Bleidt gets 11-year jail sentence for $30m fraud

Confessed swindler Bradford C. Bleidt was sentenced yesterday to 11 years and three months in prison despite emotional courtroom pleas from about a dozen of his victims urging an even stiffer sentence.

As the head of an investment firm, Bleidt defrauded about 125 clients of $30 million. Some were elderly retirees who said they lost their life savings and their homes. Instead of investing the money, Bleidt, 51, a former resident of Manchester-by-the-Sea, put much of the funds to personal use. An estimated $15 million went to the operation of WBIX-AM, a radio station he owned.

During a hearing at the John Joseph Moakley US Courthouse in Boston yesterday, many victims spoke of how they felt personally violated and betrayed by Bleidt, how they had invited him into their houses and discussed their retirement plans with him at their kitchen tables.

Sandra McCarthy of Braintree said she and her husband invested $1.2 million to $1.5 million with Bleidt over nearly two decades. When her husband died four years ago, Bleidt assured McCarthy, now 62, that she had nothing to worry about financially, McCarthy said, but McCarthy added that she has since had to get a job with a limousine service to help make ends meet.

McCarthy said that Bleidt has ''sentenced me to a lifetime of poverty." She said she is also living a parent's nightmare of becoming ''a financial burden to my children."

The length of Bleidt's sentence was part of a deal his attorney reached with prosecutors in July. Yesterday, Chief Judge William G. Young of the United States District Court, heard victims make statements on how Bleidt devastated their lives and then formally accepted the July plea bargain.

Young ordered that a transcript of the victims' statements be kept in Bleidt's prison cell. Bleidt's imprisonment will be followed by three years of supervised release. Bleidt must keep the transcript of victims' statements in his home during that period as well.

In exchange for Bleidt's guilty pleas to 115 counts of mail fraud and one count of money laundering, the plea bargain called for a sentence of just over 11 years, below the range of 14 years to about 17 years suggested by federal sentencing guidelines.

Still, Bleidt's sentence is harsh by local standards, said Stephen G. Huggard, a former Justice Department prosecutor and an attorney with Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge LLP.

''This is a very stiff sentence for white-collar crime in Massachusetts," Huggard said.

According to the office of US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan, Bleidt's sentence is the longest handed down for a white-collar crime by the US District Court in Massachusetts in a decade.

Young also ordered Bleidt to pay nearly $32 million in restitution.

But victims are likely to see only a fraction of that amount. At the moment, it appears as if Bleidt's assets, including his interest in the radio station, could generate an estimated $1.8 million in restitution, Sullivan said.

Sullivan noted that Bleidt had waived his right to appeal as part of the plea bargain and that there is no parole in the federal system.

During the hearing, some victims questioned whether Bleidt was capable of remorse.

Addressing the court, Bleidt said, ''As far as a lifetime of remorse, you've already got that."

Bleidt's activities also are the subject of a civil complaint by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Meanwhile, a court appointed receiver is seeking to recover money for victims from banks that Bleidt used as part of his scheme.

Bleidt's fraud came to light just over a year ago, when he sent a taped confession of his activities to the SEC's Boston office. He later attempted to commit suicide.

Chris Reidy can be reached at reidy@globe.com.