Aequitas Capital Management

In September 2023 U.S. District Judge Michael Simon sentenced three former executives at Aequitas Capital Management to prison terms totaling more than 20 years. Prosecutors had pushed for more, recommending “prison terms exceeding any previously imposed in this district for a fraud scheme,” reads the sentencing document from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon. Former Aequitas CEO Robert J. Jesenik was given the heaviest sentence: 14 years, plus a financial forfeiture of more than $1.5 million. Simon sentenced Executive Vice President Andrew N. MacRitchie to 70 months and ordered him to pay more than $689,000. And Brian K. Rice, an executive vice president who joined the firm more recently, was sentenced to 37 months in prison and ordered to forfeit over $116,000. Earlier this week, the three men were found guilty of conspiring with each other to commit mail and wire fraud, in addition to 28 individual counts of wire fraud. Jesenik was also convicted of falsifying a loan application. Aequitas’ problems originated nearly a decade to the collapse of Corinthian Colleges, a network of for-profit colleges that drew intense scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Education and investigation from then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris. Corinthian was one of Aequitas’ major investors, and its financial problems cost Aequitas more than $4 million a month starting in 2014, according to federal prosecutors.