Feds Want Dreier In Prison For 145 Years

Federal prosecutors are still looking to make examples out of swindlers. After successfully nailing Bernard Madoff for 150 years, now they are seeking 145 years for Marc Dreier, a once prominent lawyer who pleaded guilty to a $700 million scam involving fake promissory notes. The feds pointed out, "This defendant, an officer of the court, engaged in a more than $740 million series of frauds over a seven-year period largely to finance a personal life of extraordinary lavishness," and that his investors lost $400 million. Dreier's defense lawyer, however, is hoping to get his 59-year-old client 12 1/2 years, "In seeking some measure of leniency we appeal not to sympathy but to reason. As colossal frauds capture national headlines, sentences for white-collar offenders must not become disproportionately long." CityRoom has Dreier's letter to the judge, which includes, "I have lost all my friends. I have lost my law firm, my law license and all that I ever owned. I have seen my family suffer the unimaginable. I have lost my past and my future. I have lost everything a man can lose. And now I will lose my freedom as well, and rightly so."