Globaleye.com

Bernard Madoff was sentenced recently for the largest investment fraud in history, receiving the maximum 150 years in prison for running a $65 billion (£39 billion) ponzi scheme that lost thousands of investors' money.

That might sound like a long time behind bars but it's not the longest white-collar sentence to be handed down by the courts - not by a long way.

Read on to discover who beats Madoff in the sentencing stakes.

 

1.Shalom Weiss
Crime: Racketeering, fraud, money laundering and transportation of stolen property
Sentence: 845 years
Shalom Weiss, a nightclub owner received this mammoth sentence in 2000 for his role in a $450m mortgage and insurance scam which robbed thousands of Florida pensioners of their life savings.

Once a respected member of New York's Hasidic Jewish community, he stole millions from the National Heritage Life Insurance Company, leading to its collapse.

 

Mr Weiss, who featured on the FBI's most wanted list, was convicted and sentenced after he fled the US for Austria. Part of the extradition deal agreed with the Austrian authorities involved a promise by the federal prosecutors to re-sentence Mr Weiss to make his sentence less severe. But once he was safely back in the US, a judge ruled that was impossible.

Mr Weiss can look forward to being released sometime around 2845.

2. Keith Pound
Crime: Racketeering, fraud, money laundering and transportation of stolen property
Sentence: 740 years
Mr Weiss's accomplice ended up serving just four of his 740 years before dying in prison.

3. Norman Schmidt
Crime: Fraud and money laundering
Sentence: 330 years
Aged 72 when he was sentenced in April last year for his role in a $56 million investment scam, the chances of Mr Schmidt ever being released are slim to say the least.

Mr Schmidt scammed hundreds of investors out of millions of dollars by promising attractive rates of return in a classic pyramid investment scheme. Rather than investing the money as promised the investors funds were siphoned off to cover personal expenses and to purchase unrelated assets including race cars and the historic Redstone Castle Hotel near Aspen, Colarado. Like many fraudsters he seems to have forgotten that the first rule of being a criminal mastermind is don't draw attention to yourself. But never mind, at least it makes the police's job easier.

4. Will Hoover
Crime: Theft and fraud
Sentence: 100 years
Will Hoover, a financial adviser from Denver, Colorado was convicted in June 2004 of 44 felony counts of fraud, theft and racketeering. He wasn't happy when Denver District Judge Sheila Rappaport sentenced him to 100 years in jail for defrauding clients out of an estimated $13 million, claiming the punishment was disproportionate to the crime. The Colorado Court of Appeals didn't think so.

5. Frederick Brandau
Crime: Money laundering, mail and wire fraud
Sentence: 55 years
This criminal mastermind was convicted in 2000 of tricking some 4,000 people out of $117 million. His victims thought they were investing in life insurance policies owned by terminally ill people. In reality most of the money they handed over was spent on luxury cars, helicopters and jewels.

6. Daniel Strader
Crime: Investment fraud
Sentence: 45 years
Son of a preacher man, Daniel David Strader, 37, was convicted of 238 felony counts in 1995 after swindling 57 people by selling investments in properties that didn't exist. Florida State Attorney Jerry Hill said: "He's created as much damage and heartbreak and ruined as many lives as any homicide case I've ever seen." Mr Strader is expected to serve at least half his sentence, which means he will probably be doing bird for at least another decade.

7. Chalana McFarland
Crime: Mortgage fraud
Sentence: 30 years
Chalana McFarland, a real estate lawyer, received a 30-year sentence for heading up a mortgage fraud ring that preyed on banks and other mortgage lenders in and around Atlanta, Georgia.

 

Dubbed the "queen of mortgage fraud", Ms McFarland and her gang falsified social security numbers and used false identities to buy homes that were then quickly resold at artificially inflated prices.

8. (or joint 7th if you must) Carmen J. Palmieri
Crime: Elder financial abuse, securities violations and grand theft
Sentence: 30 years
Lots of white-collar crime follows a depressingly familiar pattern: criminal targets elderly investors, tricks them out of their life savings and spends the ill-gotten gains on flash cars, properties and other gorgeous goodies. A crime that in the American courts goes by the name "elder abuse".

 

San Diego businessman Carmen J. Palmieri is a case in point. He was sentenced in 2004 to 30 years in prison for swindling 191 terminally ill elderly people out of more than $13 million by selling them nonexistent life insurance policies.

9. (also really joint 7th) Eduardo Masferrer
Crime: Bank and securities fraud
Sentence: 30 years
Mr Masferrer, chief executive officer of Hamilton Bank was sentenced to 30 years in 2006 for his role in a $22 million fraud that prompted regulators to shut down the Miami-based bank.

 

The disgraced boss concealed losses made buying Russian bonds in order to prop up the banks results and earn a hefty bonus. He was also accused of lying to banking regulators in an effort to cover up the scheme. Sounds a bit like the sort of dodgy dealing that got us into the credit crunch.
 

10. (another joint 7th) Lance Poulsen
Crime: Securities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering
Sentence: 30 years
Court Judge Algenon Marbley described Lance Poulsen as "the architect of a fraud of such magnitude that it would make a sophisticated analyst shudder."

 

Mr Poulsen founded National Century Financial Enterprises to provide financing to hospitals, nursing homes and other health care providers so they wouldn't have to wait for insurance payments. 

 

He and his fellow executives then misused investors' money to enrich themselves - photographs of Mr Poulsen on his 60-foot yacht were produced as evidence during the trial.