GRAND RAPIDS, MI (WHTC-AM/FM, Mar. 25, 2022) – A 37-year-old West Olive man was sentenced to 16 years in prison and five years of probation on Friday at US District Court in Grand Rapids.
Joshua Louis Rupp, who is already behind bars in Michigan on unrelated counts of home invasion and assault with a dangerous weapon, pleaded guilty in November to a federal charge of committee securities fraud. The US Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Michigan alleged that, over a five-year period from 2015 to 2019, Rupp would pose as a licensed broker or trader who worked at one of two different brokerage firms. Fabricating documents to validate his claims, he obtained more than $2.7 million from at least 19 victims, misappropriated more than a half million dollars of investors’ funds, and lost more of the remaining money through trading securities.
A civil complaint against Rupp was filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission in July of 2021 based on the investigation conducted by the FBI and the Ottawa County Sheriff’s Department.
In handing down the sentence, Judge Hala Jarbou also ordered Rupp to pay around $2.73 million in restitution to the unnamed victims of his schemes.
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