Broker Gets 8 Years for Investment Scheme
From Times Wire Reports
A Los Angeles-area promoter of oil and gas limited partnership investments was sentenced to eight years in prison for her role in a $42- million Ponzi scheme that defrauded more than 1,000 mostly elderly people.
Betty Ann Rubin, president of the defunct Beverly Hills brokerage Lazar Frederick & Co., is the final criminal defendant to be sentenced in a case launched by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1995.
A Ponzi scheme occurs when early investors are paid with the deposits of later investors rather than with actual investment returns.
In March 1998, Rubin was ordered by a federal judge to pay $346,410 in connection with the allegations. Her firm was ordered to pay $7.9 million.
