Shootings leave 1 dead, 2 hurt

A bike lies abandoned in the snow near the spot where a 22-year-old man was found fatally shot Friday night. (Adam Sege, Chicago Tribune)

By Adam Sege

3:02 a.m. CST, February 2, 2013

A pair of shootings on a cold and snowy Friday night left a 22-year-old man dead and two people injured, Chicago police said.

The fatal shooting happened about 8:30 p.m., Chicago Police Department News Affairs Officer Ron Gaines said.

Officers found the man in a hallway of a three-story apartment building in the 3900 block of North Central Avenue, in the Northwest Side's Portage Park neighborhood.

Paramedics rushed the man to Our Lady of the Resurrection Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

Later, as snow coated Central Avenue and several squad cars parked near the scene, police searched for evidence and photographed a bike lying by an entrance on the building's north side.

It appeared the man had collapsed shortly after being shot near where the bike was found, police said.

Police have launched a homicide investigation in the shooting.

In a separate shooting, a 19-year-old and a 20-year-old were wounded about 11:30 p.m. near the intersection of South California Avenue and West 52nd Street.

Someone opened fire from an alley as the two walked home from a party, striking the 19-year-old in the back and the 20-year-old in the side, Gaines said.

Both people were taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where they were listed in good condition Gaines said.

The shooting happened in the Gage Park neighborhood on the Southwest Side.

Check back for more information.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com

Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking

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BlackBerry doesn’t need to catch up with Android and iOS overnight, it needs to live to fight another day

The biggest criticism of BlackBerry’s (RIMM) revamped mobile operating system and smartphone line so far is that they don’t give iOS or Android users any compelling reasons to switch brands. And this is certainly true — BlackBerry 10, for all its virtues, doesn’t do anything significantly better than the top two mobile operating systems and seems designed mostly to please the faithful and not win new converts. At the same time, I think this sort of criticism is based on somewhat unrealistic expectations for what a revamped BlackBerry would be able to achieve in its first iteration. Put simply, making its own loyal fans happy might have been the best that BlackBerry could do in this particular product cycle.

[More from BGR: GS: Ignore the chatter, BlackBerry rebound is coming]

Before we go further with this line of thinking, we should remind ourselves of the truly dire state that BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins found the company in when he took it over just over a year ago.

[More from BGR: Here comes the PlayStation 4: Sony announces February 20th PlayStation event [video]]

Longtime customers were fleeing BlackBerry for iOS and Android after BlackBerry repeatedly shot itself in the foot by releasing devices that featured outdated hardware (the first-generation BlackBerry Torch) or that lacked some of the core capabilities that BlackBerry customers had come to expect (the BlackBerry PlayBook and its lack of native corporate email without a “bridge” connection). The company also got caught completely flat-footed by the rise of mobile apps as a vital component of the global smartphone ecosystem and typically wouldn’t get big-name apps on its platform for more than a year after they’d been out on iOS and Android, if at all.

Let’s also recall that when Heins announced last summer that BlackBerry 10 would be delayed until the first quarter of 2013, many of us wondered if the new operating system would ever be released or if the company would simply collapse under the weight of competitive pressures. That Heins has been able to not only get BlackBerry 10 launched but also get more than 100 carriers on board with the new platform is a pretty impressive feat. Add in that Heins has been able to score commitments from some important apps such as Skype, WhatsApp and Amazon Kindle, and you begin to appreciate just how far BlackBerry has come from almost going over the brink.

Of course, none of this is even close to being enough to make BlackBerry a force in the mobile industry anytime soon. But if ardent BlackBerry fans buy up the new BlackBerry 10 handsets and if the company maintains its corporate clients, it may be enough to let the company live to fight another day.

Benedict Evans, a strategy consultant for Enders Analysis, has done some back-of-the-envelope calculations and estimates BlackBerry could sell as many as 20 million BlackBerry 10 smartphones in 2013, although he admits this number could be overly optimistic by as much as 50%. But even if BlackBerry sells just 15 million BB10 phones this year, that could be enough to give the company some breathing room while it works to recruit more app developers and generally improve its new operating system’s functionality.

This is not to say that BlackBerry has an easy road from here — the odds are still very much against it. But just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, no one should have expected BlackBerry to return to its former glory overnight. As much as BlackBerry fans would love to see their favorite devices rise up and crush iOS and Android, that sort of comeback was never in the cards. The best BlackBerry can hope is that they’ve stopped the bleeding and can continue building from here.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Former New York mayor Ed Koch moved to hospital intensive care

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch was moved to a hospital intensive care unit on Thursday, his spokesman said, in a sign that his health could be deteriorating.

Koch spokesman George Arzt said the 88-year-old politician, who earned a reputation for being as outspoken as he is colorful, was being moved so his cardiologist could better monitor his condition. Koch has been treated at New York-Presbyterian Hospital on and off since January 19.

Koch was re-admitted to the hospital on Monday after complaining of shortness of breath. He was unable to attend Tuesday’s premier of “Koch,” a documentary about his turbulent three terms as mayor, at the Museum of Modern Art.

In New York‘s City Hall from 1978 to 1989, Koch – with his trademark phrase “How’m I Doing?” – was seen as the personification of New York City.

“I don’t think there was anybody who had more fun being mayor as Ed Koch,” City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who is in the race to be the city’s next mayor, said while walking the premier’s red carpet.

Koch was credited with helping to restore confidence in the city at a time when it stood at the brink of financial ruin. Under his leadership, New York City regained its fiscal footing and underwent a construction boom.

His time in office was also marked by corruption among his political allies, racial tensions, a rise in cases of AIDS and HIV, and an increase in homelessness and the crime rate.

(Reporting by Edith Honan; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst)

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Ferrol Sams, Doctor Turned Novelist, Dies at 90

Ferrol Sams, a country doctor who started writing fiction in his late 50s and went on to win critical praise and a devoted readership for his humorous and perceptive novels and stories that drew on his medical practice and his rural Southern roots, died on Tuesday at his home in Lafayette, Ga. He was 90.

The cause, said his son Ferrol Sams III, also a doctor, was that he was “slap wore out.”

“He lived a full life,” his son said. “He didn’t leave anything in the tank.”

Dr. Sams grew up on a farm in the rural Piedmont area of Georgia, seven mud-road miles from the nearest town. He was a boy during the Depression; books meant escape and discovery. He read “Robinson Crusoe,” then Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. One of his English professors at Mercer University, in Macon, suggested he consider a career in writing, but he chose another route to examining the human condition: medical school.

When he was 58 — after he had served in World War II, started a medical practice with his wife, raised his four children and stopped devoting so much of his mornings to preparing lessons for Sunday school at the Methodist church — he began writing “Run With the Horsemen,” a novel based on his youth. It was published in 1982.

“In the beginning was the land,” the book begins. “Shortly thereafter was the father.”

In The New York Times Book Review, the novelist Robert Miner wrote, “Mr. Sams’s approach to his hero’s experiences is nicely signaled in these two opening sentences.”

He added: “I couldn’t help associating the gentility, good-humored common sense and pace of this novel with my image of a country doctor spinning yarns. The writing is elegant, reflective and amused. Mr. Sams is a storyteller sure of his audience, in no particular hurry, and gifted with perfect timing.”

Dr. Sams modeled the lead character in “Run With the Horsemen,” Porter Osborne Jr., on himself, and featured him in two more novels, “The Whisper of the River” and “When All the World Was Young,” which followed him into World War II.

Dr. Sams also wrote thinly disguised stories about his life as a physician. In “Epiphany,” he captures the friendship that develops between a literary-minded doctor frustrated by bureaucracy and a patient angry over past racism and injustice.

Ferrol Sams Jr. was born Sept. 26, 1922, in Woolsey, Ga. He received a bachelor’s degree from Mercer in 1942 and his medical degree from Emory University in 1949. In his addition to his namesake, survivors include his wife, Dr. Helen Fletcher Sams; his sons Jim and Fletcher; a daughter, Ellen Nichol; eight grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

Some critics tired of what they called the “folksiness” in Dr. Sams’s books. But he did not write for the critics, he said. In an interview with the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, Dr. Sams was asked what audience he wrote for. Himself, he said.

“If you lose your sense of awe, or if you lose your sense of the ridiculous, you’ve fallen into a terrible pit,” he added. “The only thing that’s worse is never to have had either.”

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Chicago beer firm Crown Imports is caught in antitrust fight

An antitrust brouhaha in Washington has thrown the future of Crown Imports, a Chicago-based beer importer, into question.

The company, which ranks third in U.S. beer sales volume, is a joint venture between New York-based Constellation Brands Inc. and Mexico's Grupo Modelo, which makes Corona Extra, the leading imported beer in the U.S., and other brands. Crown sells Modelo brands as well as China's Tsingtao.

As part of its proposed sale to Anheuser-Busch InBev, Grupo Modelo agreed to sell its 50 percent stake in Crown to Constellation Brands for $1.85 billion. The separate transaction was meant to ease possible antitrust concerns that the merger would eliminate Crown Imports as a competitor.

But on Thursday the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit against AB InBev to block its acquisition of Grupo Modelo. Antitrust officials said the merger would further increase the concentration of the U.S. beer market, leading to higher prices for American consumers.

The lawsuit said the sale of Modelo's interest in Crown Imports to its partner would only create "a facade of competition" between AB InBev and the importer.

"In reality, Defendants' proposed 'remedy' eliminates from the market Modelo — a particularly aggressive competitor — and replaces it with an entity wholly dependent on ABI," the Justice Department said in the lawsuit.

The suits cites as evidence part of an internal memo that Crown's chief executive, Bill Hackett, wrote to employees after the transactions were announced in June. According to the suit, Hackett wrote, "Our #1 competitor will now be our supplier ... it is not currently or will not, going forward, be 'business as usual.'"

Under the terms of the proposed merger with Modelo, AB InBev also had the option to terminate its agreement with Crown Imports after 10 years, giving it full control of Corona distribution.

Constellation Brands on Friday attacked the Justice Department, saying in a statement that the suit "demonstrates its incomplete understanding" of the proposed merger. Constellation and AB InBev have indicated that they plan to challenge the suit.

In a detailed defense, Constellation said its full control of Crown would improve competition, not harm it. According to the lawsuit, Modelo controls about 7 percent of U.S. beer sales, far behind AB InBev's market-leading 39 percent.

Constellation attempted to ease concerns that AB InBev's merger with Modelo would lead to higher prices. Hackett said in a statement: "Our Crown team independently develops, implements and refines pricing, promotional and sales strategies for each of our brands in the U.S."

The proposed beer merger had reduced uncertainty hanging over Crown Imports because the Modelo-Constellation joint venture was set to expire at the end of 2016. The Justice Department action creates a new level of uncertainty, said Benj Steinman, president of Beer Marketer's Insights, a beer industry trade publication.

"Crown's fate is hanging in the balance," Steinman said.

asachdev@tribune.com

Twitter@ameetsachdev

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Hadiya Pendleton's 'twin' describes death of best friend

The best friend of Hadiya Pendleton talks about the moments before her friend was shot in Chicago on January 31, 2013. (Heather Charles, Chicago Tribune)

As she and her high school classmates fled from the gunfire, Hadiya Pendleton screamed that she had been shot, fell to the ground, struggled to get up and fell again, according to her best friend.

The best friend and another girl scrambled to Pendleton's side, cradling her in their arms as others ran for help.

"I was holding her hand trying to talk her through it," her best friend told the Tribune on Thursday. "I was like, 'You're going to be fine, you're going to be OK.'"

But Hadiya, 15, died shortly after a bullet pierced her back Tuesday, igniting outrage over the senseless loss of another young victim of Chicago's out-of-control gun violence and leaving her friends staggered by the horrifying chain of events on what had been a carefree afternoon.

In the account that follows, the Tribune is not naming those who witnessed the shooting and its aftermath because the gunman is still at large.

On Tuesday afternoon, the mood outside King College Prep in North Kenwood was jubilant. The students at the elite high school had just finished final exams, classes had let out early and the winter weather was spectacular, tipping into the low 60s.

Hadiya and her best friend, both sophomores, headed toward a nearby Potbelly's, one of their favorite places to eat, the friend said. But on their way, at about 1:30 p.m., they ran into friends who invited them to Harsh Park, just a few blocks away from the school.

"We were like, 'OK, sure, who doesn't want to walk around outside when it's nice?'" Hadiya's best friend said.

As they walked, the group of about a dozen teens discussed which tests had been easy and which had been hard. Some were volleyball players from King and others went to another high school, Hadiya's friends said.

Once they reached the small, residential park, Hadiya and others headed to a playground where they swung in the warm air while chatting about their plans for the summer and their 16th birthdays. Hadiya's best friend said she and Hadiya had talked about a joint sweet 16 party and possibly wearing matching gold heels and colorful outfits to celebrate the occasion.

But then a sudden downpour drove the teens beneath a metal awning where Hadiya played "Misery Business" by the band Paramore on her cellphone and others tweeted and texted as they waited out the rain.

Minutes later, however, Hadiya's best friend said she saw a gun-wielding male scale the park fence and approach the group. She yelled a warning to her friends, but the gunman opened fire, spraying the teens with bullets as they ran.

Hadiya was struck in the back about 2:20 p.m. One teen suffered a graze wound to an ankle. And a 17-year-old junior at King was hit in the left leg below the calf, according to his mother, who said he was trying to protect his girlfriend.

The teen's mother said that her son, an Eagle Scout, didn't realize he had been shot. He felt a little sting in his leg before he looked down and saw blood.

A nurse who lived in the area and was leaving her home at the time of the shooting ran to the group, applied a makeshift tourniquet to the teen shot in the leg and called 911. The nurse instructed the others on how to take care of Hadiya.

In the meantime, another friend of Hadiya's ran to a nearby Subway restaurant, burst through the door and asked to borrow a man's phone to call 911.

But by then wailing police cars whizzed by toward the park, so she called her mom.

"I told her to stay put," her mother told the Tribune. "I can't even tell you, as a mother, what it's like to get that phone call. My goal was to get to my child."

The friend said that she and Hadiya met freshman year at a high school dance camp. The friend joined poms, while Hadiya became a majorette, traveling to Washington last month to perform in a competition with her squad during President Barack Obama's inauguration weekend.

The girls were nicknamed "twins" by classmates and teachers because of their similar appearance, the friend said. From haircut to smile to skin tone to personalities, the two were hard to tell apart, she said.

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CES gadget show host drops CNET as awards picker

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The industry group that hosts the annual gadget show known as International CES is dropping reviews website CNET as the picker of its “Best of CES” awards. It says CNET reviewers’ objectivity was compromised by the site’s corporate parent, CBS Corp.

The Consumer Electronics Association also elevated the CNET writers’ initial pick for the best gadget of the show, Dish Network Corp.‘s Hopper with Sling, to co-winner along with a gaming tablet called Razer Edge.

CBS had annulled an earlier vote by CNET staff to award the Hopper because it is in a legal dispute with Dish over the product. The Hopper allows users to automatically skip commercials from prime-time TV shows, undercutting a key source of revenue for CBS, advertising.

After CBS removed the Hopper from contention, CNET staff re-voted and chose Razer Edge as the winner.

The association says it is looking for a new partner for its awards.

The association’s president, Gary Shapiro, blasted CBS in an opinion article in the USA Today newspaper on Wednesday, saying its interference damaged its own editorial integrity. CBS also owns TV shows such as “60 Minutes,” ”CBS Evening News” and “Face the Nation.”

“It not only tainted the CES awards, but it hurt one of the world’s classiest media companies,” Shapiro wrote.

The association, which has hosted the gadget show since 1967, had contracted with CNET to pick the awards since the 2007 show. It normally chooses not to get involved, partly because of its relationship with its many exhibitors.

Mark Larkin, the general manager of CNET, said in a statement the website is “committed to delivering in-depth coverage of consumer electronics” and will continue to cover the show, as it has for more than a decade.

Dish appeared to bask in the controversy, which drew more attention to its device.

“We appreciate the International CES’ decision to stand with the consumer in the acknowledgement of this award,” said Dish CEO Joseph Clayton in a statement. “I regret that the award has come in the face of CBS’ undermining of CNET’s editorial independence.”

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Appeals judges: Anti-paparazzi law appears legal

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An appeals panel says California’s anti-paparazzi statute appears to be constitutional based on a brief filed by prosecutors.

A preliminary statement by three judges in Los Angeles requires a judge who dismissed charges aimed at a paparazzo who authorities say was driving recklessly to review his order. The judge may stick to his ruling, which would trigger a full appeal, or he could schedule further arguments on the case against freelance photographer Paul Raef.

Raef was the first person charged under the new law after a high-speed chase involving Justin Bieber last year.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Rubinson dismissed two charges in November, ruling the law is too broad and is unconstitutional.

Raef’s attorney David S. Kestenbaum says he is asking Rubinson to stand by his ruling and allow a full appeal.

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During Trial, New Details Emerge on DuPuy Hip

When Johnson & Johnson announced the appointment in 2011 of an executive to head the troubled orthopedics division whose badly flawed artificial hip had been recalled, the company billed the move as a fresh start.

But that same executive, it turns out, had supervised the implant’s introduction in the United States and had been told by a top company consultant three years before the device was recalled that it was faulty.

In addition, the executive also held a senior marketing position at a time when Johnson & Johnson decided not to tell officials outside the United States that American regulators had refused to allow sale of a version of the artificial hip in this country.

The details about the involvement of the executive, Andrew Ekdahl, with the all-metal hip implant emerged Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court during the trial of a patient lawsuit against the DePuy Orthopaedics division of Johnson & Johnson. More than 10,000 lawsuits have been filed against DePuy in connection with the device — the Articular Surface Replacement, or A.S.R. — and the Los Angeles case is the first to go to trial.

The information about the depth of Mr. Ekdahl’s involvement with the implant may raise questions about DePuy’s ability to put the A.S.R. episode behind it.

Asked in an e-mail why the company had promoted Mr. Ekdahl, a DePuy spokeswoman, Lorie Gawreluk, said the company “seeks the most accomplished and competent people for the job.”

On Wednesday, portions of Mr. Ekdahl’s videotaped testimony were shown to jurors in the Los Angeles case. Other top DePuy marketing executives who played roles in the A.S.R. development are expected to testify in coming days. Mr. Ekdahl, when pressed in the taped questioning on whether DePuy had recalled the A.S.R. because it was unsafe, repeatedly responded that the company had recalled it “because it did not meet the clinical standards we wanted in the marketplace.”

Before the device’s recall in mid-2010, Mr. Ekdahl and those executives all publicly asserted that the device was performing extremely well. But internal documents that have become public as a result of litigation conflict with such statements.

In late 2008, for example, a surgeon who served as one of DePuy’s top consultants told Mr. Ekdahl and two other DePuy marketing officials that he was concerned about the cup component of the A.S.R. and believed it should be “redesigned.” At the time, DePuy was aggressively promoting the device in the United States as a breakthrough and it was being implanted into thousands of patients.

“My thoughts would be that DePuy should at least de-emphasize the A.S.R. cup while the clinical results are studied,” that consultant, Dr. William Griffin, wrote.

A spokesman for Dr. Griffin said he was not available for comment.

The A.S.R., whose cup and ball components were both made of metal, was first sold by DePuy in 2003 outside the United States for use in an alternative hip replacement procedure called resurfacing. Two years later, DePuy started selling another version of the A.S.R. for use here in standard hip replacement that used the same cup component as the resurfacing device. Only the standard A.S.R. was sold in the United States; both versions were sold outside the country.

Before the device recall in mid-2010, about 93,000 patients worldwide received an A.S.R., about a third of them in this country. Internal DePuy projections estimate that it will fail in 40 percent of those patients within five years; a rate eight times higher than for many other hip devices.

Mr. Ekdahl testified via tape Wednesday that he had been placed in charge of the 2005 introduction of the standard version of the A.S.R. in this country. Within three years, he and other DePuy executives were receiving reports that the device was failing prematurely at higher than expected rates, apparently because of problems related to the cup’s design, documents disclosed during the trial indicate.

Along with other DePuy executives, he also participated in a meeting that resulted in a proposal to redesign the A.S.R. cup. But that plan was dropped, apparently because sales of the implant had not justified the expense, DePuy documents indicate.

In the face of growing complaints from surgeons about the A.S.R., DePuy officials maintained that the problems were related to how surgeons were implanting the cup, not from any design flaw. But in early 2009, a DePuy executive wrote to Mr. Ekdahl and other marketing officials that the early failures of the A.S.R. resurfacing device and the A.S.R. traditional implant, known as the XL, were most likely design-related.

“The issue seen with A.S.R. and XL today, over five years post-launch, are most likely linked to the inherent design of the product and that is something we should recognize,” that executive, Raphael Pascaud wrote in March 2009.

Last year, The New York Times reported that DePuy executives decided in 2009 to phase out the A.S.R. and sell existing inventories weeks after the Food and Drug Administration asked the company for more safety data about the implant.

The F.D.A. also told the company at that time that it was rejecting its efforts to sell the resurfacing version of the device in the United States because of concerns about “high concentration of metal ions” in the blood of patients who received it.

DePuy never disclosed the F.D.A. ruling to regulators in other countries where it was still marketing the resurfacing version of the implant.

During a part of that period, Mr. Ekdahl was overseeing sales in Europe and other regions for DePuy. When The Times article appeared last year, he issued a statement, saying that any implication that the F.D.A. had determined there were safety issues with the A.S.R. was “simply untrue.” “This was purely a business decision,” Mr. Ekdahl stated at that time.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 1, 2013

A headline on Thursday about a patient lawsuit against DePuy Orthopaedics, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, misstated the start of the trial in some copies. It began last week, not on Wednesday.

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Former Peregrine CEO Wasendorf gets 50 years in prison

A U.S. judge on Thursday sentenced the founder of Peregrine Financial Group to 50 years in prison for looting hundreds of millions of dollars from the brokerage, saying his customers would probably never recover the money they lost.

Russell Wasendorf Sr., who had tried to kill himself just before the fraud was uncovered, received the maximum sentence allowed by law and was ordered to pay $215.5 million in restitution for his nearly 20-year scheme.

Wasendorf's fraud was revealed in 2012, triggering the collapse of the brokerage and further shaking investors' confidence in the U.S. futures industry, already rattled by the failure of larger rival M.F. Global.

"I'm very sorry for the financial and emotional damage I've caused to investors and employees of Peregrine Financial Group," Wasendorf said in a feeble voice at a sentencing hearing in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. "I feel I fully deserve whatever sentence I am given… My guilt is such I will accept that sentence."

Chief Judge Linda Reade of the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Iowa said former Peregrine customers will probably never get all their money back.

Wasendorf, 64, admitted last July that he had bilked tens of thousands of clients over a period of nearly 20 years, faking bank statements and lying to federal regulators, employees and his closest family members.

As regulators closed in on the fraud, Wasendorf made a botched suicide attempt outside his $24-million headquarters in Cedar Falls, Iowa, which investigators say was financed with money siphoned from customers.

Peregrine Financial, known as PFGBest, quickly collapsed, and 24,000 former customers are still missing most of the money they had invested with the firm.

Wasendorf pleaded guilty in September to embezzling more than $100 million. Prosecutors said the amount stolen was more like $215 million.

"The lengthy prison sentence imposed today is just punishment for a con man who built a business on smoke and mirrors," said Acting U.S. Attorney Sean Berry.

PLEAS FOR LENIENCY

Supporters of the disgraced executive had asked Reade for leniency, arguing that Wasendorf is in frail health and that he had helped others even in the midst of his 20-year fraud.

Wasendorf, wearing an orange sweatshirt, looked gaunt in court after spending six months in isolation in a county jail.

He has been sick in jail, and doctors found a tumor on or near his pancreas, according to testimony from his pastor, Linda Livingston of Ascension Lutheran Church. Wasendorf's mother died of pancreatic cancer, but it is unknown whether Wasendorf's tumor is cancerous, she said.

U.S. prosecutors said the large loss, the sophisticated nature of the crime, and the sheer number of victims justified Wasendorf spending the rest of his life behind bars.

"The defendant spent like he was the richest man in the world," Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Deegan said in court.

Peregrine's collapse dealt a blow to confidence in the U.S futures industry, already reeling from $1.6 billion hole in customer pockets left when giant brokerage MF Global failed nine months earlier.

Futures traders had never before suffered such large losses as a result of a brokerage failure.

Despite his misdeeds, Wasendorf "did do some positive things for the community," said former U.S. Congressman David Nagle from Iowa, who spoke up for the fallen CEO in court.

Nagle, who helped Wasendorf win zoning approval for Peregrine's environmentally-friendly headquarters, asked the judge for leniency.

"Who wants to defend the magnitude of the crimes Mr. Wasendorf committed?" he said. "But good people do bad things."

Wasendorf was well known for donating to local charities before his empire came crashing down.

However, he built his reputation for generosity using money stolen from his customers, Judge Reade said, adding that the donations likely lessened Wasendorf's feelings of guilt.

Peregrine customers "unwittingly funded the charities, but it was Mr. Wasendorf who took the credit," she said.

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