Hedge-Fund Fraud's Guilty Plea Ignored

Convicted Swindler Who Faked Suicide To Avoid Prison Faces Up To 10 Extra Years

(AP)  A hedge-fund swindler accused of faking his own suicide tried to plead guilty Wednesday for going on the run, but his case was postponed for six weeks after he told the judge that his drug therapy was affecting his ability to think clearly.

If his guilty plea is ever accepted, Samuel Israel III, 49, could have as much as 10 years added to his 20-year sentence for bilking investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Israel tried to plead guilty before a federal magistrate judge Wednesday morning, but she refused and an afternoon session with U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas was scheduled.

Karas asked Israel several questions meant to make sure that a defendant entering a guilty plea knows what he is doing. When Karas asked about medications, Israel said he was being weaned off the painkiller fentanyl — which had been prescribed after several back surgeries — with methadone.

When the judge asked him to rank his clear-mindedness on a scale of 1 to 100, Israel, wearing an untucked brown T-shirt and a salt-and-pepper beard, said, "About 70 percent." He professed his desire to go ahead with the plea, saying, "I certainly can understand what's going on here."

"I would not say I'm guilty of something because I'm drugged up if I'm not guilty," Israel insisted. But he also said he was "a little shaky."

Karas said, "Seventy percent is not a number that makes me feel comfortable," and Israel's lawyer, Barry Bohrer, acknowledged that he would not want to try a case in front of jurors who were 70 percent clear-minded.

The parties agreed to return to court Sept. 16, when the withdrawal from fentanyl should be complete.

Israel disappeared June 9, the day he was supposed to report to a federal prison hospital in Ayer, Massachusetts. He left his SUV on a bridge north of New York City with the words "Suicide is Painless" etched into the dust on the hood.

He then took off in a camper vehicle and apparently spent the next few weeks at a Massachusetts campground while police and federal agents, not fooled by the fake suicide, searched for him. While he was missing, his girlfriend, Debra Ryan, was arrested and charged with aiding and abetting his failure to surrender. Her case is pending.

On July 2, Israel drove up to a Massachusetts police station and surrendered.

[frankbowers]

The posting say which hurt the public more, " a pot head setting at home puffing a joint or a Hedge Fund Manager who stole bilions", They are both hurting America and when that pot head breaks into your house and steals your goods or rapes your child or kills your child or wife and/or puts them in bed for life due to his stoned and ruined mind, then the billions the hedge fund manager has stole means nothing to you.
I think both should be put to death without a second opinion, I mean death now not tomorrow, this would creat a problem for them and they would both quit.
the best of good byes Frank Bowers of Austin, TX

[frankbowers]

www

[tootall10142]

I always thought i would like to go camping and fishing before i was tried on a thirty year sentence.He will be doing fedral and must do it all.The sad thing here is we will have to pay for evrything, this guy seems to come out close to the top on everything he does.

[noloyalisti]

This is an example of the real terrorists. Since these guys own and run the government, they can usually get away with it all. They have to catch one of them and make him out to be "one bad apple". Like the GIs who were torturing other human beings. But we know that the real problem are these big American corporations who profit from terror and killing and torture.

Don''t we?

[godofredo29]

God who? Godofredo? Not me.

[meanbiker]

20 years + 10 years = parole in 5 years.. That is the way the American court system works for the RICH..

Who hurt more people:

A hedge fund fraud

B pot head sitting around his house getting stoned

Who will do more time?

A Hedge Fund FRauder

B Stoner caught with an OZ..

[spadeisspade]

They need to charge his wife, as well. Not only did she most likely live in the lap of luxury (receiving stolen property or something like that), she obviously knew he wasn''t dead and what he was planning on doing. I think I vaguely remember something about her cooperating, but she should still sit her sorry butt in jail for some length of time.

[whitemale08]

All hedge funds should be shut down immediately.

They are nothing but parasites on society and its economy.

Anyone can pledge collaterized debt obligations from a helpless bank to "buy out" companies and industries.

Who gives the right for some individuals to "buy out" some company over another. That''s not fair.

Folks, we have nothing even close to a "free market" system instead we live in a "Guilded Age."

Make no mistake about it.

And do you create an "industry" out of "buy out" companies? It''s stupid and doesn''t make sense at all.

[slim1h2o]

Maybe they should do to him what China does to their executives when they are caught dishonoring their system, a bullet to the back of the head.

Fair?, Not sure, effective though. They do not cheat, swindle people ever again!

[brianbwb-2009]

Ever stop to thing that "God" probably also didn''t want you to steal?

[Gary Kempf]

So I wonder if he investing his ill gotten gains in hedge funds?

[Gary Kempf]

After fleecing investors of nearly half a billion dollars.


You can bet the money he scammed is safe somewhere.