Wilmington native among 2 convicted of investment fraud schemes
Clarissa Rodriguez and Robert Ross Reinhart were found guilty in Middlesex Superior Court of defrauding multiple victims of approximately $169,000 and other property over the course of six years. (Lowell Sun)
WOBURN — A more than decade-old case concluded in Middlesex Superior Court last month with the conviction of two people, including a Wilmington native, who defrauded multiple victims of roughly $169,000 and other property in connection with a string of investment scams.
Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said in a press release on Thursday that Robert Ross Reinhart and Clarissa Rodriguez will spend time in prison due to the string of schemes they carried out from 2007 through 2013.
According to Ryan, Reinhart, a native of Wilmington, and Rodriguez, of Arlington, “presented themselves as financially savvy, sophisticated, experienced and very successful people” able to provide investment advice and assistance to others on various projects. The projects included plans to develop property and to promote and market inventions. Rodriguez and Reinhart “failed to deliver, and instead left the victims bereft of their assets,” Ryan said.
Some of the scams included:
• Charging two investors $55,000 for marketing advice and product research for two separate products that were never delivered.
• Convincing a woman to drain the bank accounts she shared with her husband and held for her 13-year-old daughter so Reinhart could invest the cash. Reinhart convinced the victim to obtain more cash for him to invest by refinancing her paid-off automobile. The money was never actually invested. Reinhart and Rodriguez additionally stole the woman’s wedding jewelry under the guise of having it appraised and safeguarded. Reinhart then pawned the jewelry for $125.
• Reinhart solicited donations to support a bogus organization, titled “Missing Persons Bureau, Special Investigations Unit,” alleged to have been doing business in Washington, D.C. The unit would supposedly attempt to solve the 1977 disappearance of a 14-year-old girl from Townsend, Deborah Ann Quimby. During the scheme, Reinhart solicited a contribution from the mother of the missing girl and attempted to convince the town to pay over $11,000 in phone expenses for his fake investigation.
Ryan’s office stated that in October 2013, a branch manager of Citizens Bank in Wilmington contacted police to report his belief that a customer was the victim of a scam being carried out by Reinhart. Reinhart had been in the bank seeking to ensure a deposit made by an “investor” into an account of a sham corporation he created could be wired to another account he controlled.
The Wilmington Police determined the transaction was suspicious, and ended up arresting an individual Reinhart had sent to the bank to withdraw the money. According to prosecutors, Reinhart then went into hiding in New Hampshire.
An investigation, led by the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office, with assistance from the FBI’s New England Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory, and police in Wilmington and Chelmsford — where other investors were conned — led to the arrest of Reinhart and Rodriguez. They were charged with multiple counts of larceny in Woburn District Court.
The investigation continued and in late 2014, a Middlesex County grand jury indicted the pair for those charges and related financial crimes.
“For years, they preyed on victims who trusted them and believed their businesses to be legitimate,” Ryan said in Thursday’s release. “Tragically, as we see in many scam cases like this one, the victims were left having suffered highly personal losses including inheritance, an engagement ring and even theft of money from a bank account belonging to a 13-year-old girl.”
Reinhart, who was 53 when he was indicted in 2014, was convicted by a Middlesex Superior Court jury of 11 counts of larceny over $250, two counts of attempted larceny over $250, and one count of larceny under $250. He was also deemed a common and notorious thief and sentenced to eight to 10 years in prison, followed by three years of probation. Reinhart was additionally ordered to repay his victims $169,000 in restitution. His sentences will run consecutively with a one- to two-year prison sentence he was already serving for attempting to pay a witness $500 to influence his testimony.
Rodriguez, who was 48 at the time of her 2014 indictment, was convicted of five counts of larceny over $250. She was also deemed a common and notorious thief and was sentenced to four to five years in state prison.
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