Flamboyant billionaire Allen Stanford was sentenced to 110 years in jail yesterday after a US court found him guilty of leading a $7 billion Ponzi scheme.
Stanford was convicted of 13 out of the 14 charges laid against him, including fraud, conspiracy, money laundering and obstruction of justice.
According to The Huffington Post, Judge David Hittner described Stanford’s actions as “one of the most egregious frauds ever presented to a trial jury in federal court”.
He also imposed Stanford to repay $5.9 billion dollars of criminal proceeds.
Stanford had promised 30,000 investors from 113 countries high-interest certificates of deposit for his bank while actually using the money to fund his lavish lifestyle.
But before his sentencing Stanford argued that he had never done anything wrong.
“We could have paid off every depositor and still have substantial assets remaining,” he said, according to reports.
It’s not the first time such a large scheme has been uncovered in recent years.
Three years earlier another American businessman, Bernard Madoff, was sentenced to 150 years jail after creating and maintaining a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
