This teddy bear-loving crook apparently doesn’t have any warm and fuzzy feelings for his former business partner.
Paul Greenwood — who used stolen money to amass the world’s largest collection of Steiff plush toys — pleaded guilty this morning to conspiracy and fraud charges and agreed to testify against his hedge-fund cohort, Stephen Walsh.
Greenwood admitted looting “in excess of $75 million” from institutional investors scammed by the pair’s WG Trading Co. beginning in 1996.
He told Manhattan federal Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum he blew the dough on “a house, a horse farm and antiques,” that he has since surrendered to the feds.
“Did you have any doubt that what you were doing was a crime?” Cedarbaum asked.
“No,” Greenwood answered.
Greenwood and Walsh — who were part owners of the New York Islanders hockey team during the 1990s — were busted last year for running what a securities regulator termed “an egregious fraud of immense proportions.”
Greenwood, who at the time of his arrest was the Republican town supervisor of North Salem in Westchester, today described the scam as “sort of” a Ponzi scheme.
He said he and Walsh lost a bundle on a bad investment, then tried to catch up with risky financial maneuvering that didn’t pan out.
“As time went on the hole got bigger and bigger,” he told the judge.
All the while, Greenwood admitted loaning himself money from the firm to pay for a lavish lifestyle that included spending more than $3 million on nearly 1,350 antique German teddy bears.
Walsh’s lawyer, Glenn Colton, said his client “looks forward to his day in court,” but declined to comment further.