acre mixed-use development west of the Cato Springs Road exit, just off the Interstate 49 interchange in south Fayetteville.

South Pass Development Co. LLC, led by Nock, Alexander, and Mitchell Massey, led the project. It was to include about 3,600 single-family homes, churches, a school, a 200-acre city park, and about 500 acres of green space.

Chambers Bank recovered the land in August 2010. Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones bought 256 acres for $7.3 million in December 2014, then donated it to the Razorback Foundation, the private fundraising arm of the University of Arkansas athletics department.

In the mid-2000s, Nock proposed a 550-home development in Greenland called Greenland Hills. However, the subdivision was unpopular because Nock wanted to use a septic system instead of a city sewer.

The wastewater issue became moot, however, when the recession hit. Nock and his team floundered, and Greenland Hills ended up as a bank foreclosure.