Quotes From New York Times Article on Dreier

Using little more than his position, poise and a kind of reckless bravado, he cajoled his way into accounting, real estate and pension fund offices where he had no real business, according to a criminal complaint unsealed on Monday.

Once there, seated in conference rooms that lent credibility to his charade, he peddled forged promissory notes — utterly worthless paper — linked in some way to his unwitting hosts, the complaint said. He backed up his claims with phony financial statements and bogus audit opinions from a reputable accounting firm, correspondence on the stationery of the New York real estate developer who supposedly issued the debt, and the help of a few confederates, the government said in court papers.
With these tools and little more, he allegedly took hedge fund executives for $100 million in one instance alone, money that the authorities say remains unaccounted for.
Mr. Dreier, 58, is charged with stealing $113 million since October, according to the complaint, although the case is continuing and a spokesman for the acting United States attorney in Manhattan, Lev. L. Dassin, whose office investigated the matter, would not say whether other alleged frauds are under scrutiny.
Indeed, Mr. Dreier was working on getting an additional $33 million last Tuesday, according to the complaint, when that scheme unraveled in a bizarre tableau played out in the offices of a Toronto pension fund, court records and officials said.
He was arrested in Canada and held by local authorities for several days on relatively minor charges. But the disclosure of that arrest eventually sent the law firm, Dreier L.L.P., reeling, and as details of the strange doings there began dribbling out, it became apparent he was also under investigation by federal authorities in Manhattan.
Suddenly, the law firm could not make its payroll, people there said; the Christmas party at the Waldorf-Astoria was canceled; the firm lacked the ability to pay the rent at its Park Avenue offices (once occupied by Bloomberg L.P.); lawyers started packing up; and what had once been a lucrative law practice — a conglomeration of several separate firms — began to collapse.
On Monday afternoon, a United States magistrate judge, Douglas F. Eaton, ordered Mr. Dreier detained until a bail hearing on Thursday. However, because the Securities and Exchange Commission has sought to freeze his assets and those of Dreier L.L.P. in a parallel civil action, it is unclear how he might post bond.
Mr. Dreier’s efforts to enrich himself apparently did not end with his arrest, according to authorities. In a hearing on the S.E.C. action, which immediately followed the arraignment, a lawyer for the commission told Judge Miriam G. Cedarbaum of Federal District Court that Mr. Dreier “did attempt and may have transferred assets” while he was jailed in Canada last week. But the lawyer, Nancy Brown, would not elaborate.
Raymond J. Lohier and Jonathan R. Streeter, the assistant United States attorneys who are prosecuting the criminal case, and Mr. Dreier’s lawyer, Gerald L. Shargel, said little during the arraignment that preceded Judge Cedarbaum’s hearing.
Afterward, Mr. Shargel noted, “This is a very complicated matter — the facts are beyond reach of a sound bite.”
Outside the courtroom, when reporters asked whether Mark F. Pomerantz, the receiver expected to be appointed to oversee Dreier L.L.P.’s finances, would also run the law firm, Mr. Shargel alluded to the swift departure of some members of the firm.
“The lawyers have apparently manned the lifeboats,” he said. “Given the reaction of the partners, I don’t think there is any law firm to run,” he said.