Joshua Henner, 37, of New York, was sentenced to 30 months in prison on Sept. 30 after pleading guilty to wire fraud, according to a DOJ press release. Henner admitted to running the schemes that defrauded people of more than $2.4 million.
In the first scam, which ran between May 2022 and December 2022, Henner solicited four investors to loan him funds to buy stock, according to his indictment. He told his victims that the stock purchase was necessary for him to maintain his ownership position as an angel investor in a start-up. There was one problem: Henner had not invested in the start-up.
To support his deception, Henner provided falsified documents to his investors, claiming they were stock purchase agreements between him and the start-up, prosecutors say. Each of his four investors received agreements with different share announcements needed for him to maintain his ownership percentage in the company.
During this seven-month plot, Henner received $1.6 million from the defrauded investors, according to his indictment.
In Henner’s second scheme, as reported in the DOJ press release, Henner solicited loans from six people for renovations to an apartment he rented but did not own. He convinced these investors to give him the loans by telling them he contracted with a renovation company to do the work. He even provided the name of an actual employee at the company he claimed to contract with, coupled with a false email address.
Henner received hundreds of thousands of dollars in this scheme and did not disclose that he was actually prohibited from doing any renovations to the apartment he rented, according to the DOJ.
Henner was also accused in the indictment of stealing someone else’s identity between October 2022 and December 2022, but he did not plead guilty to this charge.
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