|  | | 2009 News and Press Releases | | |
HEADLINE NEWS:
Marc Dreier’s Crime of Destiny
Bryan Burrough
Vanity Fair. October 1, 2009
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EXCERPT: […] His name is Marc Dreier, he is 59 years old, and his life is over. A smallish, tightly wound man with red, stubbled cheeks and a silvery pompadour, Dreier was once a hotshot New York litigator with multi-millionaire clients. Then he stole $380 million from a bunch of hedge funds, got caught, and was arrested in Toronto under bizarre circumstances, having attempted to impersonate a Canadian pension-fund lawyer as part of a scheme to sell bogus securities to the big American hedge fund Fortress Investment Group. Now, as he wanders into the living room rubbing sleep from his eyes, Dreier is waiting for the judge to tell him just how many years he will spend in prison. As he takes a seat across from me, he is wearing a loose-fitting black sweater and black jeans. And then, in the lifeless monotone of a death-row inmate, Marc Dreier begins to tell his story. Maybe you remember the Dreier case. Or maybe you don’t, given that just five days after Dreier’s arrest, last December, federal authorities announced the discovery of the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history and the detention of its mastermind, Bernard Madoff; ironically, you can just glimpse a corner of Madoff’s 53rd Street headquarters from Dreier’s kitchen windows. Once the Madoff scandal hit, Dreier all but vanished from the headlines. If he’s remembered today, it’s probably for the details of his arrest, the sheer audacity of impersonating that Toronto attorney inside the man’s own offices. The Canadian incident turned out to be the tip of one very dirty iceberg. Re-arrested upon his return to La Guardia Airport, Dreier was revealed to have defrauded more than a dozen hedge funds, not counting the $45 million or so he stole from his own clients’ escrow accounts. His 270-lawyer Park Avenue firm, Dreier L.L.P., imploded practically overnight. |
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