A former Ohio broker with a history of securities violations has been indicted for allegedly using bogus investments to swindle clients, including some investors who lost IRA funds in the scam.

Thomas Brenner, 58, of Orrville, Ohio, is facing criminal fraud charges in connection with the scheme, which prosecutors said he carried out with a relative identified only as "Person-1" in a press release issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio.

Prosecutors charge that Brenner, while acting as president of First American Securities Inc. in Orrville, conspired with his relative in March 2015 to persuade clients to invest in United RL Capital Services (URL) LLC, a company they claimed financed medical laboratory developments.

The investment scheme was part of a larger fraud that was the subject of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement action in 2018. At that time, Brenner was named as one of five co-conspirators who engaged in a $102 million Ponzi scheme that victimized more than 600 investors across the nation through the sale of phony private placement investments.

In the criminal indictment, Brenner and Person-1 are accused of soliciting funds from clients through phone calls and letters and in person, falsely promising the clients that their money would be used to finance medical lab developments, prosecutors said. Brenner also claimed that the clients' money would be paid back with interest after three years and that URL "was as safe or safer than other existing investments."

Some investors removed money from their IRAs to invest in URL, with Brenner and his co-conspirator telling them they would not endure tax penalties because of the withdrawals, prosecutors said.

Instead of investing the client money, Brenner used the funds himself, including for paying taxes and "large race car-related purchases," the press release said.

"The indictment also alleges that when investors inquired about their investments, the defendant and Person-1 misrepresented that their investments were secure and provided some investors with sporadic, minimal payments, disguised as installments of earned interest, in order to lull investors into believing that their money was safe and being used as promised," the press release said.

Prosecutors said that Brenner undertook his scheme despite knowing that he was being investigated by Finra in 2015 and 2016. He also failed to inform investors of the probe, and that the firm "could face closure and that the defendant could be suspended from associating with any Finra-registered firm, which he eventually was." Brenner also failed to tell investors that Person-1 was his relative, prosecutors said.

Finra banned Brenner from the securities industry in 2017 and, a year earlier, suspended him for 16 months, fined him $30,000 and ordered him to repay $189,000 for engaging in "two separate private placements which were rife with supervisory and substantive violations," according to Finra's BrokerCheck website.

The indicment charged Brenner with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, securities fraud and engaging in a monetary transaction in property derived from criminal activity.