Newark, New Jersey, May 24, 2024 – Joshua Bryce Newman, a 37-year-old self-styled entrepreneur from New York, was sentenced to 41 months in prison for a two-year scheme in which he defrauded multiple victims who believed they were investing in businesses that offered a popular fitness training program, according to Acting U.S. Attorney William E. Fitzpatrick.
Newman pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge William H. Walls to one count of wire fraud. The sentence was imposed in Newark federal court.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court, Newman engaged in a variety of business ventures, including venture capital work, a film production company, and, more recently, in businesses offering a popular fitness training program. By 2011 and 2012, Newman found himself with mounting legal and financial troubles largely as a result of judgments and liens filed against him and his film production company, Cyan Pictures, relating to their failed film project that was meant to produce and distribute a film about the New York Yankees entitled “Keeper of the Pinstripes.”
From 2012, Newman made material misrepresentations to solicit investments and loans purportedly for various fitness business ventures he was working on, when his true intent was to use the money for his own purposes, including repaying others who had invested in one of his prior projects. Newman often supplied his victims with doctored or bogus documentation in order to obtain the investment capital and loans.
Newman also misrepresented to his potential partners, purported investors, and lenders in one of his business ventures that he had raised millions of dollars in funding for the project, when he knew that no such funds had been raised. When investors raised concerns about their investments, Newman typically gave them false assurances and agreed to return the funds. In reality, he often had no funds to return, and so he would make various excuses, including that he had sent wires that had been delayed in the banking system when no such wire had been sent.
Newman defrauded approximately 30 victims of approximately $3 million. In addition to the prison term, Judge Walls sentenced Newman to three years of supervised release and ordered him to pay restitution of $3,118,165.82. Acting U.S. Attorney Fitzpatrick credited special agents of the FBI, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Timothy Gallagher in Newark, for the investigation leading to today’s sentencing.
The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul A. Murphy, Chief of the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Economic Crimes Unit. Defense counsel for Newman is Priya Chaudhry Esq., New York, and Eric Kanefsky Esq., Newark.
Key Facts
- State: New Jersey
- Category: White Collar Crime
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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