Judge in NY scolds hedge fund scammer who ran away

One day after surrendering at a tiny Massachusetts police station after more than three weeks on the lam, Samuel Israel III again stood before an impatient and bitter U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon. She originally had pronounced his 20-year prison sentence in April while allowing him to remain free on $500,000 bail.

On Thursday, McMahon was unsympathetic. She told Israel, who scammed hundreds of millions of dollars from investors, that he had to forfeit his bail. She ordered him to begin serving his sentence while he faces a new charge of failing to report to prison, which carries a potential 10-year penalty.

The judge refused to refer Israel to the prison medical center to which he had been assigned before he fled.

"It was thrown in my face the last time. I'm now out of it," McMahon said.

Israel told the judge that he tried to commit suicide a day before turning himself in, saying he swallowed morphine tablets and the painkiller fentanyl.

"I ate the balance of my fentanyl patches because I thought it was better to do myself in than to turn myself in," Israel said. "I woke up battered and bruised, and I realized God didn't want me to do that, and I turned myself in."

Israel, 49, was sentenced in April for conspiracy and fraud after he fleeced investors of nearly a half-billion dollars by making it appear his hedge funds were profitable.

But Israel didn't show up at prison to start serving his sentence June 9. He left his SUV on a bridge over the Hudson River north of New York City with the words "suicide is painless"--the theme song for the "M.A.S.H." television show--scrawled on its dusty hood.

The financier, who was the subject of a national manhunt, surrendered Wednesday morning after riding his scooter to the Southwick, Mass., police station. He had called his sister-in-law and his mother, who contacted the U.S. Marshals Service.