‘Wall St. Whiz Kid’ Given Stiff 8-Year Prison Term

NEW YORK —  David P. Bloom, the would-be financial adviser who bilked investors out of $15 million to fund a lavish life style of expensive artworks, luxury cars and posh homes, was sentenced Friday to eight years in prison by a judge who called him “amoral, not immoral.”

The high-living Bloom, whose massive swindle scheme earned him the title “Wall Street Whiz Kid,” pleaded guilty last March to one count each of mail fraud and securities fraud. Most of the investors he conned were friends of his parents, according to prosecutors.

“I have betrayed my own sense of morality and values and betrayed the trust and love of numerous people around me,” Bloom, standing with his hands crossed in front of him, told the judge.

He conceded that he was “deserving of punishment,” but his attorney, David W. O’Connor, sought leniency, saying: “David Bloom shouldn’t wind up being the scapegoat of the 1980s.”

But U.S. District Judge David N. Edelstein said he found Bloom “remorseless, completely lacking in conscience. He was a predator, completely insensitive.”

Edelstein sentenced Bloom to four years on each count and, in an unusual move, ordered the prison terms to run consecutively as spectators in the crowded courtroom gasped.

“He went on his way without any thought of the pain, suffering and misery he was inflicting,” said a disgusted Edelstein. “He was amoral, not immoral.”

The judge said Bloom had “cannibalized his family and friends.” He also ordered Bloom to make “full restitution.”

No fine was imposed.

Edelstein could have sentenced Bloom to 10 years in prison and $20 million in fines.

According to prosecutors, the boyish-looking Bloom used deceit and fraud to parlay a college investment club into a multimillion-dollar investment operation with about 140 clients.

Bloom, who was not registered as an investment adviser, wooed investors for his now-defunct Greater Sutton Investors Group Inc. by falsely claiming his clientele included the Sultan of Brunei, the Rockefeller family and entertainer Bill Cosby.

A 1985 Duke University graduate with an art history degree, Bloom told clients that he was putting their money into the stock market when he actually was using it to pay for a lavish life style that included artworks worth $5.5 million; an $830,000 condominium on Manhattan’s Upper East Side; a Long Island beach house worth $1.9 million, and two cars--an Aston-Martin convertible and a Mercedes-Benz--worth $200,000.

Among the paintings Bloom purchased with other people’s money were works by John Sloan, Thomas Hart Benton, Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent.

Bloom began sending his investors bogus account statements that claimed to show their securities holdings, according to the charges.

Bloom also was charged with using new clients’ funds to pay “profits” to older clients.

Last January, the Securities and Exchange Commission brought civil charges against Bloom, who settled by agreeing to turn over his assets to a court-appointed receiver and to stay out of the securities industry for the rest of his life.

Under the settlement, Bloom neither admitted nor denied the SEC allegations but criminal charges were brought in March. Bloom waived indictment and pleaded guilty March 31 to one count each of mail and securities fraud.