University | 8:39 pm | April 10, 2012 | By Tapley Stephenson

Mazzuto ’70 sentenced in stock fraud case

John Mazzuto's '70 donation to Yale's baseball program was made with stock that his former company now says was illegally issued.
John Mazzuto's '70 donation to Yale's baseball program was made with stock that his former company now says was illegally issued. Photo by Sean Fraga.

John Mazzuto ’70 — the former CEO of automotive chemical company Industrial Enterprises of America, Inc. and a Yale donor — was sentenced to between 1.5 and 4.5 years in prison Tuesday.

The former CEO was part of a $60 million stock fraud scheme, a portion of which was used to make a $1.7 million donation to the Yale baseball program in 2007. According to the Associated Press, Mazzuto entered a secret guilty plea in January 2011 to cooperate with authorities and testify against IEAM’s financial chief, James Margulies. Marguiles was sentenced to seven to 21 years.

“I committed a crime,” Mazzuto said. “It affected everybody around me. Family, friends, colleagues, all that’s been destroyed, and that’s hard.”

Per a January 2011 agreement with IEAM, Yale paid Mazzuto’s former company a $1 million settlement.

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