A New York-based financial advisor was sentenced to more than eight years in prison after he pleaded guilty last year to stealing from his firm's clients, Bloomberg reports.

Matthew Weitzman, a former principal of AFW Asset Management, was also ordered to pay $7.1 million in forfeiture in addition to a 97-month jail term, according to a statement from US attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan. Weitzman, who lives in Armonk, New York, pleaded guilty in October to investment advisory fraud, wire fraud and securities fraud.

Weitzman was a co-founder of AFW, which had more than $190 million in assets under management at the end of 2008, and has offices in Purchase, New York, and Natick, Massachusetts, according to the US attorney's statement. Eight unidentified victims complained funds were missing from their accounts, prosecutors said last year.

“I was disappointed the judge imposed a sentence of the length that she did,” Weitzman's lawyer, Marc Mukasey, told Bloomberg. “I thought that the work Mr. Weitzman had begun to do to repay his victims was laudable and deserving of credit.”

Weitzman will report to prison in August, Mukasey said.