Man charged in Conn. fraud cover-up gets 14 months

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) - A real estate manager has been sentenced to 14 months in prison for trying to cover up a Connecticut-based pyramid scheme involving hundreds of millions of dollars from a Venezuela state pension fund.

Forty-one-year-old Juan Carlos Horna Napolitano, a citizen of Venezuela and Italy living in Pembroke Pines, Fla, pleaded guilty last year to one count of conspiracy to obstruct a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of hedge fund adviser Francisco Illarramendi.

At sentencing Friday in federal court in Bridgeport, Horna was ordered to forfeit $935,000 prosecutors said Illarramendi gave him to fake documents. A co-conspirator was sentenced in December to 14 months and ordered to forfeit $315,000 he received.

Illarramendi, a Venezuelan-American financier living in New Britain, Conn., awaits sentencing. He pleaded guilty last year to charges including fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice.