An Arizona man, David Prescott, age 45, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Boston in connection with defrauding four people who invested in his foreign currency trading company.
Prescott, formerly of Boston, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs to 18 months in prison, three years of supervised release and restitution of $505,619. In November 2016, Prescott pleaded guilty to four counts of wire fraud. Prescott, who previously went by the name of David Weeks, was indicted on those charges in February 2015.
Prescott was the owner and President of Cambridge Currency Partners, LLC (CCP), which was purportedly engaged in the business of buying and selling foreign currency. Prescott falsely represented to investors that their funds would be invested in CCP and used for business purposes, and that the investors would receive a monthly return. In fact, Prescott used the majority of the $500,000 he obtained from four individual investors, on his own personal expenses.
As part of the scheme, Prescott solicited investors by promising monthly returns, and made payments to them that purported to be interest, but, in fact, simply consisted of money from other investors. Prescott promised investors guaranteed monthly returns in amounts ranging from three to nine percent with little to no risk to the underlying principal. Prescott made false representations to the investors regarding the balances in their accounts. As a result, Prescott was able to secure multiple investments from the same investors. On one occasion, Prescott allegedly emailed an investor and promised to increase the interest paid on her previous investments if she were willing to invest additional funds, even though Prescott had already spent the majority of her previous investments on personal expenses and repayments to other investors.