Biggest-Ever Sentences Handed Down in Scam

Two men who helped take $9.5 million from several thousand people in telephone solicitation swindles were sentenced Friday to 15 and 20 years in prison--the toughest sentences ever handed down in Southern California for that crime, prosecutors said.

U.S. District Judge James M. Ideman announced that he intended to “make an example” to others who operate boiler room frauds. In Orange County, where the defendants began their first boiler room, those scams are rampant, federal authorities have said.

Todd E. Fisch, 26, was sentenced to 20 years and an associate, Warren Sharp, 40, to 15 years. Fisch’s mother, Joan, was placed on probation.

Recommendation Ignored

Ideman ignored Assistant U.S. Atty. Leon W. Weidman’s recommendation that Todd Fisch and Sharp each be sentenced to 10 years.

The patriarch of the family, Joel H. Fisch, 57, alleged to be the mastermind of the techniques used, is scheduled to be sentenced next month. But one defense attorney predicted that, based on the judge’s tough sentencing Friday, Joel Fisch will seek to withdraw his guilty plea and force a trial.

The three Fisch family members have pleaded guilty to running three telephone solicitation swindles since 1982, first operating in Orange County as First Trading Group Ltd.

They created bogus firms, often with business addresses that were mail drops. When authorities became suspicious, they moved on, from Orange County to Canada, to Washington, then to Boston and Florida.

When arrested in Miami in 1986, the Fisch family and associates were purporting to be brokers in the international currency markets. Potential investors were told the firm maintained an office in Paris, and the president of the firm was a man with the regal-sounding name of J. Claude Le Vasseur. No such office existed, and Todd Fisch admitted selecting the name from a Long Island, New York, phone directory.

Took in $8.5 Million

Working from offices in El Toro between 1982 and 1984, the Fisches took in $8.5 million from people who thought they were speculating on the future prices of precious metals, such as gold and silver.

About 1,600 customers, largely from Southern California, were the losers, prosecutors said.

Sharp was a computer technician who joined the family in Orange County and stayed with them through Florida.

Joan Fisch, 56, pleaded guilty to four counts of mail and wire fraud. But on Friday she insisted that she only learned at the end that her husband’s enterprises were criminal.

She also said she was the sole support for her 88-year-old mother.

While Ideman at first announced he would sentence her to prison, after a long pause, he relented. Citing Weidman’s recommendation, he placed Joan Fisch on probation, but not before lecturing her that she is “to a great extent” responsible for her son.

Three other men associated with the Fisches’ scams were sentenced earlier.