Thomas Coelho was sentenced to ten years in federal prison for wire fraud after pleading guilty to a scheme that involved promises to purchase tickets to live events for resale. Coelho, 52, will also be required to forfeit $1.8 million in assets, the proceeds of the scheme.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida, which prosecuted the case, Coelho held himself out as a lawyer and Wharton School of Business graduate to lure prospective victims for his scheme. He told investors that he would use connections to ticketing insiders in the live entertainment business to purchase event tickets at face value and then resell them at a profit. But the entire operation was a scam.
“Instead of using investors’ money to further the purported business, however, Coelho primarily used the funds for personal expenses, entertainment, and cash withdrawals,” reads the announcement of his sentence from the Department of Justice. “Coelho created fraudulent documents, including wire transfer receipts, to convince his victims the funds were properly invested and to continue to induce new victim investments.”
He kept the scheme going, prosecutors said, by producing fake documents to make it appear he’d actually purchased tickets with the victims’ money. Prosecutors cited one example from 2016, when Coelho emailed one of the victims a PDF document that showed a wire transfer of $138,000 from Coelho’s bank account to a European event promotion…
