Daniel Strader, who carried out one of the largest financial fraud schemes in Polk County history, has left prison after 26 years.
A Polk County jury convicted the former Lakeland resident in 1995 of deceiving 56 investors, most of them elderly, out of $2.3 million in a Ponzi scheme on 238 counts of theft, conspiracy, securities fraud, and racketeering.
Strader, then 37, received a sentence of 45 years in prison but has left prison after 26 years.
His case received widespread coverage, in part because he was the son of the late Karl Strader, then pastor of the defunct Carpenters Home Church in Lakeland. After its founding in the 1980s, it was Polk County’s largest church and among the largest in the country.
The Florida Department of Corrections released Strader, now 63, on Oct. 1 from Kissimmee Community Release Center.
Strader’s brother, Pastor Stephen Strader of Ignited Church in Lakeland, did not respond to a phone message.