Prompting gasps, judge spares NY hedge fund executive prison for fraud
Last edited Mon Jun 13, 2016, 07:41 PM - Edit history (2)
Source: Reuters
A New York hedge fund manager who at age 28 lost nearly all $57 million he oversaw in less than three weeks was spared prison on Monday, as the judge recognized how quickly and thoroughly the defendant owned up to his crimes.
Owen Li, the founder of Canarsie Capital LLC, was sentenced to probation by U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet in Manhattan, prompting gasps from spectators in the courtroom. The defendant then hugged his lawyer, Scott Resnik.
Li, now 30, had pleaded guilty in December to securities fraud and making a false statement.
Sweet had in March indicated he would likely sentence Li to five years in prison, less than federal guidelines advise and in line with prosecutors' recommendation.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-hedgefund-fraud-li-idUSKCN0YZ20C
Edited to add a link to the SEC action on Li (.pdf)
https://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2015/33-9991.pdf
Lint Head
(15,064 posts)Shemp Howard
(889 posts)RKP5637
(67,030 posts)okieinpain
(9,397 posts)msongs
(67,193 posts)99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)Eugene
(61,592 posts)... and it's all good.
Really?
robbob
(3,514 posts)for three weeks of action?
okieinpain
(9,397 posts)bucolic_frolic
(42,659 posts)100% loss in three weeks.
Does that compute to -1600% in one year if he kept going?
PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)Baitball Blogger
(46,570 posts)Old ploy to put someone inexperienced in a job with the hope that they can plead him off as inexperienced if something goes wrong. No wrongful intent in incompetence.
IronLionZion
(45,252 posts)the markets didn't crash that recently. The article says it was January 2015 when he went long on indexed commodities. It doesn't make any sense.
bucolic_frolic
(42,659 posts)Futures and Commodities
You can lose more than your investment
So he had no risk control, stop losses
He was just convinced of his own brilliance and insight, a good recipe for losing money
IronLionZion
(45,252 posts)he went all long and bet on the wrong stuff. It's crazy and makes me wonder if there's more to this story. Someone probably got rich off of this.
bucolic_frolic
(42,659 posts)has been done. 'You're seeking maximum growth with the public's money,
when it's driven into bankruptcy, we'll buy it back for peanuts.'
Seems to me this happened with a movie producer and a theater operator that
could barely stay solvent. Not sure if the public was aware of the conflict of interest.
ProfessorGAC
(64,413 posts)I know we're working backwards here because it's a total loss, but:
If he lost everything, there's nothing left to lose, so we have to stop at 100%.
But yeah, if he repeated this 16 times in a year it would be 1600%.
However, let's pretend it was 50%, because he started at 114 million. At this rate he'd only have $690 left.
What a great money manager! As you said!
lapucelle
(18,037 posts)for upper-class rapists and white collar mega-thieves and tough, no-nonsense punishment for the unprivileged and marginalized.
Let's hope this judge gets as much heat as the one in California did.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)Seriously.
socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)Welcome to DU.
IronLionZion
(45,252 posts)Won't get the widespread backlash like the rapist's judge. Just like the bankers in the subprime mortgage and resulting financial crisis didn't get any consequences except for the one dude with a Muslim name.
GeorgeGist
(25,294 posts)thanks,
Bob
Adsos Letter
(19,459 posts)No doubt.
Baitball Blogger
(46,570 posts)KansDem
(28,498 posts)FuzzyRabbit
(1,958 posts)to buy a judge these days?
TexasBushwhacker
(20,043 posts)LiberalLovinLug
(14,153 posts)KamaAina
(78,249 posts)PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)Scientific
(314 posts)All sleazebags are equal, but Republican sleazebags are more equal.
perdita9
(1,142 posts)Sarcasm.
Fla Dem
(23,342 posts)No disrespect to our older citizens, but come on, he's got to have lost some of his reasoning abilities.
Appointed by Jimmy Carter in 1978
Sweet was appointed to the federal court for the Southern District of New York by President Jimmy Carter and confirmed in 1978. He semi-retired into senior status in 1991.[2] One of Sweet's law clerks was Eliot Spitzer, who later became Governor of New York.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Sweet
geardaddy
(24,924 posts)Is he getting soft in his old age?
ReRe
(10,597 posts)Seriously. You can learn all kinds of things when you do a little research. That's wayyyy to old to be serving as anything, much less as a US District Court Judge.
geardaddy
(24,924 posts)bluestateguy
(44,173 posts)Every bit as dangerous as ISIL.
Send his ass to Guantanamo.
roamer65
(36,739 posts)Rob a bank, do 20 years...rob a hedge fund, get off with slap of the wrist.
Chasstev365
(5,191 posts)Response to PoliticAverse (Original post)
IDemo This message was self-deleted by its author.
snot
(10,478 posts)did they take it down?
PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)It's a major slap in the 10s of thousands of very poor sitting in prison for being caught
with a few grams of pot or crack or whatever substance is on the streets these daze.
It's also adding injury to insult to the investors whose money he "lost".
i.e. It's very fucked up, on a bunch of different levels.
valerief
(53,235 posts)laserhaas
(7,805 posts)blackspade
(10,056 posts)PADemD
(4,482 posts)Chan790
(20,176 posts)to invest in a high-risk hedge like the one Li was running, the SEC requires you to be an accredited investor, meaning you must be worth at least $1M, not including the value of your primary residence and have income of $200,000/year ($300,000 household income, if married) or more and expect to earn the same in the current tax year, in addition to being deemed to understand the risk of such investments.
So...he only stole from rich people he made poor.
pansypoo53219
(20,906 posts)2 tier justice.
EndElectoral
(4,213 posts)Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)and that some of that money was still around to "Sweet"-en his deal.
Always follow the money.
SoCalMusicLover
(3,194 posts)Anybody interested in buying a bridge?
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)IronLionZion
(45,252 posts)and sounds like he has long association with the Democratic party and candidates
La Lioness Priyanka
(53,866 posts)So clueless
Mendocino
(7,430 posts)life savings gone, gun in mouth. Someone else drinks themselves to death on cheap plonk because they have no future. A family torn apart, domestic violence over impending poverty. But at least he was "contrite".
Mika
(17,751 posts)7962
(11,841 posts)Ridiculous
Palimpsestuous
(14 posts)We currently have no effective system for impeaching judges for misconduct or grotesque favoritism. What kind of society expects to operate for long without effective judicial review? Our corruption as a society is nearly complete. I keep thinking about some popular person who commented in the media recently that we, as a nation, have no shame left at all. We're not embarrassed enough by the perfidy of our leaders for them to worry what we might do to them. The perpetual infantilization of the American public has come full circle. We're cows in a field.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)WTF is wrong with the judicial system in this country? This is an outrage!
underpants
(182,271 posts)Kurovski
(34,655 posts)I'm sure our next president will do all they can to see that justice is always served during cases such as these.