(Updates with judge's comment in 16th paragraph.)
June 14 (Bloomberg) -- R. Allen Stanford, found guilty of leading a $7 billion international fraud, was sentenced to 110 years in prison after a prosecutor said he treated his victims like "road kill."
U.S. District Judge David Hittner imposed the sentence today in Houston and ordered Stanford to forfeit $5.9 billion. Jurors in March convicted the Stanford Financial Group principal of 13 charges, including five counts of mail fraud and four of wire fraud.
The jury had found Stanford, 62, lied to those who bought certificates of deposit issued by his Antigua-based Stanford International Bank Ltd. and sold in the U.S. by his Houston- based securities firm. Prosecutors said Stanford wasted investor money on failing businesses, yachts and cricket tournaments and secretly borrowed as much as $2 billion from his bank.
"From beginning to end, he's treated his victims like road kill," Assistant U.S. Attorney William Stellmach told the judge today before a courtroom packed with Stanford's victims. "Allen Stanford doesn't deserve anyone's sympathy and he doesn't deserve your honor's mercy."
Stanford had no visible reaction to the sentence. Maintaining a fixed gaze at the judge, he didn't look back at his mother, Sammie, or daughter Randi, who were among the 200 attendees.
'Harsh Punishment'
Immediately after the proceeding, defense lawyer Ali Fazel said there would be an appeal.
"We're very disappointed in the outcome," Fazel said. "It's a harsh punishment, and it's tough on him. He is upset because he feels like he didn't do anything."
Stanford, whose sentence is 40 years shorter than the prison term meted out to Bernard Madoff in 2009, defended himself to the end.
"I've been called a lot of things -- arrogant, abrasive, a son of a gun, difficult, very opinionated and strong-willed. But I am not a thief," Stanford, dressed in a green prison garb, told the judge during a 30-minute address in which he apologized for rambling. "I never planned to, never did, either corporately or personally, defraud anyone and never set out to do that."
Maximum Sought
Prosecutors had asked for a 230-year term, the maximum under federal sentencing guidelines. Fazel requested a 10-year term for his client.
"Thirty years and 110 years are effectively the same sentence," Doug Burns, a former prosecutor, said in an interview after the sentencing. "The judge obviously felt a very high sentence was necessary."
Sammie Stanford, 82, said after the hearing she was prepared for her son to get a long prison sentence.
"In view of everything else that's happened, I didn't expect anything different," she said.
Stanford, who was ranked 205 on Forbes magazine's 2008 list of the richest Americans, with a net worth of $2.2 billion, has been jailed since being indicted in June 2009 after prosecutors said he might try to flee.
Jurors rejected defense claims that investors received adequate disclosures of how their money was being spent and that any wrongdoing was the fault of finance chief James Davis, who pleaded guilty to fraud and testified against Stanford.
Stanford had been found guilty of "one of the most egregious criminal frauds ever presented to a jury in federal court," Hittner said before pronouncing sentence.
Read Letters
Saying he'd read every one of the 350 letters received from victims, the judge added, "Stanford ruined the lives of thousands of victims all over the world who entrusted him with their life savings."
One of those victims, Angela Shaw Kogutt, referred to an honorary knighthood conferred upon Stanford by the Antiguan government and later rescinded.
"He treated our savings like they were monopoly money," she said. "Make sure the knight never sees the light of day again."
The case is U.S. v. Stanford, 09-cr-342, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas (Houston).
--Editors: Andrew Dunn, Mary Romano
To contact the reporters on this story: Laurel Brubaker Calkins in Houston at [email protected]; Andrew Harris in Chicago at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at [email protected]