The Couple Who Feds Say Scammed Berkshire Hathaway for Millions

Jeff Carpoff had a lot to celebrate as friends and business associates gathered at his company’s Christmas party last year.

The one-time auto mechanic and his wife, Paulette, had started a solar company about a decade earlier that was doing remarkably well -- so well that it could count Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. as an investor. Their business, making mobile solar generators, had afforded them lavish goodies. They owned more than 90 cars, from classic Fords and Plymouths to Bentleys, at least 20 properties, and even a professional baseball team in Martinez, just northeast of San Francisco.