BATON ROUGE, LA - Acting United States Attorney Corey R. Amundson announced today the conviction of an Addis businessman who stole over $250,000 from investors.
On Oct. 26, 2017, WILLIAM TODD CUTRER, age 52, of Addis, Louisiana, pled guilty to mail fraud before U.S. District Judge John W. deGravelles. As a result of his guilty plea, CUTRER faces a significant term of imprisonment, fines, restitution orders, forfeiture, and a term of supervised release following imprisonment. A sentencing date has not yet been scheduled.
As CUTRER acknowledged in court during his guilty plea, from in or about January 2014 through at least November 2016, he executed a scheme to defraud victim investors by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses, promises, and representations. CUTRER owned and operated West Baton Rouge Credit, Inc. (“WBRC"), a Port Allen lending company that made high-interest loans to individual customers. CUTRER raised capital for WBRC by obtaining lines of credit from local banks and by personally soliciting investments from individual investors. CUTRER guaranteed to his victims that he would pay interest on their investments and that their funds could be redeemed at any time upon written notice.
Instead of using the funds as promised, CUTRER wrote checks to himself and his family members, and made interest payments to prior investors who were due interest on their principal. When CUTRER failed to make the payments he owed to his victim investors, he sent them a letter falsely claiming that because of the August 2016 flood, he was having difficulty collecting payments on WBRC’s high-interest loans. In reality, however, CUTRER had used his victims’ money to make payments to himself and his family and to other investors. As a result of his scheme, CUTRER fraudulently obtained over $250,000.
Acting U.S. Attorney Amundson stated, “Investment-related fraud is a significant danger in our community. Those who hold themselves out as investment advisors have a unique opportunity to abuse the trust that their investors have placed in them to line their own pockets. I greatly appreciate the willingness of CUTRER’s victims to come forward and make us aware of this scheme and the hard work of the investigative agencies and the prosecutor in this important prosecution."
This matter is being handled by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Louisiana, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Louisiana Office of Financial Institutions. It is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Ryan Rezaei.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
