Double dealers
Now they have identical handcuffs — and sentences.
A pair of evil, identical-twin securities crooks were sent off, sobbing, to serve at least 3½ years in prison yesterday for a $2 million Ponzi scheme.
Over the last 10 years, Makara Nkhereanye and his brother, Tsele, 39, rooked more than 40 investors — starting with their mother, whose retirement fund they squandered on bad investments, Manhattan prosecutors said at sentencing.
“Guys, I trusted you,” education administrator Ken Williams, 53, of Harlem, said in a victim-impact statement. “Over 10 years we worked together, had dinner together . . . This is a sad day. I don’t know what’s hurting me more — the trust issue or the loss of funds.”
The Nkhereanye brothers, both of the Lower East Side, were so intelligent growing up that they won slots at top city high schools and attended prestigious universities — with Makara going to Princeton and Tsele to Stanford.
But they never took a single finance course, prosecutors said. Even so, by 1999, they were well on their way to a career in looting investors’ savings, beginning with their mom’s $180,000 retirement fund, which they talked her into lending them and promptly lost in the stock market, said Assistant District Attorney Kim Han.
In their decade as bogus brokers, the Nkhereanyes, who pleaded guilty to 64 felony charges of grand larceny and fraud in September, made a profit only one year — 2004, when they were in the black by a mere $5,000.
In the first six months of last year — their last months in operation — they lost more than $700,000, Han said. Still, they boasted to their investors about megaprofits, stringing them along for years by paying “dividends” that came out of their victims’ principal investments.
Each twin made a tearful statement yesterday, begging for mercy.
“My betrayal of you and your families hurts so much,” wept Makara.
“This pain has punctured my soul,” blubbered Tsele.
Makara’s lawyer, Gene Conway, insisted: “They are not twin Bernard Madoffs, despite what the prosecutor tells you.”
Ultimately, they were sentenced to the maximum promised by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Charles Solomon.
As for the identical sentences, Solomon noted, “There’s no distinguishing one from the other, as far as who did more and who did less.”
Heartless times 2
* Twins Makara and Tsele Nkhereanye, 39
* Born in Daly City, Calif., grew up in the city, now live on the Lower East Side
* One went to Princeton, the other Stanford
* Ran a $2 million Ponzi scheme
* They pleaded guilty Sept. 17 to 64 felony counts apiece, including grand larceny, securities fraud and scheming to defraud more than 40 investors
* Each sentenced to 3 1/2 – to 10 1/2-years in prison yesterday
