Jailed money manager gets 5 more years

A financial adviser whose tangled dealings with the government over a trove of gold and rare coins have already landed him behind bars for most of this decade was sentenced Tuesday to five more years in prison for conspiracy to commit securities fraud.

Disgraced market forecaster Martin Armstrong offered teary-eyed relatives a weak smile as he was led from a federal courtroom in handcuffs following his sentencing in Manhattan.

His company, Princeton Economics International Limited, lost hundreds of millions of dollars trading the Japanese yen and various securities between 1997 and 1999.

Prosecutors said Armstrong tried to prop up his imploding investments by engaging in a multibillion dollar Ponzi scheme that used money from new investors to pay off the losses of older ones. He pleaded guilty in August to defrauding his Japanese investors.

In court on Tuesday, Armstrong offered a halfhearted defense of his conduct, saying he had begun with a sound business plan, and only later became overwhelmed by a financial collapse beyond his control.

"I don't think this was a situation where I started out to get money from somebody," Armstrong said. "I trusted people I should not have trusted."

U.S. District Judge John F. Keenan called Armstrong's case a "human tragedy," but declined to give him a lighter sentence. The judge also ordered Armstrong to pay $80 million in restitution _ money that prosecutors acknowledged he probably doesn't have.

Just how much time Armstrong, 57, will wind up serving is still unclear because of his role in one of the nation's longest-running civil contempt cases.

A different federal judge presiding over the civil case ordered Armstrong jailed in 2000 after he failed to surrender $15 million in assets. Armstrong claims he has no control over the trove, which includes more than 100 gold bars, nearly 700 gold coins and a bust of Julius Caesar.

The standoff has continued unabated ever since, and Armstrong has remained in prison for all the while on a contempt charge.

A federal appeals court recently upheld the detention, but transferred the case to a new judge who has the power to end the confinement even if Armstrong doesn't relent.

After imposing sentence in the criminal case Tuesday, Keenan said Armstrong won't get credit for the time he has already spent behind bars, and won't begin serving his five-year term until the contempt matter is resolved.

Armstrong's attorney, David Cooper, called the five-year sentence "reasonable," but said his client's lengthy jailing on a civil contempt charge was "preposterous."