With No Body, Cops Doubt NY Banker's Suicide

'He's dead as far as I can throw him,' skeptic says of fraudster
By Jason Farago,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 11, 2008 11:31 AM CDT
With No Body, Cops Doubt NY Banker's Suicide
Samuel Israel III, the former CEO of Bayou Group, arrives at Manhattan federal court for his sentencing, Monday, April 14, 2008, in New York.   (AP Photo/ Louis Lanzano)

An international manhunt is now under way for a former hedge-fund manager who disappeared the day he was to begin serving a prison sentence for defrauding investors. A car belonging to Samuel Israel III was found Monday at a bridge over New York's Hudson River, the Wall Street Journal reports; though bodies of suicide jumpers are normally found quickly, there's no sign of Israel.

"No witnesses saw anybody jump from the bridge, and there's no evidence that he did," a police investigator said of Israel, 48, who was to begin serving a 20-year sentence for scamming investors out of $400 million. "He's dead as far as I can throw him," said one investor burned by the 2005 collapse of Bayou Management—a seemingly common sentiment. (More Samuel Israel stories.)

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