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James Kenneth Couture, 42, of Sutton, pleaded guilty to four counts of wire fraud, four counts of aggravated identity theft, one count of investment adviser fraud, and one count of witness tampering last year, the US Attorney for Massachusetts said. Along with the 100 months in prison, the judge sentenced Couture to pay back nearly $2 million in restitution to his victims and forfeit almost $3 million, the prosecutor said.
Couture admitted that he misappropriated about $2.8 million from six clients for over a decade. He told them he was investing in fictitious funds and would sell other clients' holdings to pay investment returns. In 2016, federal investigators said he liquidated one client's valuable annuities to keep the scheme afloat. In 2019 and 2020, he sold clients' mutual funds to pay back another client he'd previously defrauded, investigators said.
Couture forged his clients' signatures on documents or lied to them to get them to sign paperwork unknowingly to enact this scheme. He stole from their profit-sharing plans and conducted business on their behalf to disguise his fraudulent transactions, the prosecutor said.
Federal investigators charged Couture in June 2021, but he continued to gaslight one of the witnesses by creating fake documents that were purported to be of his clients' accounts and lied to at least one victim in the case for six months, the prosecutor said. He was charged with witness tampering in Jan. 2022.
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