OPELIKA, Ala. (AP) — Kyle Sandler is only a few weeks out of federal prison, and he needs a job.
Sandler still owes $1,903,000 in restitution for running a two-year scheme in Opelika that defrauded investors, disillusioned a community, and briefly created an abortive presidential campaign by an eccentric entrepreneur who eventually died by his own hand in a Spanish prison.
The Lee County district attorney who helped send him to jail ended up behind bars himself for ethics violations.
Sandler, now in a halfway house in Montgomery, said he can’t sugarcoat his resume, which was displayed to the world last year in HBO Max’s “Generation Hustle.”
Sandler lost his family and 90% of his friends, he said, lying to people as he took their checks, stealing from people who called him a friend, while those same people were loaning him keys to their beach houses.
“The most devastating part is the people I hurt,” Sandler said during a phone interview.
“At the end of the day, I let the community down, I let myself down, I let my family down. But we were onto something great, and that’s why this was so devastating.”
Kyle Geoffrey Sandler, 46, is a Maryland transplant to Alabama who formed the Roundhouse in Opelika, as a launching pad for new tech companies, in October 2014.
Sandler…