US Hedge Fund Manager Arrested

Albert Hu of Asenqua Capital Management in Silicon Valley was arrested in Hong Kong. Hu is alleged to have stolen $5 million or more from investors. Albert Hu faces six counts of wire fraud charges for an investment fraud scheme involving hedge funds he administered from 2002 to 2008, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

According to the FBI, "Hu's materially false statements regarding his hedge funds and their affiliated entities caused victim-investors to wire substantial amounts to entities under his control."

Though the amount of money at stake is 1/10,000 of what Bernard Madoff allegedlyy took from investors, some of the promises were similar. Alber Hu allegedly promised investors steady returns of 20-30%.



Albert is also a Partner at Asenqua Ventures, a VC firm.

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Sam Israel's Girlfriend Pleads Guilty to Aiding and Abetting

Debra Ryan, girlfriend of former hedge fund manager Sam Israel, plead guilty to "aiding and abetting Samuel Israel III's failure to surrender to serve his sentence on June 8, 2008", according to the US Attorney's office.

Israel was supposed to serve 20 years in prison, beginning in June of 2008, for his role in defrauding investors in the Bayou Management funds. Rather than turn himself in, Israel allegedly faked his own suicide, and then fled to avoid incarceration.

Background

$440 million The alleged money under management for Bayou.

$101 million Money frozen by State of Arizona believed to be remaining assets of Bayou Management LLC.

The action also states that in the spring of 2004 Bayou began a series of transactions which involved transferring large sums of money to numerous banks. The private placement programs promised above average rates of return, as much as 100% per week. These transactions are what initiated the Arizona investigation.

The CFTC filed fraud charges against Bayou, its principals and Richmond-Fairfield, citing much of the same evidence as the Federal court in charging Bayou. In addition the CFTC points out that Marino, CFO for Bayou, was listed as the registered agent of Richmond Fairfield from Oct. 10, 2000 to April 29, 2003 and is identified as the member/manager of Richmond-Fairfield in New York State records on those with professional licenses. It also notes that Israel was listed as the registrant of the Richmond-Fairfield Web site and the e-mail address provided to the Web sites domain registry was bayoufund@aol.com

Fairfield Greenwich Group Profited from Madoff Scheme?

Fairfield Greenwich Group Makes More than $500 Million from Madoff Fund
Investors channeled to Bernard Madoff by hedge fund, Fairfield Greenwich Group, will likely lose the entirity of their $7.6 billion in investments and Fairfield Greenwich's directors probably lost $60 million of thier own funds in the scheme. However, Fairfield Greenwich may have made more than $600 million in management fees from those same unfortunate investors, the Financial Times reported today.

Estimates of the size of the losses from Madoff's ponzi scheme are between $30 billion and $50 billion. The SEC admits receiving a variety of warnings about Madoff including a 2005 report entitled "The World's Larges Hedge Fund is a Fraud."

Madoff's firm is formerly know as Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities "BLM"