Ex-MIT dean and son plead guilty to securities fraud

A former associate dean of MIT’s Sloan School of Management and his son have pleaded guilty to securities fraud and obstruction of justice after allegedly losing $140 million of investors’ money in hedge funds.

According to the Boston Globe, Gabriel Bitran, 69, and his son Marco allegedly attracted investors from 2005 through 2011 promising to invest using a complex mathematical trading model developed by Gabriel Bitran at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Of the $500 million invested, much actually went in to other hedge funds, according to the allegations.

Some of the money was invested with New York financier Bernard Madoff, who was convicted in 2009 of defrauding investors of billions of dollars and was sentenced to 150 years in prison.

Read more from the Boston Globe.