NEW YORK: A Pakistani-origin New York City hedge fund manager has been arrested on $1 million cash bail for allegedly stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from investors.
According to a Securities and Exchange Commission complaint, Moazzam “Mark” Malik’s alleged victims include at least 16 investors and date as far back as 2011. A former New York City police department traffic agent, Malik has also been charged by New York City Attorney General Eric Schneiderman with stealing as much as $250,000 from five investors under his jurisdiction.
USA Today reports that 33-year-old Malik, who hails from Lahore, used such manipulative tactics as lying to a national news outlet to attract clients. In March of 2011, a Bloomberg report identified him as a rising fund manager based on data he provided claiming he had a 92.73 percent return investment. In one particular instance, Malik claimed his American Bridge Investment Group had $100 million in assets under management with offices at 40 Wall Street in downtown Manhattan.
But Wall Street Journal, citing New York prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission, said Malik was a fraud. He only raised a fraction of the amounts he said he did, never made any real investments and used the money to pay for a lavish lifestyle, the Journal quoted them as saying. The SEC accuses him of stealing more than $700,000 from investors.
