{"id":5198,"date":"2006-10-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-25T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T04:00:00","slug":"hedge-fund-fraudster-gets-four-year-sentence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.hedgeco.net\/news\/10\/2006\/hedge-fund-fraudster-gets-four-year-sentence.html","title":{"rendered":"Hedge fund fraudster gets four year sentence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>  <span class=\"intro\">A Hong Kong fund manager who siphoned $194.5 (\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c2\u00ac154.7m) million of clients\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 cash into dummy companies to hide losses in other investments has been jailed for four and a half  years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>  <span class=\"storytext\"><a class=\"keywordsearch\" href=\"http:\/\/www.financialnews-us.com\/?page=uspeoplemoves&amp;keywordsearch=Charles+Schmitt\">Charles Schmitt<\/a> left more than 1,000 clients out of  pocket when his illicit acts triggered the collapse of the <a class=\"keywordsearch\" href=\"http:\/\/www.financialnews-us.com\/?page=uspeoplemoves&amp;keywordsearch=CSA\">CSA<\/a> <a class=\"keywordsearch\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.financialnews-us.com\/?page=uspeoplemoves&amp;keywordsearch=Absolute+Return+Fund\">Absolute Return Fund<\/a> in 2004.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>  <span class=\"storytext\">The 61-year-old former senior business manager at the <a class=\"keywordsearch\" href=  \"http:\/\/www.financialnews-us.com\/?page=uspeoplemoves&amp;keywordsearch=New+York+Stock+Exchange\">New York Stock Exchange<\/a> \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cconjured up a remarkably sophisticated scheme,\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 deputy judge <a class=  \"keywordsearch\" href=\"http:\/\/www.financialnews-us.com\/?page=uspeoplemoves&amp;keywordsearch=Esther+Toh\">Esther Toh<\/a> said, noting that had the acts of a whistleblower within the firm not come to  light \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cone wonders how many more investors would have been lured into the scheme&#8221;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>  <span class=\"storytext\">Schmitt had admitted 19 charges of false accounting at Hong Kong\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s High Court. He led clients to believe they were investing in well-known funds, but actually diverted the  money into shell companies with very similar names. Schmitt used the money to cover losses in other funds.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>  <span class=\"storytext\">A shortfall of $32.5 million was left in the liquidation, and additional costs have taken the total loss so far to $46.6 million. While more than 200 clients have been fully  paid, nearly 850 are still waiting to be reimbursed. It is expected they will receive 60% to 70% of their investment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.google.com\/news\/url?sa=T&amp;ct=us\/1-0&amp;fd=R&amp;url=http:\/\/www.financialnews-us.com\/%3Fpage%3Duspeoplemoves%26contentid%3D1045682621&amp;cid=0&amp;ei=IGU_Rfn7JZSgogK7qPHBAQ\">ReadComplete Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Hong Kong fund manager who siphoned $194.5 (\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c2\u00ac154.7m) million of clients\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 cash into dummy companies to hide losses in other investments has been jailed for four and a half years. Charles Schmitt left more than 1,000 clients out of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-syndicated"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging.hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}