"I’m going to do everything in my power to make this right," he said.
Harry Potter
One of his victims, Michael Connor of Kansas City, a friend dating back to their middle school days in Minneapolis, said Meli had enticed him to invest almost $8 million for tickets to the Broadway show "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," based on what he later learned were fake documents.
"I realize he was not desperate," Connor said. "He targeted me, his long term friend, because I trusted him like a brother."
In imposing her sentence, Wood noted the amount of the loss and cited letters from victims that she called "often heartbreaking" -- including some whose losses prevented them from retiring, buying a home or sending their children to college.
"These weren’t mistakes," Wood said. "He was running what he called a shell game."
Simmons, who had wooed a mother of three in order to get her to invest more than $4 million she got from a divorce settlement, pleaded for mercy. He asked U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood to spare him from prison so he could take care of his 10-year-old son.
The judge rejected the request, calling his actions “appalling and tragic.”
The case is U.S. v. Simmons, 17-cr-00127, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan.)
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.