James Kenneth Couture, Investment Fraud, Massachusetts 2023

BOSTON – A Worcester-based investment adviser was sentenced today in connection with a long-running scheme to steal more than $2.8 million from six clients.

James Kenneth Couture, 42, of Sutton, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton to 100 months in prison and three years of supervised release. Couture was also ordered to pay restitution of $1,924,585 and forfeiture of $2,874,585.

Couture was a registered investment adviser, with an office in Worcester. In that capacity, he invested his clients’ funds in securities and various insurance products, including annuities, and set up and assisted clients with profit-sharing plans and other retirement products.

From approximately 2009 to 2020, Couture misappropriated approximately $2.8 million from his clients by transferring funds out of his clients’ accounts, investing it in fictitious mutual funds and then selling other clients’ holdings to pay investment returns. In June 2016, Couture liquidated one client’s variable annuities to fund withdrawals by another client.

Similarly, in December 2019 and January 2020, Couture paid a client he had previously defrauded by selling other clients’ mutual funds. As part of this scheme, Couture forged clients’ signatures on documents, or caused clients to sign documents by falsely representing that the proceeds of transactions would be used for the clients’ benefit.

Couture also stole from clients using their own profit-sharing plans and conducting transactions in their names to disguise his fraudulent transactions. Couture was initially charged in connection with this scheme in June 2021.

After those initial charges were filed, Couture engaged in witness tampering by creating fake documents purported to be for his clients’ accounts and providing false information to at least one victim in the case for approximately six months. Couture was subsequently charged with witness tampering in connection with his efforts to deceive this victim on Jan. 14, 2022.

The U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission and the Employee Benefits Security Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor provided valuable assistance with the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kriss Basil of Rollins’ Securities, Financial & Cyber Fraud Unit and Assistant U.S. Attorney Carol Head, Chief of Rollins’ Asset Recovery Unit, prosecuted the case.

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