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by Mike Caswell
New York prosecutors say that they will not be seeking the eight to 10 years in jail that sentencing guidelines specify for Kenneth Wise, a "highly malleable" 77-year-old man who participated in an $11-million manipulation run by Vancouver-linked fraudster Ed Durante. (All figure are in U.S. dollars.) They say that Mr. Wise simply did whatever Mr. Durante told him to do. His role in the fraud included setting up bank and brokerage accounts for Mr. Durante to use.
The submission from prosecutors comes as part of a case that they filed over the pump-and-dump of VGTel Inc., an OTC Markets listing. They say that scores of investors, many of them seniors or widows, ended up with ultimately worthless shares of VGTel in the six-year fraud. Mr. Durante had told them that the stock could go to $50. Some victims even sold conservative investments to buy VGTel, the government said.
Mr. Wise pleaded guilty to the charges on Jan. 6, 2016, relatively early in the case. Based on sentencing guidelines (a complex set of equations that attempt to break the conduct of an accused down to mathematical factors) he is facing a jail term of eight to 10 years. The largest single factor in Mr. Wise's sentencing guidelines is the fact that the scheme resulted in losses of over $9.5-million.
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