California Skydiving Instructor Sentenced for Fraud Over Unauthorized Courses

Skydivers land at Marina Green in San Francisco on Aug. 5, 2009. John Shearer/Getty Images for T-Mobile

A California man who trained skydiving instructors but in unauthorized courses—with one of his trainees having died during a 2016 tandem dive with an 18-year-old high school graduate—has been sentenced to two years in prison.

Robert Allen Pooley, 49, of Acampo, was sentenced on Sept. 30 after being convicted in May of wire fraud related to unauthorized tandem skydiving instructor courses in San Joaquin County, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced in a statement.

Pooley obtained his tandem examiner certification in 2010 from the U.S. Parachute Association (USPA) and Uninsured United Parachute Technologies LLC (UPT), a manufacturer of tandem parachute systems, the statement said. The tandem instructor certifications Pooley issued allowed his students to perform tandem jumps with the public both in the United States and internationally.

However, his certification was suspended in 2015, prohibiting him from independently training future skydiving instructors.

Despite his suspension, Pooley continued running unauthorized USPA and UPT tandem instructor rating courses, concealing his suspension from candidates, and even assisting students to fill out rating paperwork to create the false impression that they would receive legitimate certifications from his courses, the statement said.

Pooley also used a digital image of another properly-rated examiner’s signature to sign off on the training he had provided, even though the examiner was not in the country at the time.

He accepted numerous students from around the world in 2016, including those from South Korea, Chile, and Mexico. He charged approximately $1,100 for these courses and conducted them at a skydiving business in Acampo called the Parachute Center, the DOJ said.

That same year, one such student and a customer fell to their deaths in a tandem skydiving accident after both the main and reserve parachutes failed to open, the DOJ said. The two victims were 25-year-old Yong Kwon and 18-year-old Tyler Turner.

The publication additionally reported that the Parachute Center has seen 28 deaths since its opening in 1985.

In 2021, Turner’s family was awarded a $40 million judgment against the skydiving school’s owner, Bill Dause, but the family recently told SFGate that they hadn’t received the money.

Pooley was not charged in relation to Kwon or Turner’s deaths. However, U.S. District Judge William B. Shubb enhanced Pooley’s sentence after finding that Pooley’s actions involved “a conscious or reckless risk of death or serious bodily injury.”

After the deaths, many victims of Pooley’s scheme requested refunds when they realized their documents were not valid. But he did not repay them, the DOJ said. As a result, several students had to pay for entirely new tandem instructor courses at other locations.