Andrew Caspersen, the former Wall Street executive, has landed a four-year prison sentence for his part in a Ponzi-like scheme to defraud investors including family members and friends out of $38.5 million, according to Reuters.
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Caspersen, who worked at a unit of investment banker Paul Taubman's PJT Partners before his arrest in March, pleaded guilty to the charges back in July, blaming his conduct on a gambling addiction that he was unable to control.
Gambling Addiction
At the time, he said: “It was just a means for me to get money to feed a gambling addiction that was all consuming,” as he pleaded guilty to securities fraud and wire fraud.
Caspersen is the son of late Wall Street financier Finn M.W. Caspersen and was employed at Park Hill Group. The advisory firm was spun off from private equity group Blackstone Group in 2015 and is now part of PJT Partners.
Prosecutors said beginning in November 2014, Caspersen tried to defraud over a dozen investors including family members and friends by claiming he would use their funds to make loans to private equity firms, generating annual returns of 15 to 20 percent, and that he "shamelessly exploited the confidence his victims placed in him."
Instead, he used the $38.5 million he raised to make options trades to pay earlier investors and to replace more than $8 million he misappropriated from Park Hill, which according to Caspersen, he used for gambling.
Caspersen, who attempted to raise over $150 million, was arrested in March after returning from a family holiday. He had previously written a suicide note to his wife and letter to creditors saying he was "deeply ashamed”.
