‘I chose gambling over everything’
NEW YORK — A former executive at a New York investment bank who admitted defrauding investors of more than $38 million was sentenced to four years in prison by a judge who cited his gambling addiction as reason for leniency.
“I chose gambling over everything,” Andrew Caspersen, 40, told U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan.
In July, the graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School pleaded guilty to securities and wire fraud, admitting defrauding mostly family and friends of more than $38 million as he worked for PJT Partners, which he also defrauded of over $8 million.
“I lost their money,” he said. “I abused their friendship. I destroyed my family’s name,” said the son of the late Finn M.W. Caspersen, a prominent philanthropist and former chief executive of Beneficial Corp.
Still, Caspersen packed the courtroom with family and friends as well as members of organizations he has joined to fight alcohol and gambling addictions. Many of them argued for leniency in letters to the judge.
Rakoff credited Caspersen’s “very real gambling disorder” as he imposed a prison term that fell well short of the 15 years called for by sentencing guidelines or the 7½ years recommended by the court’s Probation Department.
Prosecutors said he scammed clients of PJT Partners into investing in sham private equity investments.
When he addressed the judge, Caspersen said it took public humiliation for him to confront his gambling addiction but that he was dedicated to continuing treatment.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Christine Magdo urged a lengthy prison sentence, saying Caspersen failed to follow through on gambling addiction treatment after squandering nearly $2.3 million invested by his mother and a brother in 2012.
Defense attorney Paul Shechtman said his client was so overtaken by his gambling illness that he hit a high of over $100 million one day and bet it all the next on whether the market would go up or down. As a result, he was left with nearly nothing at the end of the trading day, the lawyer said.