Samuel Cohen

A former high-tech executive convicted of defrauding investors of at least $30 million was sentenced Monday to 22 years in prison after a judge denounced him for fleecing nearly 100 victims to finance an "obscene lifestyle" of private jets, gaudy jewelry and Swiss bank accounts. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said Samuel "Mouli" Cohen was "nearly sociopathic" for refusing to show remorse for actor Danny Glover and others who suffered after he told them a company Cohen launched called Ecast that made electronic jukeboxes for bars was about to be acquired by Microsoft Corp. The fraud caused the collapse of the nonprofit charity Vanguard Public Foundation, which Glover and singer Harry Belafonte founded in 1972, prosecutors said. Prosecutors said the swindle began in the fall of 2002 when Cohen approached Glover and Hari Dillon, who were leaders of the nonprofit Vanguard Public Foundation. The charity was launched in 1972 and distributed grants to a wide-range of social causes often on the far left on the political spectrum such as anti-war movements. Cohen told Vanguard leaders that Microsoft was poised to buy Ecast and offered to sell shares to Glover, Vanguard and others affiliated with the charity for $3.50 each, promising extraordinary returns once the acquisition closed, prosecutors said. Over the years, Cohen claimed the acquisition was being held up by U.S. regulators and then their counterparts in Europe. He returned several times to the investors and recruited new ones with pleas for more money to clear the alleged regulatory hurdles. Cohen said the deal would die without the additional funds, prosecutors said. Vanguard and many of its key donors and others invested at least $30 million with Cohen, prosecutors said. Vanguard was forced to close its doors after the scheme was exposed in 2008.