The owner of the Port Allen-based West Baton Rouge Credit, Inc. has been sentenced to 42 months in federal prison for stealing more than $500,000 from investors in an investment fraud scheme, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Louisiana.
William Todd Cutrer, the owner of the agency that filed for bankruptcy last year, has been ordered to pay $502,035.09 in restitution to his victims, according to the release. Upon his release from prison, he will be supervised for another two years.
To raise capital for his agency, Cutrer obtained lines of credit from local banks and personally approached individuals for investments, promising them he would pay the interest on their investments and that they could redeem their funds at any time. Instead, he wrote checks to himself and family members while also paying off prior investors.
Unable to pay his victim investors, Cutrer lied, writing a letter saying that because of the August 2016 flood “he was having difficulty collecting payments on WBRC’s high-interest loans.”
Cutrer pled guilty to mail fraud last October, admitting that he executed a scheme to defraud victim investors “by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses, promises, and representations.”
