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In this episode of American Greed, Scott

Rothstein, always the life of the party, a guy who wants

the world to love him.

He was a larger -than -life type of person, very charismatic.

He is raking in hundreds of millions of dollars.

You saw Scott.

You're thinking money. And he spends it like it will never run out. He amassed

over 200 watches, 100 suits, 9 or 10 cars at any one point in time,

a number of homes.

But the money does run out. And Scott Rothstein is revealed as the mastermind

behind the largest Ponzi scheme in Florida history.

One investor alone lost $125 million.

You're like, wow, this is much bigger than we thought.

October 29, 2009.

In one of Fort Lauderdale's wealthiest neighborhoods, a dinner party is just

beginning. It is an annual charity event, this year held at the multi

dollar mansion of a newcomer to town, Scott Rothstein.

Head of an up -and -coming law firm, Rothstein bursts onto the Fort

scene out of nowhere, and today holds near celebrity status.

He's the go -to guy for politicians in need of money and a source of enormous

donations for local charities.

For the guests tonight, employees and volunteers of the nonprofit's Rothstein

Showers with Money, this is a rare chance to rub shoulders with the famous

spender. Many people in the nonprofit and charitable community

who had never come in contact with Scott Rothstein, thought, you know what, I'm

going to meet this man, the myth, the legend, the white knight.

Everything is in place to showcase Rothstein's extraordinary wealth.

In the driveway, a fleet of luxury cars, including a Maserati, a Ferrari, a

Bugatti. It was almost like you were going to a car show.

At the back of the house, the 87 -foot yacht named for Rothstein's wife, the

Princess Kimberly.

Inside, the decor is like that of royalty.

Even the toilets are gold.

The setting is perfect. Just one thing is missing.

Scott Rothstein.

As guests started to mingle through the crowd, the question was, well, where's

Scott?

Rothstein is a man who never misses a party or a chance to prove his own

importance. And yet, tonight he's nowhere to be seen.

It became a joke. There was no Scott.

By tomorrow, the whole city will know what the guests tonight have discovered.

The local hotshot Scott Rothstein is missing.

The biggest financial fraud in Florida history will break wide open.

The story of Scott Rothstein's con in Fort Lauderdale begins just over ten

ago, a time when no one in this city has even heard of Rothstein.

He's a boy from the Bronx who makes his way through Nova Law School and in 1999

is hired at a small law firm in Hollywood, Florida by managing partner

Phillips. I thought he was a good attorney when he wanted to practice law.

actually saw him try a case.

And he tried a nice case.

If he had continued to practice the way he did the first year with us, he would

have stayed with us for a long time.

But Rothstein isn't interested in trying cases.

Years later, in a letter to the sentencing judge, he writes that his

create a law firm that is the envy of all others, the largest, the wealthiest,

the most powerful.

Scott was, I don't know if you've ever heard of pro noia.

It's people who have, I would say, delusions of grandeur.

And he thought that he could do anything he wanted to do and get it done.

Without a game plan, without a budget, without a business plan.

After two years, Rothstein doesn't deliver the business he promises, and

Phillips asks him to leave.

As Rothstein departs, a fellow partner and friend, Stuart Rosenfeld, makes a

fateful decision to join him.

They head to Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale and with another friend open

their own firm, Rothstein, Rosenfeld & Adler, known as RRA.

They did labor and employment law.

and they did a good job representing, I think, on both sides, labor and

management. I think they represented the police unions and things like that.

For years, the firm operates in relative obscurity. But by 2005,

Rothstein is making his move.

He started hiring and merging with firms and bringing in other

lawyers and expanded from labor to everything, sort of overnight.

This law firm grew out of nowhere.

It was incredible how quickly, over the last five or six years, they went from

five or six lawyers to something like 70 people working in that law firm.

By December 2005, at the RRA holiday party, Rothstein is on his way to the

times. He has just been added to the list of best lawyers in America.

You look around this room, you look at what we were three, four years ago, and

you look where we are now. This is absolutely amazing.

Still at his side is the loyal Stuart Rosenfeld.

It says here, my name is Stuart Rosenfeld.

My wife Susie is the love of my life.

Susie, I got news for you. She's the love of my life, too.

From all appearances, RRA could not be more successful, and Rothstein is

determined that his firm will be the envy of all others, no matter what it

takes.

Well,

they were in every magazine, all the

society magazines.

You couldn't open the paper that you didn't see some advertisement for RRA.

Just last football season in 2009,

I was at the stadium where the Miami Dolphins play.

And during one game, Rothstein's name was over the loudspeaker every five

minutes.

Today's game is sponsored by Scott Rothstein of Rothstein Rosenfeld Adler

It was the strangest thing.

Rothstein eventually gets RRA national exposure, at prime time, no less.

The firm sponsors an HBO Boxing After Dark match. It's HBO's Boxing After

and it's sponsored by Rothstein, Rosenfeld, Adler Attorneys at Law. And

the center of the ring is Rothstein himself.

These days, he is the center of attention everywhere.

Enormous donations to charities buy Rothstein and his wife Kim a place at

table with the richest of the rich.

He is named Humanitarian of the Year.

700 people attend a lunch to honor him.

Rothstein is also generous to politicians.

He is an early backer of Florida Governor Charlie Crist.

At Crist's birthday fundraiser, Rothstein beats everyone.

pledging more than $50 ,000.

But that is small change for Rothstein.

In all, he and his firm donate more than a million dollars to the Republican

Party, and Rothstein climbs to the top.

John McCain is our next president. We'll change the state of Florida, we'll

change the United States, and we'll change the world.

He even hosts John McCain at his house.

Thank you for coming to this modest middle -income tract, home.

You know, the difference between me and Senator Obama is Senator Obama wants

every American to have a home. I want every American to have a home like this

one.

Rothstein's political connections pay off.

Chris appoints Rothstein to a commission for the Court of Appeals.

He went from being an energetic, affable young man to,

you know, a power broker.

In 10 years.

It was the fastest rise of a local lawyer I've ever seen.

Come on this way.

The building you see across the street was where he had his law firm and some

or 70 people working there for him.

In almost no time, downtown Fort Lauderdale becomes the center of

business empire.

He owned a bank, a vodka company, a piece of a watch company, this

the cars, the boats, multiple homes. He had another home up, I think, up in

Rhode Island.

But it is his personal extravagance that is the talk of the town.

Besides the flashy cars and enormous yachts, he accumulates $34 million worth

real estate.

His wife is doing her part with the American Express card as well.

spending $21 ,000 on shoes and $42 ,000 at a single dress shop in town.

And right here along the sidewalk is where Scott would park his Bayron

When that car pulled up, everybody talked about it, you don't see a $2

car every day.

His wealth buys him power and influence and prestige, but also suspicion.

Where's all this money coming from?

Scott was living this rock star lifestyle, the fast cars and the fancy

the yachts and hanging out with the governor of the state of Florida.

You don't make that kind of money as a lawyer. I'm sorry. We were all curious.

Where was it coming from?

Up next on American Greed, find out the real source of Rothstein's million.

I was just shocked. They told my wife that I either found the greatest deal of

lifetime or there's a huge fraud going on.

December 2006.

It is time for another holiday party for the Fort Lauderdale law firm Rothstein,

Rosenfeld, and Adler.

This is all about your money.

Scott Rothstein appears to be at the top of his game.

He has a hugely successful law firm.

He's well connected to the Republican Party.

Holds a firm place on the city's social ladder.

and has money to burn on cars, gots, and jewelry.

But across Fort Lauderdale, one question looms large.

Where is Rothstein's money really coming from?

Even members of his own law firm don't know the answer.

That's right, we're breaking the f***ing law.

They don't know that Rothstein is running a Ponzi scheme.

Take that out of the film.

It's a complicated scheme.

Here's how it works.

Rothstein makes up a story. He tells investors that his law firm has settled

suit for an employee who was sexually harassed at work.

It's completely phony. There was no case. But Rothstein claims the

they have won is huge.

Let's say $1 .4 million.

The company is willing to pay it out over a period of six months.

But the person who sued is in urgent need of the money and so is willing to

the $1 .4 million settlement for $800 ,000 in order to get money immediately.

Let's assume you have a woman who's the victim of sex discrimination in the

office. Litigation doesn't get resolved overnight.

It might have taken one or two years. In the meantime, she's got no job and no

money. She's not paying her mortgage. She's running up her credit card debt.

so the investor would be told, look, these people need their money now.

They can't wait four months.

It would make sense.

The investor pays the $800 ,000 to the victim of harassment and then over six

months gets the full settlement, a profit of $600 ,000 in a very short

These settlements were selling to investors for between somewhere around

25 % to as high as 36%. That's a very high interest rate. And

if anybody...

ever offers you an investment of more than 10 % per year, it's probably not

legitimate.

To support the plausible story, Rothstein produces a mountain of

And there is one document that cinches the deal.

The all -important wire transfer document from the bank itself, showing

settlement money has been wired into a trust account at RRA.

Every victim I've spoken with has one thing to say in terms of what motivated

them to make the investment. Every single one.

The money was in the bank.

As his scheme takes hold, Rothstein finds promoters who seek out investors

commission.

One contacts Miami attorney Alan Sackowitz, a successful real estate

I told him if the returns are reasonable and the risk is low, I'd be interested

in knowing more.

Sackowitz heads up to Fort Lauderdale to meet Rothstein in his office.

The walls were papered with thank you notes and pictures of everybody who was

anybody in Broward County and beyond.

Rothstein presents Sackowitz with the package of supporting documents.

All of the information was redacted. The names were taken out. The amounts were

taken out.

All we would see is just a bunch of papers where all the pertinent

was gone. That was unacceptable.

For Rothstein, that is the beauty of his scheme. He can claim that everything

must be kept confidential.

And I said, Scott...

I want to see the file, and I want to see it right now. I want to know that if

we're talking about buying something, I want to know that it's real.

And he says, Alan, you're making me feel very uncomfortable because you're

asking me to do something illegal.

I said, I'm not asking you to do anything illegal.

You're asking me to buy this settlement. Your client wants to sell me this

settlement. I want to see the file. And he says, I'm absolutely not giving you

that. And then I said, okay, at least let me speak to their attorney.

And he says, I'm the attorney.

I said, you can't be the attorney for every case in your office.

He says, ask me anything you want. I handled the case. I said, I'm not

a nickel.

I'm not putting any investors in until we know that this is real. And so far,

everything could be explained with Photoshop.

I went home and I was just shocked. I told my wife that I either found the

greatest deal of a lifetime.

Or there's a huge fraud going on with this major law firm and nothing they

exists. And I just couldn't figure out which it was.

But others buy in.

The scheme attracts hundreds of investors who pay millions of dollars

settlements that actually do not exist.

They convince themselves that little can go wrong.

After all, Rothstein is cloaked in legitimacy.

Scott's wealthy.

He's successful.

Governor Charlie Crist is one of his best friends.

He's friends with all the judges, with all the police.

He's in the right charities.

You know, it's like that rock song, Life in the Fast Lane. They threw all the

right parties. They took all the right pills.

You know, they lived life in the fast lane.

In the end, Sackowitz turns down Rothstein's investment opportunity.

And he places a call to the FBI asking the agency to determine if Scott

Rothstein is a fraud.

In short order, everyone will know the answer.

Next on American Greed, inside the final desperate days of a Ponzi scheme.

He started missing payments and then started making up excuses as to how come

the payment was missed.

He was furiously trying to...

find more money to fill the hole.

Anyone who knows South Florida knows Fort Lauderdale is one of the wealthiest

towns in the state.

Big money lives here.

And in this world of the super rich, The man trying to outspend them all is

Scott Rothstein.

For four years, he has been selling phony settlements out of his law office

support a life of extraordinary extravagance.

Recently, the bogus enterprise has attracted enormous quantities of cash.

He promised very high returns, very typical of Ponzi scheme.

And in a typical Ponzi scheme fashion, he paid those returns.

for quite a while. And if you promise somebody 28 to 36 percent in just four

months, which annualizes to some 140 percent a year, and you pay it, people

going to throw money at you.

One of those investors is George Levin, a Florida businessman who brings in two

New York hedge funds, Platinum Partners and Centurion Structured Growth.

It is a turning point for Rothstein.

It's like a stock chart that just goes up, up, up, up, up. It has to do with

more and more cash coming in through George Levin's hedge funds.

And those hedge funds put in $800 million.

And it was an amount that was simply too big for Scott to handle.

He would need to steal, you know, a billion dollars every three or four

to keep it going, and even bigger than that, because the returns were so high.

By April 2009, Scott Rothstein is in big trouble.

The investors are demanding money he simply does not have.

His email inbox is littered with messages from his business associate.

Just a friendly reminder, we are behind $1 .5 million from the end of last month

and have an additional $15 million due today and another.

I'm petrified.

If word gets out that we are $125 million past due, we will never see

cent. He started missing payments.

and then started making up excuses as to how come the payment was missed. The

bank was slow on releasing the funds and this and that while he was furiously

trying to find more money to fill the hole.

Rothstein responds,

What the hell is that bullshit about you being concerned?

You make me sound like the problem.

Don't hang me out to drive with these motherfuckers.

people started realizing that this thing was not as represented.

Because as it was represented, the money's in the trust account at the

the payments will come every month right out of the trust account. So that if

you miss a payment out of the trust account, either the bank messed up and

didn't make a payment, or the money's not there.

Later, in the letter to his sentencing judge, Rothstein writes, By this time, I

was literally spending almost every waking hour doing something to prevent

from blowing up in my face.

It was constantly on the verge of collapse.

But then in May, Philadelphia money manager named Barry Beckett steps in.

What we've done recently is we found an area of legal settlement, for example,

that we recently funded with $100 million.

According to a lawsuit filed by Rothstein's investors, Beckett, in his

promoter for Rothstein, is able to secure enormous new investments.

Believe it or not, we negotiated the first $100 million of outside money to

in. We're getting a 15 % current cash return.

He reports his success to an investment conference in Las Vegas.

Most of the $100 million comes from clients of William Scherer.

At this point, Scherer believes that some of the early investors must suspect

Rothstein's investments are a scam.

But they know new investors offer the only hope of getting their money back.

A lot of people kept quiet, kind of turned a blind eye to it in order to get

their money back. But they weren't getting their money back because their

was already gone.

They were getting back what Mr. Rothstein was stealing at that time.

With the spring panic behind him, Rothstein celebrates with a spending

his favorite stores in town.

In July, his charges to his American Express card topped $900 ,000 in just

one month.

The Ponzi scheme and the money were like a drug to me, he writes to the judge

who will sentence him.

But the high only lasted until the next round of payments were due.

I would crash hard.

I repeatedly considered it suicide.

A few months later, in the fall, the demanding emails start again.

This system is not working, his associate writes.

Yesterday, I failed to make $500 ,000 in payments to our largest investor, and

it will not be pretty today.

By mid -October, Rothstein is forming a plan.

He sends an email to his staff with a question about a client who has become a

citizen of Israel.

He writes that the client is likely to be charged with a multitude of crimes in

the United States, including fraud, money laundering, and embezzlement.

Rothstein wants to know if the client could be charged in Israel for crimes

committed in the U .S. He also asks about extradition treaties.

Time is of the essence.

Let's rock and roll. There is a very large fee attached to this case.

Scott obviously saw the end coming.

And he knew that he had sets of payments that needed to go out at the very end

of October, and he did not have the cash to cover them.

October 27th. An email arrives from his associate.

If I don't get $8 million today, then tomorrow I will be officially gone.

My ability to stay afloat with smoke and mirrors is gone.

Really gone.

So am I.

It's over.

Rothstein makes the decision to run.

He heads to the executive airport north of Fort Lauderdale, boards a chartered

jet with $16 million and his watch collection, and flees in panic to

Morocco.

And that is where Scott Rothstein is on the night that guests gather at

his house for the charity dinner.

None of the partygoers know that the dinner, the champagne, the cars, and the

house have all been bought with stolen money.

And no one can predict the magnitude of the scandal that will explode the next

day.

Coming up on American Greed, Rothstein is a free man in Morocco. Now he must

make the decision to stay or return to the scene of the crime.

Halloween weekend 2009.

The news spreads quickly across Fort Lauderdale.

Not only is mega -millionaire Scott Rothstein missing, but so is most of the

money in his law firm's accounts.

I get a phone call from a friend of mine who worked at the law firm and said,

Scott's gone.

The law firm's saying he stole all the firm's money.

At Rothstein's office, there is disbelief, panic.

There was a complete meltdown in there on that Friday when the investors are,

you know, buzzing down the phone lines, where's our money, and they want to look

at the bank accounts, and bank accounts that should have had hundreds of

millions of dollars in them are empty.

RRA attorney Mark Nurick is in his office when he gets a call from one of

partners.

Sounded ominous, and I went down to his office. There were a number of other

partners in there, and they all look like death.

And that's when they told me that Scott was missing and that supposedly a

billion dollars or so of client money was missing. And I said, what?

And I looked around to see if Alan Funt or Ashton Kutcher was around because I

thought I was being punked.

As I was digesting this, I went back up to my office.

I received a phone call, and lo and behold, it was Scott.

It was on the other end. It was, in fact, calling me from Morocco.

And I said, what the heck is going on?

He says, I can't talk to you until you resign from the firm. I need you to be

lawyer. I need you to help me out.

Nurek makes the decision quickly to take on Rothstein's case.

Well, I had known Scott for many years. He was a friend.

And, of course, let's face facts.

What was I leaving?

At that point, it didn't take much to realize I was jumping off the Titanic

as it was hitting the iceberg.

took the leap of faith to represent him.

Immediately, the other partners begin to cover themselves.

They go to court to place the law firm in receivership under the control of a

judge out of the hands of Scott Rothstein.

Next, they invite the news media into their offices to show how Rothstein

in a tightly controlled environment.

We're heading to, down at the corner, is going to be the Rothstein Sanctum, the

Inner Sanctum, whatever.

It is the sanctum of a highly secretive man.

I want to just point out that we have a couple of things that you won't see in

other law firms.

A surveillance camera.

And over here is a microphone that were controlled by Scott Rothstein.

We'll invite you into the office of Scott Rothstein itself.

Take a minute or two to get a sense of it.

In one sense, Scott did a very good job of keeping a secret from his own

partners. In another sense, they see all this money he's making, and if they

know law firm economics, shouldn't they have been a little suspicious?

Stuart Rosenfeld, in particular, is under a spotlight.

Is it true that there was, in October, $500 million in firm accounts, and then

few days later it was down to $500 ,000?

I don't know the answer to that.

You're a partner, one of the top guys. You're a named partner.

You're Stuart Rosenfeld, who was the president of the firm, who claimed the

Schultz defense.

I know nothing. I see nothing.

I never saw the books.

Stuart was an equity partner, and he's now saying, Scott didn't allow me

to look at the books and records.

That may be true, but he still had an obligation to do it.

Before the week is out, the FBI moves in to seize anything of value from

Rothstein's house.

As cars and computers are taken away, the size of Rothstein's crime is

When we had the initial reports that a couple hundred million dollars might be

involved, I was like, okay, this is bigger than our usual run -of -the -mill

or $20 million Ponzi scheme in South Florida.

But then the magnitude started coming out. And you hear one investor alone

$125 million. You're like, wow, this is much bigger than we thought.

As investors come forward, Jeffrey Son files suit on behalf of a few.

William Scherer files another for investors who claim a loss of $100

Some of them were angry. Some of them were angry at themselves. I mean...

I'm thinking, you know, I have only myself to blame for this.

The victims Scherer represents are multimillionaires who took a chance

in the scheme.

But Rothstein's greed reaches far and wide, even in the small town of Margate,

ten miles north of Fort Lauderdale.

This is the home of John Figueroa, a father of two children.

He's a highway maintenance man who was injured on the job when a piece of

equipment malfunctioned.

I'm an everyday person who works from paycheck to paycheck.

It hit us hard. Whatever savings we had, we had to dip into.

But then he hires an attorney at RRA and wins a settlement, a real settlement,

for $90 ,000.

What we were going to do is just put it all in the bank, pay whatever we had to

pay off, and set up accounts for the kids. You know, make sure that everyone

a financial future.

The money is deposited into an RRA trust account at the end of October.

to be distributed to Figueroa later.

It's just as Scott Rothstein is desperately looking for cash to feed his

With no other money on hand, Rothstein helps himself to the law firm trust

accounts. These are escrow accounts.

They're never supposed to be touched.

So not only did Scott allegedly steal the victim's money, he stole his own

client's money.

These are people who are school teachers, firefighters, clerks in retail

And these people wanted their money yesterday or last week, not to be told

the money was gone.

While the shockwaves of Rothstein's crime continue to be felt, Fort

waits to see if he will return from Morocco.

He was in Morocco with at least $16 million liquid, with a watch collection

was conservatively estimated 200 watches over several million dollars.

He would have probably had at his disposal 20 -plus million dollars in a

that had no extradition treaty with the U .S. I'm sure with 20 million dollars

he could have lived quite well.

But Rothstein does what no one expects.

He boards a chartered jet and heads back to Fort Lauderdale.

Now, why did Scott return?

Ask yourself that question.

He got away with it. And there's only one reason we can all think of.

Somebody must have threatened the lives of his parents and his wife.

That was the scuttlebutt. If you don't come back, we're going to have them

killed.

Scott's story is, I got a conscience and I decided to return and confess and try

and make good.

I don't believe that for a second.

Once a con man, always a con man.

Scott came back and disappeared.

um was not making any public appearances was not returning to his mansion on the

canal uh he was not driving around in his ferraris anymore he disappeared why

isn't scott in jail he comes back and he is not arrested right away and we're

all wondering why i know one of the questions you guys have is why he hasn't

been arrested you know we want a successful prosecution so we are not

rush this investigation unbeknownst to everybody else he was

with agents and prosecutors around the clock for a month, cooperating,

providing detailed information on every aspect of the scheme, and involving

himself in active undercover operations.

It is later reported that Rothstein is taking on some extraordinary assignments

to win favor with the feds.

He agrees to wear a wire and meet with a reputed Italian mobster, Roberto

Satinari. He asks Satinari and his friends for help laundering money and

destroying documents.

In the end, the guys went for it. They've all pled guilty now, and a

mafia figure that was wanted by both Italian authorities and American

authorities is now facing prison.

It is why Rothstein is not arrested and why Nurek has to provide a cover story.

We felt it was necessary to get him out there in public so he could be

seen meeting with me.

At one point, a local video news blogger, Bob Norman, finds Rothstein

martini with his attorney at a local bar.

How do you make it right, Scott?

I'm not answering any questions, Bob. I'm going to make it right.

He thought he was getting a big scoop.

He actually helped the cover story.

With his assignment for the feds behind him, Rothstein is arrested.

He sought to buy power and influence at the expense of his clients, and

instead... has potentially bought himself a lengthy prison sentence.

Two months later, Rothstein pleads guilty to five counts of racketeering,

and money laundering.

He faces the possibility of 100 years in prison.

But in the last month, he does everything he can to get a reduced

Up next on American Greed, the price Rothstein pays for his ponzi.

People say, do you feel bad for him at all? I say, are you kidding me?

Not at all. This guy is getting exactly what he deserves.

Just a year ago, Scott Rothstein was on top of the world.

As head of one of South Florida's largest law firms, Rothstein has it all.

High -priced real estate, fancy cars, gold watches, political connections.

But in January 2010, he pleads guilty to scamming hundreds of investors in South

Florida's largest Ponzi scheme.

And the feds take everything.

Now, with his fate in the hands of a federal judge, he pleads for leniency.

I only ask that you deal with me fairly, he writes, and that based upon the fact

that the record now exists from my decision to return from Morocco and all

I have done since, that I am truly a changed man.

Meanwhile, a government auction is underway.

Potential bidders gather to cash in on the remains of his fallen empire.

This is about justice today. This is about getting money back

into the hands of the people that were defrauded.

The display of excess on sale today is a tribute to Scott Rothstein's greed.

We're talking about the most exotic cars, the most expensive cars that a

consumer can get their hands on. There's a Bugatti worth over a million dollars.

There's a Lamborghini, a Rolls Royce.

Scott himself readily admits that he became obsessive in his

acquisition of material possessions.

I mean, he amassed over 200 watches, over 100 suits.

nine or ten cars at any one point in time, a number of homes.

It was beyond reason.

In the end, the auction nets $5 .8 million.

But with almost $400 million owed to victims, the government is searching for

stolen money everywhere.

Florida Governor Charlie Crist and other politicians hurry to return tainted

donations.

American Express agrees to pay back a portion of the $21 million charged in

four years to Rothstein's account.

And charities like Holy Cross Hospital, which received $1 million, and Joe

DiMaggio's Children's Hospital, given $800 ,000, are forced to give back much

-needed funds.

He used charities.

There's greedy people in this world.

but to step on the back of a dozen charitable organizations, but then to

them in the dust in a situation where they were going to have to give back

money, cut services, lay off employees.

This guy doesn't deserve to see the light of day.

And investors, too, are going after their money, claiming that Rothstein had

lot of help in his fraud, starting with the banks.

Obviously, the allegations at this point was that Scott was receiving some sort

of favoritism from the banks he dealt with. All I can tell you is that in my

experience as a securities lawyer, when a bank has hundreds of millions of

dollars washing in and out of their accounts on a very frequent basis,

should be raised.

Red flags are raised.

A week after his prized possessions are auctioned off, Rothstein faces the

music.

Prosecutors request a sentence of 40 years in prison, but the judge slaps

Rothstein with a 50 -year term with the goal of sending a message to future

schemers. The judge says Rothstein infiltrated so many parts of our daily

Politics, sports, charities, law enforcement, the judiciary, the legal

profession. The society page.

When someone of that perceived stature is found to be a cheat, public

is important in determining adequate deterrence.

You know, people say, do you feel bad for him at all? Are you kidding me?

Not at all. This guy is getting exactly what he deserves.

He should not be walking around free. He ruined people's lives.

The judge orders Rothstein to pay victims $363 million in restitution.

But authorities know they can only return a small fraction of that money.

Attorney Seth Lehrman convinces the judge that victims like his clients, the

Figueroa family, whose settlement money was stolen, should be paid first.

There's a big difference between them and investors.

Investing is...

something that inherently has risk, whereas our clients were not supposed to

suffer any risk by having their attorneys hold their money in trust.

Today,

Rothstein is in a federal prison in a witness protection program.

His meteoric rise and his stunning collapse took just over 10 years.

And now, Fort Lauderdale faces the fact the town was taken for a ride.

Fort Lauderdale's a small town, and it sort of makes us look foolish somewhat

have invited him into the community at a high level and have him trick and fool

everybody.

Scott Rothstein did not build his reputation.

He bought it.

He bought it.

And people were suckers for being bought so quickly, so easily.

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