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Financier Armstrong released after record imprisonment for contempt
Financier Martin Armstrong Released After 11 Years in Jail
By Zeke Faux and David Glovin
Bloomberg News
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-03-15/financier-martin-armstrong-r...
Financier Martin Armstrong, jailed since January 2000 on civil and criminal charges stemming from what prosecutors said was a $700 million Ponzi scheme, was released from prison last week.
Armstrong, the founder of now-defunct Princeton Economics International Ltd., will be confined to his home until his time in federal custody ends in September, said Chris Burke, a spokesman for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons. Armstrong is permitted to leave for work and will check in periodically at a halfway house in the Philadelphia area.
"I would like to thank everyone who has stood by me these many years," said a letter under Armstrong's name posted on the website MartinArmstrong.org. "What I have seen is the deep corruption that lingers through the political-financial system that threatens the future of my family and friends."
... Dispatch continues below ...
Sona Drills 85.4g Gold/Ton Over 4 Metres at Elizabeth Gold Deposit, Extending the Mineralization of the Southwest Vein on the Property
Company Press Release, October 27, 2010
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Sona Resources Corp. reports on five drillling holes in the third round of assay results from the recently completed drill program at its 100 percent-owned Elizabeth Gold Deposit Property in the Lillooet Mining District of southern British Columbia. Highlights from the diamond drilling include:
-- Hole E10-66 intersected 17.4g gold/ton over 1.54 metres.
-- Hole E10-67 intersected 96.4g gold/ton over 2.5 metres, including one assay interval of 383g of gold/ton over 0.5 metres.
-- Hole E10-69 intersected 85.4g gold/ton over 4.03 metres, including one assay interval of 230g gold/ton over 1 metre.
Four drill holes, E10-66 to E10-69, targeted the southwestern end of the Southwest Vein, and three of the holes have expanded the mineralized zone in that direction. The Southwest Vein gold mineralization has now been intersected over a strike length of 325 metres, with the deepest hole drilled less than 200 metres from surface.
"The assay results from the Southwest Zone quartz vein continue to be extremely positive," says John P. Thompson, Sona's president and CEO. "We are expanding the Southwest Vein, and this high-grade gold mineralization remains wide open down dip and along strike to the southwest."
For the company's full press release, please visit:
http://sonaresources.com/_resources/news/SONA_NR19_2010.pdf
Armstrong was jailed a record seven years for defying a judge's order to produce gold bars, coins, and other assets. His detention for contempt in a high-security Manhattan prison was the longest of its kind in a federal white-collar civil case. In 2006 Armstrong was sentenced to five more years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy in a related criminal case.
He has repeatedly challenged his guilty plea.
The former money manager built his reputation on his theory that economic cycles recur over centuries. His firm, which was based in Princeton, New Jersey, operated from an office overlooking Tokyo's Imperial Palace and grew to manage as much as $3 billion.
Thomas Sjoblom, a lawyer who represented Armstrong when he was jailed for contempt, didn't immediately respond to a phone call and e-mail seeking comment. Armstrong's daughter didn't immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment.
Armstrong was charged in 1999 with defrauding mostly Japanese investors out of more than $700 million. In December 2001, Republic Securities, now a unit of HSBC Holdings Plc, pleaded guilty to helping Armstrong swindle Japanese clients and paid $569 million, then the largest reimbursement by any corporation to investors victimized in a fraud.
Two ex-Republic employees and a former Armstrong worker also pleaded guilty.
In the civil case, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued Princeton Economics and Armstrong in 1999. The judge in that case jailed Armstrong in January 2000 for contempt after Armstrong refused to surrender $14.9 million in gold bars and rare coins.
Armstrong said he didn't have them to turn over.
While in prison, Armstrong said, he spent lengthy periods in isolation. A violent attack left him hospitalized in intensive care.
Armstrong spent his first 7 1/2 years in a high-security federal detention center in Manhattan and the remainder of his sentence in a prison camp in New Jersey.
The criminal case is U.S. v. Armstrong, 99-cr-997, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
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