Quoting the theme song from M*A*S*H and faking your own death doesn't get you out of a 20-year jail sentence. Someone should probably let hedge fund manager Sam Israel III know.
After failing to appear at the prison where he is expected to serve time on Monday, ABC News reports that despite the message "Suicide is Painless" found scrawled in dust on the hood of Israel's car, it was believed that he is indeed still alive. (He abandoned the car near the Bear Mountain Bridge, in upstate New York, hoping that police would assume he had jumped to his death.) That same day, according to CNN, Israel's girlfriend Debra Ryan was arrested and admitted to helping him load up his possessions, as well as a motor scooter, into an RV.
Israel was convicted of stealing $450 million that belonged to the investors in a Bayou Management hedge fund. Perhaps Israel wanted to pull a Ken Lay, the former Enron CEO who died of a heart attack at his SnowMass, Colo., ski chalet a few months before he was to be sentenced for fraud in the Enron debacle. He was facing a long jail stretch when he died suddenly.
