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75 year old investor, Arthur G. Nadel, disappears
75 year old hedge fund manager, Arthur G. Nadel, has disappeared, along with his investors’ money. The exact amount of money that he has, allegedly, swindled is unclear, however, it is expected to be quite an exorbitant amount of money as the Sarasota Police Dept. has already received calls from at least seven investors, some claiming they have lost upwards of $700,000. One investor said that the hedge fund was worth as much as $350 million.
Police might not have been so quick to cry foul play had they not found his green Subaru in an airport parking lot with a note that revealing how “distraught” he was. He was reported missing by his family this past Wednesday.
This comes as quite a surprise to many people throughout the community.
“Sarasota is a good sized place, but it’s actually a very small community of people,” police Capt. Bill Spitler said. “Obviously we have white collar crime. But very few places have anything of this magnitude.”
Those who knew Nadel continue to describe him as a modest, unsuspecting guy.
“He didn’t appear to be extravagant,” said Bill Warner, a resident who knows a few of Nadel’s investors. “That’s why I think people trusted him.”
He worked under the name of Scoop Management Inc., in a small office on Main Street. Police are still unclear as to exactly how the fund worked, however did confirm that every claim that they have received has been for a loss of at least 6 figures.
“The alleged perpetrator and victims in this case were all philanthropists,” continued Spitler. “They knew each other. They had a strong bond. And for our community, I don’t care even if it’s a big city … this is a lot of money.”
As details on the case are revealed, it will be interesting to see exactly what was going on in Nadel’s mind. Is this another Ponzi-scheme gone bad – ala Bernard Madoff/Joseph Forte etc. – or was Nadel legitimately trading people’s money? If the first scenario is proven to be true, then we can understand why he would have decided to take the money and run, so to speak. But if he really was trading, and reaping the great profits that were reported, why would he flee? The only possibility I can assume, would be that he had taken great losses over this past quarter and rather than bring the bad news back to his investors, he decided to simply quit while he was a head. Regardless, as I said at the end of an earlier article, with a weak market and timid trading/traders, it can all but be expected that cases like this will continue to emerge.
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If it weren’t for the Madoff case, this case would be back page news.