12 Year Prison Sentence For Outrageous Ross Mandell, Sky Capital Con Man
by Beth Connolly on May 4, 2012
Ross Mandell, former CEO of Sky Capital LLC and convicted con man, was sentenced to twelve years in prison Thursday by Judge Paul Crotty, the Huffington Postreports. He also has to forfeit $50 million.
Mandell was convicted last summer of conspiracy and securities fraud in a $140 million in a penny stock scheme.
“I’ve never taken any money from anyone sir,” said Mandell in his testimony, according to the Huffington Post.
Mandell’s hard-partying lifestyle was believed to embodify the fast life of high-powered stockbrokers at the turn of the millenium. His expenditures included a private jet, booze and prostitutes in the UK, and $1.3 mill spent on hotels in Europe.
His website, RossMandell.com, seeks to rectify this image by presenting a slideshow of Mandell cuddling family pets and his blonde wife.
Prosecutors called Mandell and his associates con men, “saying they capitalized on the excitement over Internet tech stocks by using their broker-dealer operation to solicit private investments in startups. Prosecutors said the defendants spent some of investor money living lavishly with private jets, expensive vacations, fancy cars and flashy watches. They said the men manipulated the value of stocks they sold to investors in part by paying brokers 400 percent commissions to promote the stocks,” according to the Huffington Post.
Mandell evidently focused on foreign investors because they were less skeptical than Americans. “They are easier to convince. All you have to do is say the name Wall Street,” Mandell told his brokers, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Katherine Goldstein.
Past CompliancEX Coverage of Mandell:





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