Adviser gets eight years in jail for stealing from clients

Matthew Weitzman, a former principal of AFW Asset Management Inc., was sentenced to 97 months in prison after he pleaded guilty last year to stealing from the firm’s clients.

Weitzman, 44, also was ordered to pay $7.1 million in forfeiture at his sentencing hearing today, according to a statement from U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan. Weitzman, who lives in Armonk, New York, pleaded guilty in October to investment advisory fraud, wire fraud and securities fraud.

AFW is a financial planning and investment management firm with offices in Purchase, New York, and Natick, Massachusetts, according to the U.S. Attorney’s statement. Weitzman was a co- founder of the firm, which had more than $190 million in assets under management at the end of 2008, according to the statement. Eight unidentified victims complained funds were missing from their accounts, prosecutors said last year.

“I was disappointed the judge imposed a sentence of the length that she did,” Weitzman’s lawyer, Marc Mukasey, said in a phone interview. “I thought that the work Mr. Weitzman had begun to do to repay his victims was laudable and deserving of credit.”

Weitzman will report to prison in August, his lawyer said.