Financier who stole $200 million gets 17 years in federal prison

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) -- A federal judge ordered a former financier Thursday to serve the same sentence he got in 2004 for stealing $200 million from insurance companies -- 17 years in a federal prison.
Martin Frankel, a Toledo, Ohio, native was ordered resentenced after a Supreme Court ruling last year that gave judges more leeway in their use of sentencing guidelines.
During a brief hearing in U.S. District Court, Judge Ellen B. Burns said she saw no reason to alter the sentence.
"It seemed to me, that was the appropriate sentence to impose," she said.
Frankel was convicted of taking over and looting insurance companies in Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Missouri and Tennessee of more than $200 million while living a life of luxury in Greenwich.
He had been barred from securities trading after a similar scheme years before in Ohio.
Prosecutors said Frankel was motivated by greed, sexual desire and a lust for the high life: a mansion, luxury cars, diamonds the size of nickels, and several girlfriends.
Frankel fled the country in May 1999 shortly after a meeting with Mississippi regulators, who questioned his management of several insurance companies.
He was arrested in Germany four months later and pleaded to 24 counts of fraud and racketeering in 2002.