Fraud, Swindler | featured news

A prominent futures-industry executive, Russell Wasendorf Sr., was sentenced to 50 years in prison on Thursday for embezzling from his clients and defrauding banks over nearly two decades.

The son of the disgraced chief of Peregrine Financial said he has been personally and financially devastated by his father's fraud, which brought down the firm and left investors facing tens of millions of dollars in losses.

The star prosecution witness in the trial of convicted Texas financier R. Allen Stanford was sentenced Tuesday to five years in prison for helping to bilk investors out of more than $7 billion in one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in U.S. history.

Timothy S. Durham, the onetime chief executive officer of National Lampoon (NLMP) Inc., was sentenced to 50 years in prison for defrauding investors in an unrelated company he partly controlled. “I found no sincere remorse,” U.S. District Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson in Indianapolis said today before imposing punishment on Durham, 50. She said the former Fair Finance Co. CEO exhibited deceit, greed and arrogance.