(c) 2009 F. Bruce Abel
This article on Marc Dreier is the story of the century, not Madoff's.
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2009/11/marc-dreier200911?currentPage=1
Showing posts with label dreier. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dreier. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Monday, October 5, 2009
Dreier on 60 Minutes Last Night
(c) 2009 F. Bruce Abel
I found the 60 Minute segment on Dreier fascinating and generally agreed with the following author in the WSJ this morning:
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/10/05/postgaming-marc-dreiers-performance-on-60-minutes/
I found the quote of the judge to be questionable -- that Dreier was the sharpest lawyer who appeared before him.
I found the 60 Minute segment on Dreier fascinating and generally agreed with the following author in the WSJ this morning:
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/10/05/postgaming-marc-dreiers-performance-on-60-minutes/
I found the quote of the judge to be questionable -- that Dreier was the sharpest lawyer who appeared before him.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Monday, December 15, 2008
Madoff and Dreier -- Time to Get Out Your Auchincloss
F. Bruce Abel
(c) 2008
We now start to hear about the lawyers who were a part in the derivatives scam. After all a derivative is nothing but a piece of paper between two parties. I can "sell" you a $1 billion derivative. Even though I would not be a thinkable counterparty.
Get out your Auchincloss novels. Or, type in "Auchincloss" for searching on this blog. Or click on that label below to accumulate the same material.
I, a lawyer, grew up at the tail-end of the WASP era, when lawyering was viewed as a public service by the wealthy on Park Avenue and the upper East Side, and a White-shoe lawyer would never, never cheat, lie or steal, and would be from a well-connected family of the east coast. Or so I thought.
Get the made-for-TV movie "Love Letters" and see beautiful writing of this era.
To get a taste for a midwestern example of that type of lawyer growing up, living and working as a lawyer in Cincinnati, Ohio, call Sam Allen of Glendale, Ohio.
(c) 2008
We now start to hear about the lawyers who were a part in the derivatives scam. After all a derivative is nothing but a piece of paper between two parties. I can "sell" you a $1 billion derivative. Even though I would not be a thinkable counterparty.
Get out your Auchincloss novels. Or, type in "Auchincloss" for searching on this blog. Or click on that label below to accumulate the same material.
I, a lawyer, grew up at the tail-end of the WASP era, when lawyering was viewed as a public service by the wealthy on Park Avenue and the upper East Side, and a White-shoe lawyer would never, never cheat, lie or steal, and would be from a well-connected family of the east coast. Or so I thought.
Get the made-for-TV movie "Love Letters" and see beautiful writing of this era.
To get a taste for a midwestern example of that type of lawyer growing up, living and working as a lawyer in Cincinnati, Ohio, call Sam Allen of Glendale, Ohio.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
More From Dreier Article
Mr. Dreier’s résumé included high-level stints at Rosenman & Colin and at Fulbright & Jaworski, where he was head of the litigation department. His credentials and his no-nonsense demeanor helped him attract talent to his legal firm.
He has a triplex apartment on the East Side of Manhattan, along with a house near the beach in Southampton, N.Y., and a 120-foot yacht. The walls of his Park Avenue office drip with expensive modern art, and he kept three personal assistants busy.
The criminal complaint, sworn out by James J. Otten, an investigator with the U.S. attorney’s office, tells a remarkable story of hubris.
The seven-page document, which was filed under seal on Thursday and made public on Monday, details three schemes and charges Mr. Dreier with one count each of wire fraud and securities fraud.
In one scheme, it says, Mr. Dreier sought to sell a total of $146 million worth of bogus promissory notes that he created using the name of a real estate firm, unnamed in the complaint. He convinced a receptionist at the Manhattan offices of the firm (which people involved in the matter said was Solow Realty, a firm that had in the past retained Mr. Dreier) that the firm’s chief executive had authorized him and three other people to use a conference room for a meeting with the executive.
In fact, the chief executive had not scheduled such a meeting. But he later saw Mr. Dreier conducting a meeting in Solow’s conference room, where he was negotiating to sell the notes.
At some point in the investigation, according to the complaint, a cooperating witness secretly recorded Mr. Dreier admitting that he had “participated in the fabrication” of certain financial statements that he was to give to a hedge fund. On the tapes, the government contends, Mr. Dreier “further stated that he was ‘ashamed’ of his role in fabricating the documents and that it was “very serious what’s happened here.’ ”
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.
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.
More Dreier! Best Story of the Decade
I'm a lawyer but this should have massive and general appeal.
It turns out his was not a "prominent" law firm, but a creation of advertising in some way.
And the fraud trail begins with his partners and years ago. Stay tuned.
This fits in with the story of the rogue traders. Everybody was psyching everybody else and committing billions based on face only. Now the litigation begins over trying to unwind everything.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/12/08/doj-files-criminal-complaint-against-marc-dreier-others-sue/
It turns out his was not a "prominent" law firm, but a creation of advertising in some way.
And the fraud trail begins with his partners and years ago. Stay tuned.
This fits in with the story of the rogue traders. Everybody was psyching everybody else and committing billions based on face only. Now the litigation begins over trying to unwind everything.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/12/08/doj-files-criminal-complaint-against-marc-dreier-others-sue/
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