A former executive of a California solar power company was sentenced Tuesday to 6 1/2 years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $620 million in restitution for his role in a $1 billion fraud scheme, federal prosecutors said.

Ryan Guidry, 45, of Pleasant Hill pleaded guilty in 2020 to conspiracy and money laundering charges, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement.

Guidry was a one-time vice president of operations for DC Solar, based in Benicia in the San Francisco Bay Area. Between 2011 and 2018, the company marketed mobile solar generator units. The firm touted the trailer-mounted units as being able to provide emergency power for cellphone companies or lighting at sporting and other events.

‘SCAM BANKRUPT FRAUD’: FTX FOUNDER USED CONFUSING, ‘TECHNOCRATIC JARGON’ TO THROW OFF PUBLIC, INVESTOR SAYS

But executives started telling investors they could benefit from federal tax credits by buying the generators and leasing them back to DC Solar, which would then provide them to other companies for their use, prosecutors said.

In reality, DC Solar sold more generators than it made, used phony financial statements and lease contracts to conceal the fraud and in a classic Ponzi scheme repaid early investors with money from later ones, prosecutors said.

Some 9,000 of the approximately 17,000 generators that DC Solar claimed to have made didn't exist, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Among those suckered by the business were Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

GET FOX NATION BY CLICKING HERE

DC Solar founder Jeff Carpoff was sentenced in 2021 to 30 years in prison and ordered to pay $790.6 million in restitution for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering.

In 2021 and 2022 four other people, including Carpoff's wife Paulette Carpoff, were sentenced to prison in connection with the fraud while Ronald J. Roach of Walnut Creek could face up to 10 years in prison when he is sentenced in March, prosecutors said.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will undergo an overhaul in the wake of the nation's baby formula shortage, but no one at the agency will be reassigned or fired, Commissioner Robert Califf said Tuesday. 

Califf announced a "new, transformative vision" for the agency which will consolidate the regulators responsible for food safety under a new "Human Foods Program." However, this general restructuring of FDA agency components did not come with a specific plan to address the problems identified by an internal FDA review that hindered its response to the infant formula shortage. Additionally, when asked at a press conference, the commissioner said there were no plans to fire or reassign anyone involved for the agency's failures. 

Califf did acknowledge that there had been some "leadership changes" – the FDA's top food safety official, Frank Yiannas, resigned last week. In his resignation letter, Yiannas wrote that the structure of the foods program "significantly impaired the FDA's ability to operate as an integrated food team and protect the public."

"But the short answer is no one's going to be reassigned or fired because of the infant formula situation," Califf told reporters, according to Politico. 

BABY FORMULA SHORTAGE: FDA RESPONSE REPORT CITES OUTDATED SYSTEM, TRAINING ISSUES

The FDA was widely criticized by lawmakers last year for its delayed response to the baby formula shortage and its handling of a bacterial outbreak at an Abbott Nutrition production plant in Michigan.

Abbott's plant was shut down after the Cronobacter pathogen was detected in its formula and led to at least four infant illnesses – including two deaths. Abbott has denied a causal relationship between its products and the illnesses, but the company is now under criminal investigation by the Justice Department, the Wall Street Journal reported.

A whistleblower had tried to warn the FDA of problems at the Abbott facility in the fall of 2021, but government inspectors did not investigate the complaints until months later.

An internal review found that "inadequate processes and lack of clarity" related to the whistleblower complaints may have delayed the agency's response, as well as outdated technologies.

FDA PROPOSES LEAD LIMITS IN BABY FOOD

The report said the FDA's emergency response lacked clarity of roles between programmatic and incident command standard operating procedures; the agency needed effective mechanisms to rapidly engage with regulatory and public health partners to avoid confusion; its investigators received limited infant formula-specific training; funding limitations had stalled growth of the foods program; record-keeping practices were dated, and the FDA does not have the ability to manage supply chain issues. 

Califf testified to Congress that the FDA's response was "too slow and there were decisions that were suboptimal along the way." However, he blamed "mailroom issues" caused by the pandemic for the breakdown in the agency's response to whistleblower complaints. 

PARENTS FEAR BABY FORMULA COSTS COULD SPIKE AS SUPPLIES REMAIN LOW: ‘A REALLY HARD BLOW’

The FDA chief's reforms will generally address these issues and others raised by an external evaluation conducted by the Reagan-Udall Foundation by consolidating the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Office of Food Policy and Response, and components of the Office of Regulatory Affairs into a unified Human Foods Program. A new deputy commissioner for Human Foods will be hired to oversee the program and will report directly to the FDA commissioner. 

"The Deputy Commissioner will have decision-making authority over policy, strategy, and regulatory program activities within the Human Foods Program, as well as resource allocation and risk-prioritization," Califf said. 

Additionally, FDA will establish a Human Foods Advisory Committee consisting of outside experts to "advise on challenging and emerging issues in food safety, nutrition and innovative food technologies." 

"Creating a Human Foods Program under a single leader who reports directly to the Commissioner unifies and elevates the program while removing redundancies, enabling the agency to oversee human food in a more effective and efficient way," Califf said. 

Fox News' Julia Musto contributed to this report.