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About the Foundation

The courtroom may close the case, but it does not repair the life.

The Justice Restoration Foundation exists to confront government overreach across the American justice system — and to restore accountability, due process, and proportion to a system that too often has none for the people it gets wrong.

Support the MissionLeadership & Board

Mission

We argue the system, not the verdict.

A system that ruins the people it gets wrong cannot be trusted to tell guilt from innocence.

The Foundation’s public work is calm, institutional, compassionate, and donor-worthy: public education, economic research, dignity repair, restoration resources, and a reform spine that focuses on accountability, due process, and proportion.

What we fight

  • Accountability for prosecutorial misconduct
  • A real remedy for the wrongly prosecuted — Hyde Amendment reform
  • A fair grand-jury and charging process
  • An end to trial-by-press-release
  • An end to venue-shopping
  • Coerced pleas and the trial penalty
  • Prosecutorial-immunity reform
  • Restoring civil-rights remedies

Founder’s Note

From ordeal to structural reform.

The Foundation was built by people who have seen the federal system up close and understand that restoration is more than a legal outcome. It means rebuilding families, reputations, livelihoods, trust, and public accountability after the case ends.

— Lucky Ott, Co-founder & Vice President

Leadership & Board

Governed by clinical, legal, and nonprofit experience.

Meet the Team
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Stephen Keller

President & Co-founder · Author of “Pay to Play”

Stephen Keller serves as President and is the author of the memoir Pay to Play. He founded Kelco at 27 and helped create the modern life-settlement industry — in 1998 introducing the first securitized bundles of life-insurance policies on the NYSE and, at its peak, capturing roughly 65% of the global market. Over his career he raised some $13 billion on Wall Street, co-founded the industry’s first association, and helped author regulations still in force. After a federal investigation, trial, and international manhunt, he was arrested by Interpol in Panama, extradited, and served nine years before rebuilding his life in South Florida, where he runs the Stephen L. Keller Foundation scholarship for Eastern Kentucky entrepreneurs. He is the Foundation’s primary public voice.

Online: stephen-keller.com

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Mark Sorensen

Co-founder · Healthcare entrepreneur

Mark Sorensen spent 25 years building SyMed Inc., a Medicare-enrolled durable-medical-equipment company. Charged in 2019 with Anti-Kickback Statute violations — though never with health-care fraud — he was convicted at a 2023 trial built largely on cooperators’ testimony and sentenced to 42 months. On April 14, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit found the evidence legally insufficient, a precedent-setting decision; after DOJ declined further review, the court entered his acquittal on June 12, 2025, ending a nearly six-year ordeal. His case is now a cornerstone precedent in the Foundation’s research, and he leads its business, commercial, and partnership efforts.

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Lucky Ott

Co-founder & Vice President · Founder of Boerne Drug

Lucky Ott is a San Antonio entrepreneur who built Boerne Drug Company into a modern, tech-enabled pharmacy. After a 2019 federal action targeted a colleague, prosecutors pressed him to incriminate that colleague; he refused to falsely confess. Charged in 2022 in the Southern District of Georgia — a district he had never set foot in — he rejected every plea offer. At trial in Statesboro in October 2025 his defense dismantled the government’s central claim, and on October 27, 2025 the court granted a motion for acquittal, finding the government failed to establish venue. He founded the Foundation to turn that ordeal into structural reform, and leads its mission, narrative, and day-to-day operations.