Free Republic

Shackled and wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, Brad Bleidt pleaded guilty yesterday to 115 counts of mail fraud and one count of money laundering tied to a long-running financial scam that bilked more than $27 million from investors - many of them elderly citizens left destitute by his money-hungry ambitions. ``I am guilty, and I think the healing process should start with my admission,'' the 51-year-old Bleidt told U.S. District Judge William Young in Boston's federal court. But some of his scam victims expressed disappointment at Bleidt's proposed sentence under the plea agreement: 11 years and three months. Judge Young...

BOSTON (AP) -- A former investment firm manager who confessed to stealing more than $27 million from investors, including his mother, was set to plead guilty on Tuesday. Bradford Bleidt, 51, manager of Allocation Plus Asset Management, attempted suicide in November after he mailed taped confessions to securities regulators, family members and business associates. He was scheduled to plead guilty in U.S. District Court on Tuesday afternoon, according to the court calendar. Bleidt, of Manchester-by-the-Sea, is charged with 115 counts of mail fraud and a single count of money laundering. It was not immediately clear whether he would plead guilty...

Brad Bleidt rationalized his heavy drinking and an apparently busted marriage on the ``magnitude'' of a Ponzi swindle that left him in a ``hell of guilt,'' he says on a tape intended to be his last words to his wife. ``I've lived with that horror of the day of reckoning for years and that's sort of where the drinking's come from and me being distant and me being removed,'' Bleidt said in the rambling message to Bonnie Bleidt left just hours before he botched a suicide bid. Bleidt gave little chance for his wife to brace herself before launching into...