A federal appeals court rejected former Sentinel Management Group Inc. chief Eric Bloom's bid to void his conviction and 14-year prison sentence over an estimated $666 million fraud that led to the demise of his suburban Chicago firm and a big writedown for Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Reuters reported. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago yesterday disagreed with Bloom's contentions that a lack of evidence, prosecutorial misconduct and errors by the trial judge tainted the conviction, and that the sentence was too long because the judge miscalculated the alleged loss. "We are extremely disappointed by the opinion and plan to seek rehearing," Bloom's lawyer Len Goodman said. Bloom had been appealing his March 2014 jury conviction on 19 fraud counts. Prosecutors said Bloom misappropriated assets belonging to dozens of clients, including futures commission merchants, commodity pools and hedge funds, to fund a risky "house" trading portfolio, and concealed mounting liquidity problems that culminated in Sentinel's August 2007 bankruptcy. Read more.
For a further analysis of commercial fraud, make sure to pick up a copy of ABI’s Fraud and Forensics: Piercing Through the Deception in a Commercial Fraud Case.
