Ex-Commodities Dealer Gets 5-Year Prison Term : Finances: Mark R. Weinberg pleads guilty to four counts of grand theft in an investment scheme.

A former Beverly Hills commodities trader was sentenced Monday to five years in state prison and ordered to repay more than $75,000 to four victims who lost more than four times that amount in several schemes he operated.

Mark R. Weinberg, who once had close ties to powerful California Democrats, pleaded guilty to 11 felony fraud counts in Van Nuys Superior Court on March 17--exactly a year after a jury in the same courthouse convicted him in another case of defrauding clients of nearly $900,000.

Superior Court Judge John Fisher sentenced Weinberg, who, in an agreement with prosecutors, pleaded guilty to charges of bilking three investors and a securities firm of nearly $300,000.

Weinberg pleaded guilty to four counts of grand theft and seven counts of writing checks with insufficient funds from 1989 to 1991, Deputy Atty. Gen. Tricia Ann Bigelow said.

“It would have been nice to see a restitution order to fully compensate these victims, but I think Judge Fisher made the best decision in the interest of justice,� Bigelow said.

Weinberg was ordered to pay the investment firm of Bateman Eichler Hill Richards $46,188. He was also ordered to pay $10,000 each to three individuals who lost money in various schemes.

While one man actually lost only that amount, Bigelow said the remaining two lost about $240,000. Fisher could not order full restitution for this pair because the crimes were committed before 1990, and state law at that time limited restitution payments to $10,000. The prison term ordered today will run concurrently with an eight-year, eight-month sentence that Fisher ordered last year in the first case.

Bigelow said she agreed to the plea bargain because the maximum possible sentence that Weinberg could have received on both cases was 10 years.

The state attorney general’s office began prosecuting Weinberg after Fisher ruled that then-Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner could not handle the case because of his close relationship with Weinberg.

Weinberg contributed more than $200,000 to Reiner’s 1984 campaign, $84,000 to Mayor Tom Bradley’s campaign in 1985 and another $54,000 to U. S. Sen. Alan Cranston the same year.