An Ivy League-educated former executive at a New York investment bank was arrested on Monday on charges he tried to defraud investors of more than US$95 million as he led what a prosecutor called a “shameful charade” to cover his tracks.
Prosecutors said Andrew Caspersen, 39, got away with only US$25 million. He was charged in Manhattan federal court with securities and wire fraud after his Saturday arrest. He is accused of scamming clients of PJT Partners Inc into investing millions of dollars in sham private equity investments from July through March. After an initial court appearance, he was released on US$5 million bail.
Dan Levy, a lawyer for Caspersen, declined comment outside court.
Caspersen has homes in New York City and suburban Bronxville, New York. He is the son of Finn M.W. Caspersen, a prominent philanthropist and former chief executive of the financial services firm Beneficial Corp. The elder Caspersen was found dead in 2009 of what authorities said was a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
PJT Partners released a statement saying it was “stunned and outraged” to discover the fraud while Caspersen was a partner in its Park Hill Group.
It said it referred the matter to federal prosecutors after learning facts suggesting improper behavior.
“To advance his US$95 million fraud scheme, Caspersen allegedly put on a shameful charade — creating fake e-mail addresses, setting up misleading domain names and inventing fictional financiers,” US Attorney Preet Bharara said in a press statement. “When confronted by a suspicious client who had invested US$25 million, Caspersen had no good answers.”
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also filed civil charges against Caspersen, seeking a return of ill-gotten gains with interest and monetary penalties. It said that after graduating from Princeton University in 1999 and Harvard Law School in 2002, Caspersen was a principal at a private equity firm in London, before he became a managing principal in January 2013 at the New York firm.
“As alleged, Caspersen engaged in a brazen fraud by raising money under false pretenses and simply stealing the funds,” said Andrew Calamari, director of the SEC’s New York Regional Office. “This action amply demonstrates that even sophisticated institutional investors are not immune to financial scams.”
Caspersen could face up to 40 years in prison.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the