As a child growing up in Los Angeles, Sean Grusd was bullied because of a medical condition and was always chasing the success of his three brothers, one of whom became a top executive at Fortune 500 companies.
In letters to a federal judge in Chicago, his family and friends described his lifelong struggles and begged for leniency for Grusd, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud for stealing $23 million in a series of financial scams.
Despite those pleas, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis sentenced Grusd to seven years in prison after prosecutors called for a substantial prison term for causing “significant harm to his victims, both monetarily and emotionally.”
In her sentence, handed down last month, the judge recommended that Grusd serve his time at Lompoc federal prison outside Los Angeles. The judge ordered Grusd, 33, to report to prison on Jan. 6. She also ordered him to repay his victims $21.5 million.
According to prosecutors, Grusd was a “con man” who portrayed himself as an oracle for investing in private financial technology companies, called “fintechs.” He stole from more than a dozen victims, prosecutors said.
To gain his investors’ trust, he lied and said his brother — who’s been a senior executive in media and technology companies and lives in Beverly Hills, California — was the manager of one of Grusd’s operations.
Grusd was clamoring for the approval of his older brothers, who are athletes who’ve competed in Ironman competitions and got Ivy League college educations, according to his family.
Prosecutors said Grusd, who graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, squandered his investors’ stolen money on luxury cars, including $150,000 Teslas he gave to five women he met online; two Porsches he bought for more than $300,000; Aston Martins; Range Rovers; a Maserati; and a $640,000 McLaren. He also purchased expensive homes in Chicago and Montreal and spent lavishly on artwork and jewelry.
But his nearly two-year scheme came crashing down with his arrest in 2023 after Chicago businessmen realized they’d been scammed.
Defense attorney Steve Greenberg said Grusd’s crimes were rooted in emotional struggles. His disabilities left him with psychological trauma and overwhelmed his “moral compass,” said Greenberg, who noted that Grusd’s father, a radiologist, also went to prison for fraud.
The court got lots of letters supporting Grusd and asking the judge to give him a lenient sentence — or no prison time at all.
His mother, a psychologist, wrote that she worried her morbidly obese son would get bullied in prison and be forced to help gang members carry out crimes, such as getting contraband phones for them.
“He will yield to gangs and any person who sniffs out Sean’s weakness,” she wrote to the judge.
Greenberg had asked the judge to give Grusd a sentence that emphasizes rehabilitation over retribution, saying, “Sean’s story is not of a hardened criminal but of a deeply flawed man who for too long was driven by a need of approval and belonging.”