After pleading guilty to one count of wire fraud and three counts of bank fraud earlier in March, Hassan Nemazee, a New York City businessman and former prominent Democratic fund-raiser, was sentenced to 12 years in prison and to pay a restitution of more than $292 million to his victims.
Between 1998 and 2009, Nemazee ran a bank loan Ponzi scheme which defrauded Bank of America, Citigroup and HSBC Holdings PLC a total of approximately $292 million. Within the 11 year period, Nemazee has been misrepresenting to the banks that he owned hundreds of millions of dollars in collateral and assets. He provided fake documents to further prove his non-existing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. Treasury notes and other securities.
By 2009, when Citibank suspected Nemazee’s of fraud, Nemazee used the loan he received from HSBC to repay that of Citibank’s.
Nemazee originally faced 15 to 19 years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines. But Nemazee’s charitable work lowered his sentencing guidelines.