Suicide may be fraudster's latest scam

Suicide may be fraudster's latest scam

An abandoned car on a bridge with the words "suicide is painless" etched in dust on the bonnet has sparked an international manhunt for an American hedge fund manager convicted of cheating investors out of $450m (£230m).

The US marshals service believes that Samuel Israel, a one-time investment prodigy whose Bayou Group hedge fund collapsed in 2005, has faked his own death to avoid serving a 20-year prison sentence for fraud.

A "wanted" poster has been issued for Israel warning that he should be considered "armed and dangerous". In a statement yesterday, the marshals service said: "Although suicide has not been ruled out at this time, the marshals service is treating this as a fugitive investigation."

Israel, 48, was sentenced in April after pleading guilty to making fictitious investments to cover up huge losses at his fund. His lawyers successfully argued that he should remain on bail to seek treatment for heart and back ailments before reporting to jail on an agreed date.

But on the date set for his imprisonment, June 9, his sports utility vehicle was found on the Bear Mountain Bridge - a road over the Hudson River in upstate New York.

The keys were in the ignition of the car and there was no note, other than three words scrawled on the bonnet which echo the theme tune to the television show MASH - a song covered by the Manic Street Preachers in 1992.

The police are monitoring airports and border crossings. His victims.....continued below

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believe that he is on the run and that he may have already escaped overseas.

"He probably faked this," Samuel Christen, who invested $825,000 in Bayou Group, told the New York Times. "Everything about him was phoney."

Israel's prison sentence is among the longest given to a white-collar fraudster in the US. It rivals the 24-year stretch handed to Enron's former chief executive, Jeffrey Skilling, in 2006 and a 25-year sentence given to the WorldCom fraudster Bernie Ebbers.

The marshals service said Israel is addicted to pain killers and has a tattoo of a bird on his left arm.

His disappearance is embarrassing for Israel's lawyers who assured the court in a filing prior to sentencing that "Sam is neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community".

Israel is the second high-profile client mislaid by the same New York law firm - Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason, Anello & Bohrer. In 2006, the firm defended the former Comverse Technologies boss Kobi Alexander who fled to Namibia to escape criminal charges for fiddling executive stock options.

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