Hartford Man Sentenced for Defrauding Own Family

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A Hartford man was sentenced Monday to 63 months in prison for defrauding elderly family members and family friends of more than $447,000.

Robert Oathout, 37, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Providence by U.S. District Court Chief Judge William E. Smith, who also ordered Oathout to serve three years supervised release upon completion of his term of incarceration and to pay restitution to the victims in the amount of $434,635.75, according to Acting United States Attorney Stephen G. Dambruch and Harold H. Shaw, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Boston Field Division.

Oathout pleaded guilty on July 16, 2017, to eight counts of wire fraud.

According to court documents, Oathout told the victims he needed to borrow the money to pay medical expenses in advance of his receipt of a $1 million settlement payment as the result of a botched medical procedure performed on him at a Connecticut medical facility. Oathout told the victims that the medical facility would repay them upon payment of the settlement, Dambruch said.

An investigation by the FBI determined no such medical procedure was performed on Oathout, and he was not due any settlement payments from the medical facility, Dambruch said.

According to information provided to the court, as part of the scheme, between Sept. 27, 2013, and Dec. 22, 2015, Oathout induced his victims, all between the ages of 67 and 87, to transfer a total of $447,267.25 to him electronically, Dambruch said.

Electronic transfers of varying amounts were made to Oathout before, while and after he was a federal inmate at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Center in Central Falls, R.I. Some of the funds were transferred into his and other inmates’ prison accounts while he was being detained on federal drug charges in an unrelated case brought against him by the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut, Dambruch said.

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