The integrity of online investigator service checkfundmanager.com has been pulled into question over its wrongful depiction of former fund mangers Seth Tobias and Gad Grieve. The site’s founder and CEO is listed as Guy Simonian, a former internet entrepreneur and self-styled investigator who found his niche in digging up dirt on Wall Street traders. However to crack an obituary on Simonian’s “Wall of Shame†you don’t need a criminal record or to have violated any laws.
Both Seth Tobias and Gad Grieve, who have no history of any criminal violations, are depicted by Guy Simonian and his website as having perpetuated fraud. Grieve was accused by the SEC in a civil filing of numerous misrepresentations and regulatory violations in 2009. However what Simonian and his website don’t say is that the civil filing was never served on Grieve, a legal prerequisite for establishing a claim on someone and which goes beyond “knowledge” of the filing. Secondly, the associate companies Finvest Asset Management LLC et al., who were served with the precise claims as in the Grieve action, filed a motion to defend the action. The SEC declined to litigate the matter. Ultimately, regulators did succeed in obtaining a default judgement against Grieve, using procedural shortcuts that are highly questionable and in all probability invalid.
A senior manager who worked at Finvest Asset Management, said that the firm had previously used Check Fund Manager to conduct background checks on external fund managers. “Their work was shoddy and their information unreliable,†he added. “They were fired, as they just didn’t make the cut.â€
Simonian and his company use news on the web to promote business and clearly, unsubstantiated allegations or hearsay also counts. The website Check Fund Manager, lists a string of fund managers, many who have been found guilty of a felony and fraud, boasting that it helped its clients avoid the fraud.
The website states that beyond the “professional misrepresentations, Grieve’s life was fraught with drama as well.†The site suggests that Grieve was involved in a custody battle in which he tried to remove a child from the custody of his ex-wife. What the website omits is that the child was removed from Gad Grieve’s custody through a habeas corpus, inked in the court of corrupt Judge Gerald Garson. Advocates of Justice, Agudath Israel and reputed attorney Nat Lewin tried in vain to undo the travesty which Garson had perpetrated, even before the judge was ultimately indicted and jailed. Any child who is removed from either a father or a mother, hardly constitutes a “Happy Endingâ€, as the website suggests.
A Wall Street trader who knew Grieve, said that to try paint the guy as dishonest, you have to be pretty desperate. “His fund may have lost money, but he was straight as an arrow.â€
The late Seth Tobias, a general partner of Circle T. Partners is also listed on Simionian’s website. Although any claim that Simionian was convicted of a crime is absent, the website lucidly portrays him as someone who was active in “drug-fueled binges with gay porn stars.†A senior hedge fund researcher on Wall Street said, “the lengths that people will go to bring people to their website, boggles the mind. But hey, sex sells. How convenient is that? Tobias is dead, so he’s not around to verify or deny the claims.â€
Several managers of investment firms in New York said they did not use Check Fund Manager, but declined to give reasons. The checkfundmanager.com website is marked as “not secure†on Google Chrome and does not have a security certificate.
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