Victor Smith pleaded guilty Aug. 19 to theft of property worth more than $300,000 and was sentenced to 25 years in prison, the Denison Police Department said. Police said the people who lost money were Grayson County residents whom Smith had met while officiating youth sports, and that he collected from them over a period of years.
Grayson County shares the Texoma region with Cooke and Fannin counties under the Texoma Council of Governments, which estimated the three-county population at about 231,000 in 2024.
The department said officers opened the investigation after complaints about Smith's financial dealings with those contacts. Police said he was arrested Sept. 30, 2025, on a charge of theft over $300,000 and booked into the Grayson County Jail on a $100,000 bond.
Police records reviewed for this report place the amount above $300,000 and do not state a $360,000 total.
That dollar threshold set the charge. Section 31.03 of the Texas Penal Code makes theft of $300,000 or more a first-degree felony, and Section 12.32 sets the punishment at five to 99 years or life, with a fine of up to $10,000 available. Smith's 25-year term falls inside that range. A separate provision, Section 31.09, lets prosecutors add individual thefts together when they are committed under one scheme or a continuing course of conduct, which is how a run of smaller payments collected over years can reach the state's top felony tier.
Source: Denison Police Department; Texas Penal Code §§ 31.03 and 12.32
Long sentences for financial crime are not new to this corner of North Texas, though the largest have come out of federal court in Sherman. Prosecutors for the Eastern District of Texas announced in 2025 that a McKinney man received more than 24 years for a COVID-fraud conspiracy and that a Dallas County man received 20 years plus an order to repay more than $14 million. Another 2025 announcement covered defendants in romance scam and investment fraud schemes who stole at least $17 million. Those were federal prosecutions, separate from Smith's state case.
The Federal Trade Commission reported that people lost about $16 billion to fraud nationally in 2025, the highest total in its records and roughly a quarter above the previous year, with imposter scams the most-reported category. FBI complaint data for Texas shows older residents carrying a heavy share of the damage, with victims over 60 filing more than 14,000 reports.
Source: FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, 2025 annual report, Texas state table
The FBI's national figure counts cyber-enabled crime. Denison police described Smith's case as one that began with complaints from people he met while officiating youth sports over several years.
_Editor's note: Everyone charged with a crime is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law._
Join the conversation
Comments