Forte gets 15 years in Ponzi scheme

A Philadelphia-area fund manager is going to prison for 15 years for running a Ponzi scheme that cost investors $35 million.

U.S. District Judge Jan Dubois also ordered Joseph S. Forte, 53, to pay $34.8 million in restitution.

Federal prosecutors say Forte, of Broomall, sought status by accumulating wealth and pledging large charitable gifts. He also used the investments on a beach house and to raise his family.

There was silence in the courtroom as the sentence was announced. The judge described the victims' testimony as the most moving he'd ever heard.

The official number of victims, counting husbands and wives as one, was 76 victims.

Four of them spoke, telling of how their lives were ruined and futures were stolen.

When Forte was given a chance to speak to the court, he said that he lied about his investment results almost from the start because his trading strategy was not working, but that he thought he could get it to work with more practice.

"It wasn't a scheme when it started," he said. "I let it morph into that."

But in the end, he acknowledged, he had inflated the value of the fund so much that he could never catch up.

Forte was ordered to surrender Jan. 10 to begin his sentence at a prison to be determined. He is free under his bail until then.

Forte ran an investment fund from his basement and dummied up reports showing high returns. He pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering.

Victims say he sought new money even days before his December 2008 plea.

Forte paid himself millions, bought a beach house in Sea Isle, N.J., and donated more than $1 million to charity. Investigators say he blew through more than $20 million from 1996 to 2008.

Forte's lawyer says the former gym owner had delusions of grandeur and thought he could make his clients money.