Former Refco CEO sentenced to 16 years in prison

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Phillip Bennett, the former chief executive of Refco, was sentenced to 16 years in prison Thursday for fleecing investors of more than $2.4 billion in a fraud that destroyed the world's largest independent commodities broker. The sentence marks the latest chapter in the decline and fall of Phillip Bennett, 59, who built Refco into a global commodities trading empire only to see it unravel in 2005 after the company disclosed an accounting deception. Bennett, who at Refco's peak was a billionaire, but will forfeit all his assets as part of his sentence, was penitent on... [read full story]