2 Sentenced for Bilking Investors Out of Millions

A couple who pleaded no contest to felony charges received prison sentences Wednesday, 15 years after they bilked investors out of millions of dollars and fled to Britain.

Stanley Seldon Sirotin, 74, was sentenced to five years in state prison and ordered to repay $5.7 million he took from investors in a Pasadena shopping arcade. Sirotin is expected to serve about 42 months in prison.

His wife, Alice Beryl Sirotin, 69, was sentenced to time served, plus five years of felony probation. She was made jointly responsible for making restitution.

Stanley Sirotin had plead no contest to stealing more than $150,000, and together the couple pleaded no contest to failing to file a tax return and selling securities by misrepresentation.

Superior Court Judge Thomas L. Willhite Jr. rejected defense requests for a lesser sentence for Stanley Sirotin, who has a heart condition, and a request to reduce his wife’s felony conviction to a misdemeanor so she can obtain a real estate license.The couple were also ordered to pay nearly $500,000 in state taxes.

They left the country for Britain in 1984 while owing $6 million in judgments to investors. In 1986, the couple were charged with bilking investors out of millions of dollars they put into land development projects, including the Commons and the Burlington Arcade, both on South Lake Avenue in Pasadena. British authorities refused to extradite them. They were arrested last April in Miami after getting off a plane from Britain.