Technology Investor Receives Nine-Year Sentence for Stock Fraud

New York, NYU.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan has sentenced noted philanthropist and technology investor Alberto Vilar to nine years in prison for stock fraud, ignoring the 69-year-old's pleas for a community service sentence.

span itemprop="image" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/ImageObject" style="display:block">Vilar, the co-founder of the investment advisory firm Amerindo, was convicted of 12 criminal counts of fraud ranging from wire fraud to money laundering in a 2008 trial. His partner and co-founder, Gary Tanaka, was handed a five-year sentence earlier in the year.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had filed securities fraud charges against the company in 2005 for defrauding a customer out of as much as $5 million, according to AltAssets.com.

The SEC claims that the customer believed that she was investing in the Amerindo Venture Fund, when in actuality the money was being transferred to a brokerage fund, where Tanaka disbursed it between the two men. Vilar allegedly accepted more than $1 million of the money, donating more than $700,000 of it to schools and charities.

Amerindo collapsed shortly after the two men were arrested in 2005.