Former MD Pension Exec Jail Time Cut

February 20, 2007 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - A federal judge last week reduced former Maryland pension fund manager Nathan A. Chapman Jr.'s 7 ½-year prison sentence by more than two years to comply with federal sentencing guidelines.

U.S. District Judge William D. Quarles re-sentenced Chapman, 49, to five years, three months in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release, prosecutors said, according to the Baltimore Sun.   Chapman will start serving his sentence on June 5.

Last December a federal appellate court denied a request from Chapman to overturn his 2004 stock fraud conviction.   However, at that time the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals in an unpublished opinion ruled that Chapman was improperly sentenced and granted him the right to be sentenced again (see  Chapman Loses MD Pension Fraud Appeal ).  

Because of U.S. Supreme Court decisions handed down since the Chapman conviction, the trial judge in the case should have stayed within a federal sentencing guideline range of five years and three months to 6 ½ years in prison for the principal charge in the former pension manager’s conviction, the judges ruled.

Chapman, who had once served as a chairman of the state university system’s board of regents, was convicted of using state pension money to buy stock in his companies to prop up their value – a move that went sour when the stock value plummeted and the retirement system lost virtually all of that money (See Chapman Jurors Convict on 23 of 32 Charges ). The jury that convicted Chapman in August 2004 fixed the amount of the loss at more than $5 million (See Chapman Gets Jail Time, $5M Fine in Pension Fraud Case ).

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