Former BigLaw Associate Gets 5 Years in $5m Ponzi Scheme That Bilked Friends and Relatives

A former Skadden Arps lawyer who cheated friends and relatives of life savings in a Ponzi scheme and then tried to kill himself was sentenced in New York to five years in prison Thursday, reports the Associated Press and the New York Post.

His crime was revealed when he wrote a long suicide note and jumped into the Hudson River in a 2014 suicide attempt that ended with his rescue by police divers.

A U.S. District Court judge gave Bennett a sentence at the high end of federal sentencing guidelines. She announced it after hearing several of the 58-year-old’s friends describe giving hundreds of thousands of dollars for a supposedly safe investment. Some of them told the judge he is a “pathological liar.”

Read the AP story and the Post story.