A Scottsdale man could face up to five years in prison for embezzling $8.8 million from an employee benefit plan and spending the cash on things like big game hunting trips, taxidermy, jewelry, casino gambling and even direct payments to his girlfriend.
James Vincent Campbell, 49, pleaded guilty to one count of theft from an Employee Retirement Income Security Act plan, the Justice Department said in a news release on Sept. 29.
Campbell is the CEO and founder of Axim Fringe Solutions Group, a company that processes employee benefits for people who work for federal contractors.
Workers contributed money to the fund believing it would go to their health insurance and 401(k) accounts.
“Instead, James Vincent stole directly from these accounts by embezzling
funds and putting more than $8 million into his own pocket,” Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva said in a written statement.
A federal judge in Maryland will sentence Campbell later, the DOJ said. Campbell did not respond to The Republic’s request for comment.
According to the DOJ, Axim was responsible for forwarding money to insurance carriers and retirement accounts. Before the company did so, prosecutors claim that Campbell pooled the dollars in a master trust account and used some of the cash for his own benefit.
Over nine years, prosecutors said Campbell made 135 unauthorized withdrawals from the pool. He withdrew $2.5 million from 2015 to 2024, which was “beyond the legitimate fees owed to Axim.”
Campbell used a “significant portion” of the stolen funds for big game hunting trips in Alaska, Africa and elsewhere, the Justice Department said. He also spent some of it on taxidermy, jewelry and casino gambling. He made direct payments to his girlfriend with the money, too, the DOJ said.
Campbell, a Marine Corps veteran, moved his company to Scottsdale from Maryland in 2022.
“Once Campbell relocated Axim to Arizona, he continued the thefts by secretly charging clients up to five times the amount of fees they owed to Axim,” the Justice Department said in a news release. “In sum, Campbell unlawfully converted more than $8.8 million from Axim’s clients using both withdrawals from the master account and repetitively charging client fees.”
Podcast appearance
Campbell discussed his military service and his work with employee benefits in a 2023 appearance on the #RockstarsRocking with Eric Silverman podcast.
On the show, Campbell said he began working for UnitedHealthcare after he left the military, where his role was to get brokers to sell the product. That’s when he realized how lucrative being a broker could be, he said.
“I saw all my brokers making money,” Campbell said. “They had the nice cars and the nice suits and everything.”
He was joined on the podcast by Patrick Moore, a fellow veteran whom the podcast host identified as the president of Axim. Silverman jokingly referred to Moore as Campbell’s “partner in crime.”
Campbell founded other companies, including one called TrUcare, which Moore also worked for, according to the podcast.
Campbell was candid about the challenges of being an entrepreneur.
“I’ve put myself in the poorhouse,” Campbell said. “More times than I care to admit.”
At the time, Campbell said he hoped to see “bad actors” leave the government contractor benefits industry, adding that he suspected many would due to new transparency laws.
“A lot of them will go away because the clients are gonna start to see that — ‘Oh my gosh, we’re paying you how much? For doing what?’” Campbell said.
Stephanie Murray covers national politics and the Trump administration for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. She co-hosts “The Gaggle,” The Republic’s weekly politics podcast. Reach her at stephanie.murray@usatodayco.com, on X and TikTok @stephanie_murr and on Instagram @stephaniemurray.news.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Scottsdale man could face up to 5 years in prison for embezzling $8.8M
