Rothstein ally’s prison term cut

Preve, 75, helped other prosecutions

A Broward County man who admitted he fed more than $20 million to Scott Rothstein’s massive Ponzi scheme had his prison term reduced last week at the request of prosecutors.

Frank Preve, 73, of Coral Springs, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in 2014.

Senior U.S. District Judge James Cohn agreed on Friday to cut Preve’s federal prison term from 3 1⁄2 years to two years and two months. Federal prosecutors recommended the sentence reduction because of information and help Prevé provided in related prosecutions in Pennsylvania.

In a related matter, former Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler law firm partner Stuart Rosenfeldt, 61, of Boca Raton, is serving the last few months of his federal prison sentence at a halfway house in South Florida, prison records show. He was moved from the federal prison camp at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama to South Florida to begin his transition back to freedom,

prison officials said.

Rosenfeldt was a partner in the now-defunct Fort Lauderdale firm of Rothstein Rosenfeldt and Adler, which was the center of operations for the $1.4 billion Ponzi scheme orchestrated by Rothstein. Rothstein is serving a 50-year prison sentence for his crimes.

Rosenfeldt, who pleaded guilty to a single charge of conspiring to commit campaign finance fraud, to defraud the United States, to commit bank fraud and to deny civil rights, surrendered to prison in early 2015. He will be placed on probation for two years after he is released from the halfway house.

Preve, who worked with a hedge fund group, fed more than $20 million from investors into the fraud in the four months before it collapsed in 2009.

Preve was initially sentencedin February 2015 but was allowed to remain free on bond because of poor health and so he could testify in one of the related cases, according to court records.

Prosecutors said he didn’t know it was a Ponzi scheme but failed to report obvious red flags to investors, including that Rothstein skipped making payments, paperwork was missing and the underlying deals couldn’t be verified.

Preve was also credited with helping authorities to investigate the Rothstein fraud.