Accountant who embezzled millions from ex-Chicago Blackhawks players is sentenced to 16 years

An Illinois accountant who embezzled millions of dollars from three ex-Chicago Blackhawks players, a trustee of the Art Institute of Chicago and a widow to pay for his lavish lifestyle has been sentenced to 16-and-a-half years in prison.  

Sultan Issa, 46, stole at least $72 million from his victims over seven years and used it to buy 25 properties, two private jets, four yachts, about 60 firearms, and watches and jewelry.

Issa forged signatures to gain control of assets and swindle millions from philanthropist and Art Institute trustee Roger L. Weston, 77, who is now suing his former personal accountant. 

His other victims, who have not been named in court records, include a widow from whom he stole $500,000 from her dead husband’s estate and three former NHL ice hockey stars.  

Issa, of Hinsdale, was sentenced Monday after pleading guilty to wire fraud charges back in January.  

US District Judge Andrea Wood described the extent of Issa’s deception ‘startling’ and said he had gained the ‘trust and affection’ of his victims before scamming them out of millions. 

The judge blasted Issa for his ‘greed’ saying the 46-year-old already had a nice home and family but just wanted ‘more and more toys.’

‘There doesn’t seem to have been any motive here except greed,’ Wood said Monday, at the culmination of the two-day hearing.

Issa said in a statement to the court he was ‘overwhelmingly ashamed’ and that he has been seeing a psychiatrist and taking medication for anxiety and depression.   

‘I just don’t recognize that man as myself,’ Issa said. 

‘I now recognize that I lost my soul. I lost all sense of respect and human decency.’

He said he had been working for more than a year to pay back his victims. 

Weston testified earlier this month that Issa was ‘evil’ and told how he stole from a trust fund set up to pay for his mother’s treatment for an ‘incapacitating illness’. 

‘If you steal from family and people who trust you the most, you are the worst kind of evil in the world,’ said Weston.  

In his plea agreement in January, Issa admitted to stealing $65 million from his numerous victims, but prosecutors believe the real figure stands at more than $72 million.  

Issa said he started embezzling from Weston’s family funds back in 2010 by forging signatures to gain control of assets and fraudulent documents to secure millions of dollars in loans. 

He also admitted to regularly lying to the wealthy businessman about the status of the family’s assets and manipulating the books to make it appear investments were paying off in the scheme that went on until October 2017. 

The accountant also admitted that Weston, who has a museum wing named after him, was not his only victim and that he stole millions from several other individual investors over the seven-year period. 

Most of the accountant’s victims were not named in court records but were identified as a widow who trusted him to invest some of her dead husband’s estate and the three ex-Blackhawks players.

Prosecutors accuse Issa of swindling $500,000 from the widow in April 2016, knowing she ‘was unusually vulnerable due to the recent loss of her husband’. 

Several sources have named the NHL players as Marian Hossa, Bryan Bickell and Tomas Kopecky, reported the Chicago Tribune.

It is not clear how or when the scam began with the sports stars but Issa had links to the team through his charity foundation and was pictured with Hoss and Bickel at a food drive at his now-closed Lamborghini dealership Global Luxury Imports, the Tribune reported. 

Issa bought 25 residential properties in Illinois, Montana, Michigan and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, with his victims’ money.

He also spent $15 million to pay expenses for Global Luxury Imports – which once housed the bulletproof 1979 Rolls-Royce Princess Diana and Prince Charles used in Washington DC in the 1980s. 

Weston is suing Issa for $100 million in damages.