Sholam Weiss (born 1954) is an American convicted

fraud In law, fraud is intent (law), intentional deception to deprive a victim of a legal right or to gain from a victim unlawfully or unfairly. Fraud can violate Civil law (common law), civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrato ...

ster. In 2000, Weiss was sentenced to 845 years in prison for

racketeering Racketeering is a type of organized crime in which the perpetrators set up a coercion, coercive, fraud, fraudulent, extortionary, or otherwise illegal coordinated scheme or operation (a "racket") to repeatedly or consistently collect a profit. ...

wire fraud Mail fraud and wire fraud are terms used in the United States to describe the use of a physical (e.g., the U.S. Postal Service) or electronic (e.g., a phone, a telegram, a fax, or the Internet) mail system to defraud another, and are U.S. fede ...

money laundering Money laundering is the process of illegally concealing the origin of money obtained from illicit activities (often known as dirty money) such as drug trafficking, sex work, terrorism, corruption, and embezzlement, and converting the funds i ...

, and other charges in connection to the collapse of the

National Heritage Life Insurance Company National Heritage Life Insurance Company (NHLC) was an insurance company based in Orlando, Florida. It collapsed as a result of a fraud scheme, and was liquidated in 1995. It is believed to have been the largest insurance company failure caused by ...

. He and other defendants engaged in an immense scheme that siphoned off $450 million from the company, resulting in what was believed to be the largest insurance company failure ever caused by criminal acts. His sentence was believed to be the longest prison term ever imposed in a U.S. federal court and the longest ever for

white-collar crime The term "white-collar crime" refers to financially motivated, nonviolent or non-directly violent crime committed by individuals, businesses and government professionals. The crimes are believed to be committed by middle- or upper-class indivi ...

. Weiss fled the country during jury deliberations in October 1999, and was extradited from Austria in 2002. His sentence was commuted by President

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on January 19, 2021. Weiss was released the next day.

Early life and background

Weiss grew up in Borough Park, New York; he attended a

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

-language

yeshiva A yeshiva (; ; pl. , or ) is a traditional Jewish educational institution focused on the study of Rabbinic literature, primarily the Talmud and halacha (Jewish law), while Torah and Jewish philosophy are studied in parallel. The stu ...

and, as a child, Weiss delivered fruit for his father's fruit stand. As a young man, he did construction work, and purchased Windsor Plumbing Supply in 1974, at the age of 20. The firm was profitable for the 1970s and for most of the 1980s, but declared bankruptcy in the late 1980s. In 1994, Weiss was indicted on

mail fraud Mail fraud and wire fraud are terms used in the United States to describe the use of a physical (e.g., the U.S. Postal Service) or electronic (e.g., a phone, a telegram, a fax, or the Internet) mail system to defraud another, and are U.S. fede ...

charges and found guilty, for which he served eight months in prison. Weiss had falsely claimed that more than $1 million worth of bathtubs had been damaged in a 1986 warehouse fire.

National Heritage Life Insurance Company fraud

In a scheme that ''

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'' described as "a series of numbingly complex mortgage and stock frauds", Weiss and others siphoned $450 million from the National Heritage Life Insurance Company. The majority of the insurer's policyholders were elderly Florida residents, and the case attracted little attention outside Florida, but federal authorities "said it ranked as the largest insurance company failure caused by criminal acts in United States history". In 1990, the insurer was taken over by fraudsters who paid for the company with a check for $4 million, although they did not actually have $4 million. Then, using a variation on a simple

check-kiting Check kiting or cheque kiting (spelled differently in American and British English spelling) is a form of check fraud, involving taking advantage of the float to make use of non-existent funds in a checking or other bank account. In this way, ...

scheme, they lent themselves the money to cover the purchase price. Weiss became involved in the fraud in 1992 through an attorney, Michael Blutrich, who later admitted to the fraud and became a federal witness. After taking control, Weiss and others bought worthless stocks and mortgages in a series of deals that drained the insurer of hundreds of millions of dollars. Much of the money vanished, and millions went into accounts controlled by Weiss. The heavy involvement of attorneys, who comprised one-quarter of the persons eventually convicted, helped the conspirators keep the fraud secret. National Life, which was liquidated in 1995, had about 35,000 policy holders, of whom about 10,500 lived in Florida. Many lost their life savings as a result of the fraud, though various guaranty funds repaid policy and annuity holders about $420 million.

Trial, sentencing and flight

Weiss rejected a government offer of a plea deal in which he would have served five years in prison, and chose to go to trial. Weiss fled the country while the jury was deliberating. In November 1999, he was found guilty

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at the trial and was sentenced to 845 years in prison, three years of supervised release, a fine of $123.4 million and ordered to pay $125 million in restitution. Asset forfeitures of $57 million were also ordered. The restitution was paid. In addition to Weiss, 15 other defendants pleaded guilty or were convicted in the fraud case by the time he was sentenced, and several were serving long prison terms. After fleeing the trial Weiss travelled to Israel, Belgium, Brazil, Austria and the United Kingdom. Weiss shaved his beard, lost weight, used prepaid phones and created false identities to avoid detection. During this time he lived an extravagant lifestyle and spent money on fine dining, gambling and prostitution. He was apprehended in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

, Austria and

extradited In an extradition, one jurisdiction delivers a person accused or convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, into the custody of the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforcement procedure between the two jurisdic ...

to the United States in 2002. At the time of his extradition, Weiss was believed by the FBI to have control of $250 million stolen from National Life. Another estimate was that he controlled half of the $450 million he helped steal.

Campaign to commute sentence

Weiss' sentence was controversial due to its length, which exceeded the 150-year sentence imposed on

Bernard Madoff Bernard Lawrence Madoff ( ; April 29, 1938April 14, 2021) was an American financial criminal and financier who was the admitted mastermind of the largest known Ponzi scheme in history, worth an estimated $65 billion. He was at one time ...

. The

National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) is an American criminal defense organization. Members include private criminal defense lawyers, public defenders, active U.S. military defense counsel, law professors, judges, and def ...

included Weiss with other clemency petitions it submitted to the

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. Rep.

Sean Patrick Maloney Sean Patrick Maloney (born July 30, 1966) is an American attorney and politician who served as the U.S. ambassador to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development from 2024 to 2025. He served as the U.S. representative from from ...

asserted that the sentence was retaliation for rejecting a five-year plea deal. Weiss hired lobbyist

Brett Tolman Brett L. Tolman (born June 10, 1970) is an American lawyer. He served as a United States attorney for the District of Utah from July 2006 to December 2009. Before becoming U.S. attorney, Tolman worked as counsel in the Senate Judiciary Commit ...

to press for commutation, and other supporters included former U.S. Attorney General

Edwin Meese Edwin Meese III (born December 2, 1931) is an American attorney, law professor, author and member of the Republican Party who served in Ronald Reagan's gubernatorial administration (1967–1974), the Reagan presidential transition team (1980� ...

, former U.S. Solicitor General

Seth Waxman Seth Paul Waxman (born November 28, 1951) is an American lawyer who served as the 41st Solicitor General of the United States from 1997 to 2001. He is the co-chairman of the appellate and Supreme Court litigation practice group at the law firm W ...

and

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professor

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. The commutation campaign was spearheaded by his nephew. ''

'' reported that Weiss was one of several "wealthy or well-connected people" who "benefited from their social, political, or financial ties to a loose collection of lawyers, lobbyists, activists and Orthodox Jewish leaders who had worked with Trump administration officials on criminal justice legislation championed by Jared Kushner." It reported that Weiss' case had been discussed at the White House for several years but met resistance. A Republican operative brought it to the attention of

Mark Meadows Mark Randall Meadows (born July 28, 1959) is an American politician who served as the 29th White House chief of staff from 2020 to 2021 under the Trump administration. A member of the Republican Party, he also served as the U.S. representat ...

, Trump's chief of staff, and Weiss' commutation followed. On January 19, 2021, President Donald Trump commuted Weiss's sentence, in one of the 70 pardons and 73 sentence commutations issued on his last full day in office. A White House statement said that Weiss "has already served over 18 years and paid substantial restitution. He is 66 years old and suffers from chronic health conditions." Two months later, Weiss suffered a

stroke Stroke is a medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemor ...

. In an editorial, ''

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'' criticized the commutation, noting that Weiss had "skipped town before his verdict, forcing federal officers to track him across continents", and opined that "of the inmates in federal prison, he is among the least deserving".

References

External links