Stock manipulator who stole $20M dies in crash
Meissenn, of Suffield, led scheme that took savings from 12K people
A Connecticut stock manipulator who got a relatively short, three-month sentence because of a terminal illness after stealing nearly $20 million in a “pumpand-dump” scheme has died three years later in a car crash on I-95.
Christian Meissenn, 49, of Suffield was an organizer of a penny stock conspiracy that cost as many as 12,000 people — many of them retirees — their savings. The state police said Meissenn died when his vintage Lincoln Town Car crashed on I-95 in Greenwich on Aug. 16.
Meissenn’s punishment after his 2016 conviction was dramatically
less than the 3- to 7- year sentences imposed on his co-conspirators. Hartford lawyer and former City Councilor Corey Brinson, who Meissenn recruited as so-called legal counsel for the
gang of swindlers, received three years for laundering more than $3 million that retirees thought they were investing in hot stocks.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer and federal prosecutors were persuaded by Meissenn’s request that he be spared substantial prison time because he faced imminent death from a rare terminal illness and the federal prison system could not provide him with adequate care.
Meyer called Meissenn a brazen criminal, but said he was influenced by his deteriorating health and medical evidence that his life could soon end.
“I have to wonder whether some providential force — I’m sure you have too — has sentenced you to something worse,” Meyer told Meissenn.
Meissenn’s lawyer said he was afflicted by Erdheim-chester disease, a rare slow-growing blood cancer, and retroperitoneal fibrosis, which is characterized by fibrous growths in the abdomen. Meissenn’s outlook was not good, defense lawyer Cody Guarnieri said.
Guarnieri asked for a sentence of house arrest and no prison, but the judge said it would send the wrong message to allow someone who stole millions to avoid prison.
“I believe you should serve some prison time, but I don’t believe it should be so much you don’t see your children again,” Meyer told Meissenn.
In pump-and-dump schemes, conspirators acquire blocks of stock in worthless shell companies and pitch the companies to investors as being on the cusp of a commercial breakthrough, often in fields such as rare earth mining or software development. They then pump up share prices through rigged trades and phony announcements delivered to millions of inboxes by internet spammers.
As share values worth pennies shoot up, salesmen pitch the stocks to unsophisticated investors. As values peak, the conspirators dump, or sell, their stock, causing the value to collapse, and leaving unwitting investors with worthless shares.