No Love For Ex-Mayor Sentenced In Hedge Fund Fraud

Date: Friday, May 16, 2008
Author: FINalternatives.com

A former Ohio mayor was sentenced to four years in prison yesterday for running a hedge fund scam that cost his victims more than $150,000.

Lee Skierkiewicz was indicted almost two years ago on 10 charges of theft and two charges of aggravated theft, and was extradited to Ohio from Chicago, where federal marshals arrested him in November 2006. Prosecutors allege that he raised between $25,000 and $100,000 from 13 people for his hedge fund, Prima Partners, stealing $157,000 from six of them to pay business or personal expenses, or for his own stock market speculation.

At his sentencing, Skierkiewicz, who served as mayor of Loveland, a suburban city of 11,000 about 20 miles northeast of Cincinnati, from 1995 to 1999, said he was willing to repay the money he was accused of stealing, a promise the judge dismissed as not believable.

Skierkiewicz, pleaded guilty to theft charges. Had he been convicted on all dozen charges, he faced as much as 25 years in prison.

A year after leaving the mayor’s office, Skierkiewicz left R.W. Baird Co. to found Prima. Among his victims, according to prosecutors, were his in-laws and a former Loveland council member.