Justice was blind recently when it came to sentencing a broker who defrauded investors out of more than $66 million. New York broker Bradley D. Eisner received five years’ probation for his role in a Ponzi scheme that convinced investors they were putting money in a foreign-exchange market when, in reality, the funds were being spent by Eisner and his business partner, Michael R. MacCaull.
The court apparently showed leniency toward Eisner because he turned himself in 2008 and began cooperating with the government. MacCaull, in the other hand, was sentenced to 15 years and eight months in prison in March.
As reported Sept. 20 by Bloomberg, Eisner and MacCaull operated their scam from January 2001 to January 2008.
At MacCaull’s sentencing, MacCaull called Eisner the mastermind of their Ponzi scheme and the one who benefited the most financially. According to MacCaull, Eisner kept the majority of the more than $110 million that their company, Razor FX, stole from investors. Prosecutors say both men used investors’ funds for their personal use, buying lavish homes, cars, and artworks by Picasso and Willem De Kooning.
To conceal the scheme, MacCaull and Eisner created fake customer account statements and returned tens of millions of dollars to investors with money from new ones. Both men must pay back $66.3 million to their victims.
According to prosecutors, a total of 272 investors found themselves victims of MacCaull and Eisner’s scheme. Two of those individuals were David B. Dringman and Evi Remp- Dringman.
“We lost our future financial security to Mr. Eisner, the public face of Razor FX,” said David B. Dringman and Evi Remp-Dringman, in the Bloomberg article. “Ultimately we were forced to make the decision to sell our home in California that we had hoped to keep for our future.”