A recent article on alleged con man Karl Hahn caught our eye for two key reasons. First, it's yet another cautionary tale of a friend swindling another friend out of a whole lot of money. We saw this not long ago in the case of major league pitcher, Barry Zito. In this particular case, the victim was a Silicon Valley legend named Chase Bailey, formerly a chief scientist for Cisco Systems, serial startup entrepreneur, actor and filmmaker. Bailey and Hahn became friends while Hahn, a former financial adviser, was working for Deutsche Bank. Hahn began the alleged con by selling Bailey very expensive life insurance policies, then proceeded to fleece Bailey out of millions of dollars through a series of what appear to be completely false and fraudulent coastal real estate deals. Some friend. Unfortunately, by the time Bailey caught on to Hahn, the alleged con man had already filed for bankruptcy, making it extremely unlikely Bailey and his legal team will be able to recover the $10.5M judgment from Hahn personally (in a colorful wrinkle, Hahn now finds himself working at Home Depot). However, and this is the second key reason we wanted to share this article:
"Also linked to the case are three of Hahn's former employers: Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank and Oppenheimer. All denied "vicarious liability" for, and negligent supervision of Hahn, but according to FINRA records, they all reached unspecified settlements before a FINRA hearing commenced."
As this quote indicates, in cases where it may prove difficult to recover from a rogue broker like Hahn, we at The Green Firm have found that through extensive investigation, we are often able to expose the broker's employers by showing that they knew or should have known about this type of gross misconduct and yet they did nothing to protect their clients.
If you or someone you know has the been the victim of investment fraud or broker misconduct, please contact us immediately to discuss your legal rights.