Swindler Southwick is denied parole

Convicted swindler Val Southwick has been denied parole.

In a decision released Monday, the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole opted instead to schedule a rehearing for Southwick in June 2025. The 63-year-old inmate will be allowed to ask for release again when he is 80.

A rationale sheet shows aggravating factors outweighed the mitigating ones in the parole board's majority vote against release. Southwick was hit for abusing a position of trust, numerous victims, motive, obstruction of justice, relative vulnerability of victims, disciplinary problems in prison, extent of community fear if released and overall rehabilitative issues.

The parole board did give him credit for accepting responsibility, the fact that this is his first incarceration and a support system on the outside if he were ever to be released.

Southwick is serving nine consecutive one-to-15-year prison terms for securities fraud in one of the state's largest-ever fraud schemes. Investigators said Southwick bilked more than 800 people out of at least $140 million in a Ponzi scheme that lasted more than 20 years.

Southwick's "VesCor" enterprises raised more than $180 million from investors for property developments. The Utah Division of Securities said in a report that Southwick lured his victims with promises of high returns and trading on his membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, emphasizing that he was a "respectable LDS gentleman who was more concerned about the consequences of the afterlife than those in this life if he lied to investors." — Ben Winslow