A 29-year-old Haverhill man received a prison sentence Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Boston for fraudulently obtaining $350,000 in investor funds.
Luciano Schipelliti was sentenced by U.S. Senior District Court Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV to one year and one day in prison, to be followed by two years of supervised release with six months of home confinement. He was also ordered to pay $350,000 restitution. As WHAV reported in March, Schipelliti agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud and did so the following month.
According to U.S. Attorney Leah B. Foley’s office, Schipelliti established, what he called, the Superstars Fund during the fall of 2018 and raised roughly $275,000 to invest in cryptocurrency.
“By 2019, through a series of bad investments, Schipelliti allegedly lost all the money in the Superstars Fund. He did not, however, tell any of the investors that he had lost the money. Instead, according to the charging documents, beginning in approximately November 2020, Schipelliti began sending monthly newsletters to investors that falsely reported that the Superstars Fund continued to grow in value,” a release said.
Earning investor confidence through the newsletter reports, Schipelliti allegedly launched a new fund, the TTM Fund, around February of 2021. He raised approximately $350,000 to invest in cryptocurrency and allegedly lost most of that money by September of that year. Court documents allege he also used some of the money in “a manner inconsistent with the terms of the TTM Fund’s operating agreement.”