January 8, 2015, New York (HedgeCo.Net)— The Securities and Exchange Commission has announced charges against three fund managers and their New York-based firm accused of secretly diverting investor money for their own benefit to prop up a fledgling side business.<\/p>\n
The SEC Enforcement Division alleges that VERO Capital Management\u2019s president Robert Geiger, general counsel George Barbaresi, and chief financial officer Steven Downey managed a pair of funds whose offering documents indicated they would aim to achieve attractive returns by investing primarily in mortgage-backed securities.\u00a0 After deciding to wind down the funds, instead of returning all of the cash to investors as the funds liquidated their investments, the three officers diverted $4.4 million by causing the funds to make undocumented \u201cbridge loans\u201d to an affiliated company purportedly in the risk management business.<\/p>\n
The Enforcement Division alleges that VERO Capital and the officers never disclosed to investors or the funds\u2019 director that they were making unauthorized loans to their other company out of investor funds.\u00a0 In fact, in one instance they even lied to the funds\u2019 custodial bank to withdraw $800,000 from the funds\u2019 bank account to divert to the other company.<\/p>\n
\u201cVERO Capital and its officers allegedly misled their investors about the funds\u2019 investment activities and funneled money to their side project while winding down the funds,\u201d said Andrew M. Calamari, Director of the SEC\u2019s New York Regional Office.<\/p>\n
According to the order instituting an administrative proceeding against VERO Capital, Geiger, Barbaresi, and Downey, the SEC Enforcement Division additionally alleges that although VERO Capital had custody of client assets, the firm failed to have the funds audited by independent auditors for 2012 or 2013.\u00a0 The firm also failed to arrange for a surprise examination to be performed as required.<\/p>\n
The SEC Enforcement Division further alleges that VERO Capital and the three officers caused the funds to purchase three notes worth a total of $7 million from an affiliate of the firm, which constituted principal transactions that require written notice to a client as well as the client\u2019s consent before completing the transaction.\u00a0 However, they allegedly made no efforts to provide the required notice to the funds or obtain the required consents for these three transactions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
January 8, 2015, New York (HedgeCo.Net)— The Securities and Exchange Commission has announced charges against three fund managers and their New York-based firm accused of secretly diverting investor money for their own benefit to prop up a fledgling side business. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hedgeco-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45733"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45738,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45733\/revisions\/45738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}