Ponzi schemer gets sentenced knocked down to 310 years from 330 years

The Tenth Circuit today has largely affirmed, through this opinion, the convictions and sentences of white-collar offenders Norman Schmidt and Charles Lewis, who together conducted a Ponzi scheme through a number of investment companies and caused investor losses of more than $40 million. For sentencing fans, the most notable aspect of the Tenth Circuit ruling involves this determination concerning Schmidt's sentencing appeal:

The district court properly calculated Schmidt’s guidelines sentencing range and he has not overcome the presumption of reasonableness of his within-guidelines 330-year sentence (which is reduced to 310 years by our setting aside his convictions on four counts).

I suspect that Schmidt won't be too eager to celebrate the fact that his projected release date has now been moved up from the early fall of 2291 to the early fall of 2271. Indeed, because Schmidt is in his mid 70s, I would wager he won't end up serving even one-tenth of his new sentence. Just leave it to a white-collar scoundal to find a technicality like life expectany to ensure he never has to serve the bulk of his (apparently reasonable) prison sentence.