David and Antoinette Bolden have been sentenced to 200 hours of community service each for lying to the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA) about their company finances.Chief Justice Richard Ground told the husband and wife, who used to run an array of financial services firms: “It will mark the wrongness of what you did; it will constitute public denunciation of your conduct; and I hope it will bring home to you the error of your ways. It will also offer you a real opportunity to atone in a meaningful way.”The Boldens stood trial at Supreme Court earlier this summer accused of stealing $272,000 from an exempt company they part-owned called Emerald Capital International and laundering the stolen funds. They were found not guilty of those charges.The jury found them guilty, however, of misleading the BMA over the financial position of their Emerald Financial Group of companies, which was licensed by the regulator.The Boldens made what the jury deemed to be false claims to the regulator between September 28 and October 28, 2008, in answer to BMA inquiries about the Emerald Group’s liquidity and capitalisation.The case centred around a letter to the BMA where the Boldens stated they had $500,000 in unencumbered funds available to them, when that was not true.The Official Receiver was called in, in summer 2009, after the Bermuda Monetary Authority took enforcement action to begin winding up the Emerald Group of Companies.The maximum sentence they could have been handed was four years in jail, a $100,000 fine, or both. Prosecutor Susan Mulligan had urged the judge to jail the pair, who continue to deny their guilt and are planning an appeal.