Jail, Ponzi Scheme | featured news

Former jet-setting Texas tycoon R. Allen Stanford, whose financial empire once spanned the Americas, was sentenced Thursday to 110 years in prison for bilking investors out of more than $7 billion over 20 years in one of the largest Ponzi schemes in U.S. history.

R. Allen Stanford, the Texas financier accused of directing a $7 billion Ponzi scheme, complained that his jail cell often lacks light and air conditioning.

For the past week, Stanford, who's in a cell in Conroe, Texas, with from eight to 10 other men, has endured heat and intermittent lack of power when outside temperatures reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius) or more, his lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, said yesterday in a motion asking that his client be transferred to a downtown Houston jail.

Arch swindler Bernard Madoff will not appeal the 150-year prison sentence he received for masterminding a global multibillion-dollar investment fraud, his main lawyer said on Thursday.

A federal appeals court ruled that Madoff, who faces up to 150 years in prison, must remain in jail until his sentencing.

The lawyers of disgraced US financier Bernard Madoff contest a judge's decision to revoke his bail and send him to jail.