The jail-time fates of the associates of convicted businessman Tom Petters will be known sometime during the week of Aug. 16, nearly two years after the stunning collapse of the $3.65 billion Ponzi scheme that they helped engineer.
Tom Petters team reckoning nears
Seven colleagues of the jailed exec will be sentenced in mid-August for their part in the huge Ponzi scheme.
March 24, 2011 at 2:38PM
U.S. District Judge Richard Kyle said in an order filed Wednesday that the exact times and dates of the sentencings will be set later but said all seven defendants will receive their sentence that week.
Six of the seven testified on behalf of the government during Petters' criminal trial last year in hopes of gaining reduced sentences. They previously pleaded guilty to a variety of fraud, money laundering, conspiracy and tax charges.
They are Deanna Coleman, Robert White, Michael Catain, Larry Reynolds, James Wehmhoff, Gregory Bell and Harold Katz, who did not testify at the trial.
Coleman, the whistleblower who brought the fraud to the government's attention and wore a concealed recording device at work, testified during the trial that she hoped she would get probation as a result of her cooperation.
That will be up to Kyle to decide based on the recommendations of federal prosecutors and Coleman's defense attorney.
Petters, meanwhile, is in the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City awaiting his next prison assignment. He was sent there recently after a long stint in the Sherburne County Jail, where he had been a prisoner since October 2008.
DAVID PHELPS
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Stadium Capital, the largest shareholder, had been pushing for management and board changes at Minneapolis-based smart-bed maker.
