The sentencing of CDR Financial Products Inc. founder David Rubin for his role in municipal bond bid-rigging has been postponed from Thursday to 11 a.m. Friday, according to a spokesman for U.S. District Court.
Rubin is scheduled to appear before Judge Kimba Wood of the Southern District of New York in Manhattan.
A court spokesman gave no reason, though sentencing has been frequently delayed over the past year.
Rubin, 52, pleaded guilty in January 2012 to three criminal counts dating back to the start of the new millennium. The counts were conspiracy to allocate and rig bids for investment agreements and other municipal finance contracts, defrauding muni issuers and the Internal Revenue Service, and wire fraud.
He became a cooperating witness and testified in the trial of former bankers Peter Ghavami, Michael Welty and Gary Heinz, who are appealing their August 2012 conviction on the grounds that the government withheld evidence. All three were convicted of rigging bids for contracts for investing proceeds of municipal bond sales and sentenced to prison terms. Ghavami received 18 months.
Attorneys from the U.S. Justice Department said Rubin should pay more than $11.5 million in restitution to 99 municipal victims who have not been compensated for losses they incurred due to kickbacks and depressed interest rates resulting from the criminal activity. Rubin's defense team disputed the estimates and asked the judge to consider house arrest instead of jail time.
Rubin's case is part of a federal investigation of bid-rigging in the $3.8 trillion municipal bond market. General Electric Co., Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co. and UBS AG have paid more than $700 million in restitutions and fines.
Former General Electric bankers Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg, and Peter Grimm, convicted in May 2012, are out of jail after an appeals court ruled the statute of limitations on their charges had expired before the government charged them with criminal counts.
