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A prominent futures-industry executive was sentenced to 50 years in prison on Thursday for embezzling from his clients and defrauding banks over nearly two decades.

Russell Wasendorf Sr., the chief executive of the now-defunct futures brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group, stole more than $215 million from his customers, prosecutors say.

The financial fraud was centered in the unlikely locale of Cedar Falls, Iowa, a small Midwestern town where Mr. Wasendorf ran Peregrine. Federal authorities discovered the crime last summer after local police there found Mr. Wasendorf unconscious in his car in the company parking lot. He had tried to kill himself, and left a detailed suicide note explaining his crimes.

Judge Linda Reade of United States District Court in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, ignored requests for leniency and agreed with the government, which had requested a 50-year sentence.

For nearly two decades, Mr. Wasendorf forged false account statements from U.S. Bank to steal millions of dollars from his customers at Peregrine, which also did business as PFGBest. Mr. Wasendorf insisted that he acted alone, keeping his scheme from his roughly 240 employees. He said that he was able to hide his fraud by being the only P.F.G. employee with access to the firm's customer accounts held at the bank, and then forging the statements before delivering them to customers.

"With careful concealment and blunt authority, I was able to hide my fraud from others at P.F.G.," he wrote in his suicide note.

Coming on the heels of the collapse of MF Global, a commodities and futures brokerage firm where about $1 billion in client money went missing, the Peregrine fraud raised new questions about oversight failures in the futures industry.

Futures brokerage firms like Peregrine match buyers and sellers of contracts for commodities, charging a small commission for the service.

Peregrine's clients – and Mr. Wasendorf's victims – included everyone from speculators betting on the price of orange juice to farmers who use such contracts to protect themselves from large price fluctuations.

Mr. Wasendorf was a celebrity in Cedar Falls. He started his business there in the late 1960s after graduating from the University of Northern Iowa. Mr. Wasendorf eventually moved his business to Chicago, the epicenter of the futures industry, but in 2009 returned to Cedar Falls, building a gleaming new headquarters there. He also owned one of the most popular restaurants in town.

The Peregrine fraud recalled the Ponzi scheme perpetrated by Bernard L. Madoff, the former New York money manager now serving a 150-year prison sentence. In interviews, Mr. Madoff has said that he began his fraud after investment performance soured and he couldn't admit defeat. Mr. Wasendorf, in his confession, expressed a similar sentiment, noting that he began to steal from his clients when his business slowed and he could not gain access to additional funding to run his firm.

"I was forced into a difficult decision: Should I go out of business or should I cheat?," he wrote. "I guess my ego was too big to admit failure. So I cheated."