2 Convicted In Massive Middlesex County Investment Scam: DA

WILMINGTON, MA — Two people were found guilty of defrauding victims of approximately $169,000 and other property over the course of six years, according to Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan.

From 2007 through 2013, Robert Ross Reinhart and Clarissa Rodriguez presented themselves as "financially savvy, sophisticated, experienced, and very successful people who could provide investment advice and assistance," according to Ryan's statement. These projects included plans to redevelop property and promote and market inventions.

Ultimately they did not deliver and instead defrauded the victims of money, according to the statement.

“For years, [Reinhart and Rodriguez] preyed on victims who trusted them and believed their businesses to be legitimate," Ryan said in a statement. "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.”

In one instance, the pair scammed two inventors for $55,000, promising marketing advice and product research that was never delivered.

In another instance, prosecutors said the pair convinced a victim to drain bank accounts she shared with her husband and held for her 13-year-old daughter so that Reinhart could “invest” the cash.

Reinhart also convinced this victim to obtain more cash for him to “invest” by refinancing her paid-off automobile. The pair also stole her wedding jewelry under the guise of having it appraised and safeguarded, after which Reinhart pawned it for $125, prosecutors said.

Reinhart was also accused of soliciting donations for a bogus organization called “Missing Persons Bureau, Special Investigations Unit.” The unit was supposedly tasked with solving a 1977 disappearance of a missing 14-year-old girl from Townsend.

Reinhart then solicited a contribution from the mother of the missing girl and attempted to convince the town to pay more than $11,000 in phony expenses for his "investigation," prosecutors said.

In October 2013, the branch manager of Wilmington Citizens Bank called police to report that he believed one of his customers had been victimized in a scam.

Following an investigation, Reinhart and Rodriguez were charged with multiple counts of larceny in Woburn District Court. They were indicted in late 2014 by a Middlesex County grand jury.

Reinhart was convicted last month 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 ten years in state prison, followed by three years of probation. He was ordered to repay his victims $169,000 in restitution.

The court ordered his sentences to run consecutive with a one-to-two-year state prison sentence he was already serving for attempting to pay a witness $500 to influence his testimony.

Rodriguez was convicted by a Middlesex Superior Court jury 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, according to prosecutors.

Wilmington police tweeted the following on the case:

"We would like to commend the WPD Detectives as well as all of the other investigators who have worked this case tirelessly since 2013 to bring these two criminals to justice."