Mario Gabelli of Gamco Investors has settled his civil case over allegedly setting up “sham” companies in order to win cellular phone licenses offered only to small companies by the Federal Communications Commission. Terms of the settlement in the 5-year-old case brought under the federal False Claims Act have not been disclosed. And, although Gabelli’s firm was not a defendant in the suit, it may suffer from the fallout by association. Rachel Barnard of Morningstar told Bloomberg News that “All of Gamco is predicated on Mario Gabelli’s personality, persona and reputation. These settlements help in the sense that its gets him out of the news, but in terms of reputation, the damage cannot be undone.”
