A hedge fund manager in Beverly Hills, California, bilked investors out of about US$44 million while claiming annual returns of as much as 60 percent, US prosecutors said.
Bradley Ruderman, 46, was taken into custody on Friday morning after he surrendered to federal agents, US Attorney Thomas O’Brien said in a statement.
Ruderman, the founder and manager of Ruderman Capital Partners, faces as long as 20 years in prison if convicted of wire fraud, according to the statement.
The fund manager raised US$44.3 million over the past eight years from 22 investors, mostly family members, according to the statement. Ruderman sent a letter to the investors last month saying the funds were almost depleted, prosecutors said.
Ruderman spent US$8.7 million of the money on personal expenses, including two Porsches and US$5.2 million he lost in clandestine poker games, prosecutors said.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Ruderman on April 30 and got an emergency court order freezing his assets.
Ruderman falsely claimed that Lowell Milken, chairman of the Milken Family Foundation, and Oracle Corp chief executive officer Larry Ellison were investors in his funds, the SEC said.
He also made at least one Ponzi-like payment earlier this year when an investor sought to withdraw US$750,000 and Ruderman transferred funds raised from two new investors, the SEC said.
Ruderman was released on US$500,000 bail on Friday afternoon, FBI spokesman Laura Eimiller said in an e-mailed statement.
UK ARRESTS TWO
Meanwhile, Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) arrested two men on Friday in a probe into collapsed hedge fund Weavering Capital, which it said used swaps to artificially inflate its value.
The watchdog searched two houses in Kent and Surrey, and the two men, aged 43 and 45, were taken to a police station for questioning, it said.
An SFO spokesman declined to name the two, the first arrests of hedge fund managers in the UK since the start of the credit crisis. No further arrests were expected for the moment.
Liquidators to the Weavering Macro Fixed Income hedge fund were appointed in March after the firm told investors it had unearthed a large interest rate swap position where the counterparty was a firm related to Weavering.
The investigation is focused on the swaps, which “inflated the apparent net asset value of the Macro fund,” and were between the fund and a company registered in the British Virgin Islands, Weavering Capital Fund Limited, the SFO said.
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
RSS