Stanford sentenced to 110 years for $7 billion fraud

Former Texas entrepreneur R. Allen Stanford was sentenced to 110 years in prison on Thursday for involving 30,000 investors from around the world in a $7 billion Ponzi scheme, according to The New York Times.

Stanford was convicted in March of 13 out of 14 counts of fraud in connection with the scheme that lasted more than two decades.

US District Judge David Hittner handed down the sentence during a hearing while two people representing Stanford's investors spoke of how his fraud had impacted their lives, according to the Associated Press.

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Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of 230 years, the maximum sentence possible for Stanford's convictions on conspiracy and wire and mail fraud.

Each count of mail or wire fraud is punishable by 20 years in prison, and Stanford was convicted on five counts of the former and four of the latter, according to Bloomberg.

"I'm not here to ask for sympathy or forgiveness or to throw myself at your mercy," Stanford said to the judge, according to the AP. "I did not run a Ponzi scheme. I didn't defraud anybody."

The prosecution called Stanford a "ruthless predator responsible for one of the most egregious frauds in history," according to The Wall Street Journal.

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