Sutton investment adviser sentenced to prison for fraud, witness tampering

Millbury-Sutton Chronicle

SUTTON — An investment adviser from Sutton will spend the next several years in prison after pleading guilty to stealing more than $2.8 million from six clients.

James Kenneth Couture, 42, of Sutton, was sentenced to eight years and four months in prison and three years of supervised released during a hearing Wednesday, July 11 in U.S. District Court in Boston. Judge Nathaniel Gorton also ordered Couture to pay $1,924,585 in restitution and $2,874,585 in forfeiture.

Couture pleaded guilty in September to four counts each of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, one count of investment adviser fraud and one count of witness tampering.

Couture was a registered investment adviser with an office in Worcester. He invested clients' money in securities and insurance products, such as annuities, and set up and helped clients with profit-sharing plans and other retirement products.

Between 2009 and 2020, according to prosecutors, Couture misappropriated about $2.8 million from his clients by transferring money out of their accounts, investing it in fictitious mutual funds, and selling other clients' holdings to pay investment returns.

In June 2016, prosecutors said, Couture liquidated one client's annuities to fund withdrawals by another client. In December 2019 and January 2020, Couture paid one previously defrauded client by selling other clients' mutual funds. He would forge clients' signatures on documents or get clients to sign documents by falsely claiming the proceeds would be used for the clients' benefit.

Prosecutors also said that Couture stole from clients by using their own profit-sharing plans and conducting transactions in their names to disguise his own fraudulent transactions.

After initial charges were filed in June 2021, prosecutors said, Couture created fake documents for his clients' accounts and provided false information to at least one client in the case for nearly six months. He was later charged with witness tampering in January 2022.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Boston, the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and the U.S. Department of Labor were involved in the prosecution.