Marc Dreier Assets Itemized: Over $400 Million Taken From Investors
The New York Law Journal reports today on a list of Marc Dreier’s assets compiled by Mark Pomerantz, the receiver appointed by the court to “locate, recover and safeguard” whatever Dreier and his firm had left out of the $400 million allegedly taken from investors.
Dreier was the single equity partner in the now-defunct Dreier LLP, a situation that, as the ABA Journal observantly opined, posed some risk for the other 249 lawyers in that firm. One such risk: the single equity partner may be a crook. Dreier is charged with defrauding investors by selling them more than $700 million in bogus real-estate and pension-plan notes.
I had assumed that Dreier intended to use any profits from this scheme solely for the public good, but it appears that he treated himself to a few items as well. According to Pomerantz, who has been combing through documents and interviewing former employees of the firm, Dreier and/or his LLP owned, in addition to the expected attorney trust account and other bank accounts:
• 
more than 300 works of art allegedly worth nearly $39 million;
• a Manhattan apartment bought in 2007 for $10.4 million (but probably now worth a lot less);
• three homes worth in the neighborhood of $15 million;
• a 37-meter yacht worth more than than all the homes put together ($18 million), which has five cabins and is “luxuriously equipped with flat-screen televisions and a wine collection”;
• five cars, including an Aston Martin DB9;
• $1.2 million in “home furnishings”;
• two watches valued at $11,000 (combined, presumably, unless they are nuclear-powered);
• and law firm accounts receivables and work-in-progress from Dreier LLP.
Don’t get too excited about that last item, as the value of “work-in-progress from Dreier LLP” has likely declined somewhat.
Nor is the value of the artwork entirely clear which shows an etching of a chair with a hole in it and a bronze sculpture vaguely resembling Ziggy. On the plus side, though, the sculpture appears to depict a person putting up his hands while being robbed, which seems appropriate for something found in Marc Dreier’s office.
[via loweringthebar and newyorklawjournal]
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