From Baby Shower To Prison Shower
Ian Gregory Bell celebrated with 75 guests. Six days later, he got three years.
This Week In Blunders – Sept. 7-13
“You always pay for hubris.” – Carl Icahn”
Ian Gregory Bell, 36, celebrated a poolside baby shower at his mother’s Tudor mansion in Denver last Saturday. On Friday, the busted day trader was sentenced to three years in federal prison for defrauding his investors, including a roster of pro athletes.
Perhaps we should admire his confidence in bringing a child into our crooked world.
Bell, who was indicted in December, walked into a Denver federal courthouse armed with Harvey Steinberg, one of Denver’s top white-collar criminal attorneys. He’d agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors who pledged to shave years off his potential sentence. So maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
Bell’s esteemed counsel argued for leniency, saying that most of the bilked investors’ money went for trades to recover losses. Turns out, Bell was just a bad trader with a little too much hubris. Not so much a crook.
Prosecutors, on the other hand, had indicted Bell for blowing his loot on vacations, a lavish lifestyle, his girlfriend, and his mother, as well as his losing trades – which he covered up by sending his investors screenshots of their accounts with fabricated numbers.
U.S. District Judge Philip Brimmer was unmoved by numerous letters of support attesting to Bell’s character, legal trade publication, Law360 reported.
“There wasn’t anything legitimate about his investments from the get-go,” the judge said. “He was lying to people about the money they're making. There’s no suggestion that Mr. Bell was ever trying to do a good job for his clients.”
Brimmer sentenced Bell to 37 months in prison, a $150,000 fine and $1.2 million in restitution. It could have been worse considering the 18 counts for which he was originally charged.
Bell lived a life of privilege and used his high-society connections to raise more than $1.2 million in investments – some of it from professional athletes. Among his 29 victims is former NFL player Ryan Lewis, who told the court that Bell took advantage of their personal friendship.
Read More: Spoiled Rotten Day Trader (Dec. 11, 2024) and Day Trader Plea Deal (May 8, 2025)
As you might expect, Lewis wasn’t among the 75 RSVPs on the guest list that was still posted online as of this writing.
“We invite you to an afternoon shower honoring our little lemon,” an online invitation reads. “Her name carries the magic of Tuscan and Maui coasts – the places where her parents felt love in its purest form. This lemon spritz shower blends la dolce vita with aloha spirit!”
In photos posted on Instagram, Bell and his bride look as happy as any expectant parents. We should wish them well. We all make mistakes. Sometimes, maybe, we learn from them. And there is life after prison.
Meantime, the judge ordered Bell to surrender to federal authorities within the next 15 days.
Like stealing candy from a baby
Paul R. Steed, 58, of Stamford, Conn., pleaded guilty to fraud and tax charges on Thursday related to his sneaky theft of $28 million from candymaker Mars Inc.
Steed was the “Global Price Risk Manager for Mars Wrigley’s Global Cocoa Enterprise.” And, gee fellas, whoever suspects that the risk manager is the biggest risk?
Stead was accused of setting up his own company and directing sugar refineries to pay it – instead of Mars – for credits under the U.S. Department of Agriculture Sugar-Containing Products Re-Export Program.
It was a sweet deal while it lasted. But like the ol’ M&M slogan goes: “It melts in your mouth, not in your hands.” So Steed finally copped to the caper.
He’s agreed to pay restitution of more than $28.4 million to Mars. And the IRS wants the back taxes on his ill-gotten gains, which it calculates at more than $10.3 million.
For now, he’s out on a $5 million bond but faces sentencing Dec. 9.
What a chocolate mess.
Read More: Mars Bars
Never trust a quant
One of the hardest thing to understand in the investment world is the strategies devised by quantitative investment analysts, or quants.
Quant firms don’t even understand the quant analysts they employ, which may be how Jian Wu, 34, allegedly ripped off his employer, New York-based Two Sigma Investments.
I’ll spare the language and formulas that most mere humans can’t understand. But Wu allegedly programmed an algorithm to pay himself $23.5 million while causing a loss of $165 million to the firm’s clients, according to an indictment filed on Thursday.
“Wu’s employer trusted him to act with integrity when creating models for the firm’s use,” U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton. “Instead, Wu used his technical abilities to cheat his employer out of millions.”
Wu, a Chinese citizen who has lived in New York, has been charged with one count each of wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering. Each carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Two Sigma fired him last year.
It would seems like $23.5 million is a lot of money to miss for a firm that relies on advanced mathematics all day long. But Two Sigma manages more than $60 billion and does so much Byzantine quant stuff there’s bound to be a rounding error.
Besides, in the quant world, it’s never called theft. It’s called “alpha extraction.”
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It never ends with these crooked traders... scam after scam. Makes you want to keep all your $ under your mattress.
"Sometimes, you feel like a nut...sometimes, you don't..."