Ex-Refco president sentenced to 10 years in prison

By Martha Graybow

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Tone Grant, former president of Refco, once the largest independent commodities broker, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his role in a $2.4 billion fraud that involved hiding huge trading losses from clients.

His sentence was handed down by U.S. District Judge Naomi Buchwald in Manhattan at a hearing on Thursday. No surrender date was immediately set.

Grant, 64, was the lone top executive at Refco to go to trial. Ex-chief executive Phillip Bennett pleaded guilty in February to 20 criminal counts a month before he was due to go to trial.

Bennett was sentenced last month to 16 years in prison. He is appealing that sentence.

Refco unraveled in 2005, shortly after it became a public company, after revealing that Bennett had hidden $430 million in bad customer debt. Refco stock plummeted and the company filed for bankruptcy.

Judge Buchwald said Grant played a pivotal role in the fraud, rejecting defense lawyers' arguments that Bennett was the main culprit. She said Grant issued "totally false" statements to the public and showed a clear willingness to lie.

Grant "made the choice over and over again to join with Bennett -- not to extricate himself from the fraud," the judge said.

Grant's lawyers, who are planning to appeal his conviction, had asked the judge to impose a lighter sentence of about 3-1/2 years in prison. Prosecutors had sought a prison term on par with the 16 years that Bennett received.  Continued...