Alan B. Bond, once a regular on “Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser,” was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison on Feb. 11 for defrauding union and other pension funds of $56 million. Sr. U.S. Dist. Judge Leonard Sand (Sou. Dist. NY, Carter) also ordered the frmr. President of Albriond Capital Mgmt. to pay $6.6 million in restitution and a $36,000 fine as he condemned Bond’s “greed.”
Bond was convicted last June of cherry-picking profitable stock trades into his private account, while moving losing trades into his clients accounts. Two of those clients were Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 725 in Birmingham, Ala., and ATU Local 1220 in Richmond, Va. Strangely, those officials stuck with Bond even after he was indicted in Dec. 1999 on charges that he used kickbacks from stock-brokerage firms commissions to pay for gifts to James Thomas, a trustee of ATU Local 689s pension plan in Wash., D.C.
Until he was indicted again in Aug. 2001, Bond’s union clients lost two-thirds of the value of their pension funds, even as he received a 5,000% return on his investments at a time when the stock market was declining. [Los Angeles Times 2/12/03]