Northwest Florida sports talk radio host Scott McKinney has pleaded guilty to charges involved in an investment. But other charges may be coming against him in other states.

McKinney pleaded guilty to nine counts of theft and one count each of fraud, money laundering and racketeering and will serve up to five years in prison, according to the Northwest Florida Daily News.

Sentencing is set for Feb. 24.

A message left for McKinney at Star Broadcasting in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., where he works, wasn't returned Friday. The person answering the phone said he expected him to be back at work Monday.

McKinney, a Booneville, MS native whose show had been heard on some 115 stations from Texas to South Carolina, was accused of scamming investors in the Florida Panhandle of more than $100,000 after he moved there in 2005.

The two Mississippi men and a Nashville man said last year that McKinney scammed them out of about $140,000 before he moved to Florida.

"It certainly is good that he finally admitted what he was doing for years to his investors," said Herbert Rogers of New Albany, who maintains he lost $75,000 in a scam to fund McKinney's business in 2001 and 2002.

The men say they've sent complaints to Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood's office.

Hood's policy is neither to confirm nor deny ongoing investigations.
McKinney's alleged scams involved him selling more than 100 percent ownership in his company.

Rogers said he was ready to go forward with pressing for a prosecution of McKinney in Mississippi pending the result of his sentencing in Florida.

According to the Daily News' report, McKinney will serve a year and a day in prison at least and could face five years.

The prosecutor in the Florida case, Russ Edgar, said the plea deal was made to keep McKinney from serving his sentence in a local jail.

"We don't want our victims to hear him broadcasting from the county jail on a work release," Edgar told the newspaper.

Rogers said he was surprised to learn McKinney had pleaded guilty. He was planning on attending McKinney's trial, which was set to begin Monday.

"If he gets less than three years, I'm definitely ready to go forward," Rogers said. "They give him four or five, that's OK."

Wilkes Bryan of West Point, who said he lost $50,000, said he wasn't sure what would happen with the Mississippi case.

"I'm glad somebody got him, though," Bryan said. "That's my main concern, that somebody got him."