Davenport Man Sentenced to 12 Months in Prison for Wire Fraud and Money Laundering

DAVENPORT, IA—On January 17, 2014, Charles Arthur Ruhl, Jr., age 59, of Davenport, Iowa, was sentenced to 12 months and one day of imprisonment for wire fraud and money laundering, announced United States Attorney Nicholas A. Klinefeldt. United States District Judge Stephanie M. Rose also imposed a $144,000 fine and a two-year term of supervised release.

From 2008 to 2012, Ruhl embezzled more than $1.3 million from four limited liability companies that he managed. Ruhl used the stolen money for business expenses related to NAI Ruhl and Ruhl Commercial Company and for personal expenses such as property taxes on a vacation home, real estate investments, and his daughter’s college tuition. For years, Ruhl concealed his fraud by directing his employees to generate false financial statements and distribute them to the members of the defrauded LLCs. Ruhl’s fraud was discovered on May 31, 2012, after he had so depleted the bank accounts of the Lincoln Healthcare Building LLC that there was not enough money to pay the taxes on the property owned by the company. Over the next 18 months, Ruhl repaid all the money that he had taken.

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation and was prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa.