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by Mike Caswell

A New York judge has imposed a 17-month jail term on Lee Cohen, a U.K. citizen who helped two yet-to-be-identified Canadians defraud investors in a $1.2-million scheme. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.) Prosecutors said that Mr. Cohen, 52, ran a boiler room in the Philippines that pitched ultimately worthless companies to investors. He was part of a conspiracy that included manipulative trading and payments to corrupt brokers, according to the government.

Mr. Cohen's sentence is contained in a judgment handed down on Tuesday, May 16, in federal court in New York. In addition to the 17-month jail term, the judge ordered Mr. Cohen to make restitution of $1.2-million. He must also serve three years of supervised release (although any meaningful supervision is likely to be cut short, as foreigners are often deported after being released from prison).

The decision is a partial loss for prosecutors, who had asked the judge to imprison Mr. Cohen for three years. Ahead of sentencing, they said that he had built a career out of stealing money through his boiler room. The operation featured Mr. Cohen personally pitching ultimately worthless companies to investors, using the alias Charles Davenport, prosecutors claimed.

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