Samuel Israel III (born July 20, 1959) is an American fraudster and former

hedge fund A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as s ...

manager for the Bayou Hedge Fund Group, which he founded in 1996. In 2008, Israel was sentenced to 20 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $300 million for defrauding his investors.

Early life and education

Born into a Jewish family, Israel attended

Hackley School Hackley School is a private college preparatory school located in Tarrytown, New York, and is a member of the Ivy Preparatory School League. Founded in 1899 by a wealthy philanthropist, Frances Hackley, Hackley was intended to be a Unitarian al ...

Tarrytown, New York Tarrytown is a village in the town of Greenburgh in Westchester County, New York. It is located on the eastern bank of the Hudson River, approximately north of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, and is served by a stop on the Metro-North ...

. He does not have a college degree.

Career

In 1996 Israel founded the Bayou Hedge Fund Group, which raised $450 million from its investors and for which Israel was CEO. Bayou and Israel misappropriated these funds for personal use, running what would later be revealed as a Ponzi scheme. After poor returns in 1998, the firm founded a dummy accounting firm, which they hired to audit themselves in order to keep up appearances to investors. In 2005, Bayou was indicted. On September 29, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed charges against Bayou, Israel, and Bayou CFO Daniel Marino. The next year, the hedge fund filed for

Chapter 11 Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, wheth ...

bankruptcy-court protection. On April 14, 2008, Israel was sentenced to 20 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $300 million after pleading guilty to defrauding investors in his bankrupt firm.

Manhunt and arrest

Sentenced in April 2008 to 20 years in federal prison, Israel failed to report to prison as ordered on June 9, 2008. His 2006

GMC Envoy The GMC Envoy is a mid-size SUV, manufactured and marketed by General Motors for model years 1998-2009 over two generations. Adopting a nameplate used by GM Canada, the Envoy was a rebadged variant of the Chevrolet TrailBlazer, Oldsmobile Brava ...

was found abandoned on the

Bear Mountain Bridge The Bear Mountain Bridge, ceremonially named the Purple Heart Veterans Memorial Bridge, is a toll suspension bridge in New York State. It carries US 6 and US 202 across the Hudson River between Bear Mountain State Park in Orange Co ...

on June 10, 2008 with " Suicide is Painless" (the title of the

theme song Theme music is a musical composition that is often written specifically for radio programming, television shows, video games, or films and is usually played during the title sequence, opening credits, closing credits, and in some instances at ...

for both the

movie A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

and TV series ''

M*A*S*H ''M*A*S*H'' (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) is an American media franchise consisting of a series of novels, a film, several television series, plays, and other properties, and based on the semi-autobiographical fiction of Richard Hooker. Th ...

)'' written in the dust on the hood. Police suspected that this was an attempt by Israel to fake his own death in order to avoid

prison A prison, also known as a jail, gaol (dated, standard English, Australian, and historically in Canada), penitentiary (American English and Canadian English), detention center (or detention centre outside the US), correction center, corre ...

. Israel's girlfriend, Debra Ryan, was arrested later that same month for aiding and abetting his escape, and was released on bail. Under intense questioning, Ryan admitted to helping him escape, and that she and Israel parked an RV loaded with Israel's belongings near Bear Mountain Bridge on the day before his disappearance. The pair were featured on '' America's Most Wanted''. Israel was eventually tracked down to a campground in

Granville, Massachusetts Granville is a town in Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 1,538 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The town is named for John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granvill ...

, and surrendered to authorities on July 2, 2008. As a consequence, he was further sentenced on July 15, 2009, to an additional two years in prison while his girlfriend was sentenced to three years' probation. Israel is serving his sentence at

Federal Correctional Institution, Butner Low The Federal Correctional Complex, Butner (FCC Butner) is a United States federal prison complex for men near Butner, North Carolina. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. FCC Butner ...

Butner, North Carolina Butner is a town in Granville County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 8,397 as of the 2020 census. Butner was managed by the state of North Carolina from 1947 through 2007. History A bill passed by the North Carolina General ...

. In 2019, he applied for early release, citing the

First Step Act The First Step Act, formally known as the Formerly Incarcerated Reenter Society Transformed Safely Transitioning Every Person Act, is a bipartisan criminal justice bill passed by the 115th Congress and signed by President Donald Trump in Decembe ...

. This application was denied, and Israel's scheduled release date is May 10, 2026. A ''Dateline'' segment about him aired on September 5, 2008. Israel is the subject of the "Suicide is Painless" episode of ''

American Greed ''American Greed'' (also known as ''American Greed: Scams, Scoundrels and Scandals'' and as ''American Greed: Scams, Schemes and Broken Dreams'') is an American documentary television series on CNBC. The series focuses on cases of Ponzi schemes, ...

'' on

CNBC CNBC (formerly Consumer News and Business Channel) is an American basic cable business news channel. It provides business news programming on weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Eastern Time, while broadcasting talk sho ...

, first broadcast on February 3, 2010.

In popular culture

In the 2023

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fi ...

documentary series "Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street" detailing the rise and fall of Bernie Madoff, the arrest of Israel is depicted as a precursor to the public uncovering of Madoff's multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.

References

External links

The U.S. Government Is a Sham. The Federal Reserve Is Running a Secret Bond Market. Global Finance Is Controlled by an “Upperworld” of Rogue Black-Ops Fixers
'' New York'', July 1, 2012
The Search for a Missing Trader Goes Global
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', 14 June 2008
Israel's FBI wanted posterIsrael's U.S. Marshals wanted posterFugitive hedge-fund swindler in federal custody
Reuters, 2 July 2008

''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

'', 2 July 2008
Fund Manager Who Faked His Suicide Surrenders
''The New York Times'', 3 July 2008 {{DEFAULTSORT:Israel, Samuel 1996 crimes in the United States 20th-century American Jews American financial businesspeople American white-collar criminals American confidence tricksters Fugitive financiers American hedge fund managers Businesspeople from New Orleans Pyramid and Ponzi schemes 1959 births Living people People who faked their own death American people convicted of fraud American businesspeople convicted of crimes Hackley School alumni 21st-century American Jews