Ronald Rup, Jr. Imprisoned For Equipment Theft From Agri-Mark

The Office of the United States Attorney for the District of Vermont announced that Ronald Rup Jr., 54, a former resident of Fairfax who now lives in Essex Junction, was sentenced today in United States District Court in Brattleboro to 27 months of imprisonment following his guilty plea to a charge of wire fraud.  U.S. District Judge J. Garvan Murtha also ordered that Rup serve three years of supervised release following completion of his prison term and pay restitution of more than $1.5 million.  The court directed Rup to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on September 13 to begin serving his sentence. 

Last October, the United States Attorney filed a criminal information charging Rup with wire fraud and Rup pleaded guilty to that charge in November.  According to the information, Rup was employed by Agri-Mark as its manager of IT infrastructure.  Several years ago, when Agri-Mark was constructing a new headquarters in Waitsfield, Rup was the employee responsible for purchasing the IT network equipment for the facility.  As part of his criminal scheme, Rup caused Agri-Mark to purchase more than 100 pieces of switching equipment than were needed to serve the new building.  The switches were expensive – many costing $8500 or more.  Between about April 2012 and March 2014, Rup stole the extra switches from Agri-Mark's inventory and sold them over the Internet to a Texas company which specializes in buying and selling new and used IT networking equipment.  Rup sold the switches for about one-third of their cost to Agri-Mark.  The Texas company paid for the switches by depositing funds into Rup's PayPal account.  Altogether, Rup realized more than $475,000 from the sales.  He used the money to buy vehicles, snowmobiles, motorcycles and jewelry, and to pay for improvements to his home. 

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Rup is represented by Brooks McArthur.  The prosecutor is Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregory Waples.