Wymer Is Guilty in Huge Fraud : Crime: The ex-Newport Beach money manager is ordered to pay $209 million in restitution and faces up to 100 years in prison.

Money manager Steven D. Wymer pleaded guilty Tuesday to engineering a giant fraud involving small government agencies in what federal prosecutors termed “one of the most significant and financially devastating” cases of fraud ever.

Wymer, 44, who once managed $1.2 billion through his Newport Beach investment company, was ordered to pay $209 million in restitution. He faces up to 100 years in prison when he is sentenced on Jan. 15.

“It is a certainty that he will be behind bars for a very substantial period of time,” said James R. Asperger, an assistant U.S. attorney and chief prosecutor in the case.

Wymer, in his first public statement since his arrest last December, told U.S. District Judge Richard G. Gadbois Tuesday that he was ashamed of his actions.

He said he lost huge sums of money through bad investments, then tried to hide the losses from clients and federal authorities by forging documents. He promised his clients--mostly municipalities seeking a safe place to invest extra cash--that they would make huge returns on their investments.

“I began taking money from other clients to make up the losses,” Wymer said. “The false statements I made to clients were not planned from the beginning. The situation got out of hand and snowballed even though I tried, without success, to remedy the situation.”

At one point, Wymer’s voice cracked as he read his prepared remarks.

“I am deeply sorry for and ashamed of what I have done,” Wymer said. “Unfortunately, my illegal activities have greatly hurt some of my clients, my wife, my daughter and my family.”

The Securities and Exchange Commission uncovered Wymer’s fraud, which amounted to a giant Ponzi scheme, last fall. He was arrested in December and charged with 30 counts of various felonies.

In his plea agreement Tuesday, which settles all federal criminal and civil charges against him, Wymer also agreed to forfeit assets worth up to $15 million and to cooperate with authorities in a continuing criminal probe of his former business associates.

Wymer will likely receive a 20- to 25-year sentence at his sentencing hearing in January, prosecutors said.

Although Wymer claimed that most of his clients lost no money, prosecutors said he used investors’ funds to finance an opulent lifestyle. His assets included 13 cars, four boats and properties in Newport Beach, New York City, Sun Valley, Idaho, and Palm Beach County, Fla.

“He was robbing Peter to pay Paul,” said Asperger. “He acted out of greed and he certainly lived a very lavish lifestyle as a result.”

It was unclear how Wymer would ultimately pay the restitution. Prosecutors said that Wymer would be liable to repay clients who lost money if he goes back to work after prison.

His victims, more than 60 government entities, pension funds and financial institutions--including the cities of Orange, Torrance, Indio and Palm Desert--are out more than $208 million: $174 million in losses and about $34 million in interest, said U.S. Attorney Terree Bowers.

Of that, authorities believe they have traced $75 million, much of it losses from a trust in Iowa.

Joanne Coontz, a councilwoman in Orange, which said it lost $7 million invested with Wymer, doubts that the money will ever be returned. “His pleading guilty is not going to help us,” she said. “He doesn’t have the money.”