Former Adelphia executives John and Timothy Rigas had their sentences reduced by a federal judge yesterday to 12 years and 17 years, respectively, as part of a Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruling last year.
Former Adelphia founder and chairman John Rigas and his son former Adelphia chief financial officer Timothy Rigas were convicted on 18 counts of fraud and conspiracy in 2004 stemming from the massive accounting scandalat the cable company.
After a five-month trial, U.S. District Court judge Leonard Sand sentenced John and Tim Rigas to 15 years and 20 years in federal prison. An appeals court in May 2007 re-affirmed the pair’s convictions on all counts except one count of bank fraud and directed that the defendants be resentenced.
In reducing the Rigases’ sentences by three years, Sand indicated that a “minimal adjustment is appropriate.” In a statement Sand said that the reversal “in no meaningful way altered the seriousness of the defendants’ crimes, nor the suffering which their conduct inflicted on so many people.”
The Rigases are currently serving their sentences in federal prison in North Carolina.
