Con to Judge: Reduce My 845 Year Sentence

A white collar criminal sentenced to 845 years in prison is asking a federal appeals court to reduce his sentence.

Sholam Weiss was sentenced in February 2000 by a federal judge in Florida who said he should be removed permanently from society. Weiss wasn't there because he had fled overseas while a jury was deliberating.

Austrian authorities eventually found him and sent him back, and now his attorneys want the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to order a new sentencing hearing. They're hoping a judge would use different guidelines that would give him a sentence closer to 35 years or so.

Weiss and six others were convicted or pleaded guilty in a plot that caused the 1994 collapse of the National Heritage Life Insurance Co. It cost many of the Orlando company's 25,000 customers their life savings.