Billionaire hedge-fund fraud and charter school patron gave $1M to Trump inaug

Steven Cohen, chairman and CEO of Point72 Asset Management, big Trump donor.

Scandal-ridden billionaire hedge-funder and charter-school bank-roller Steven A. Cohen is back in the news again. Turns out Cohen was among the million-dollar donors to the Trump inauguration, according to a federal filing. He wasn't the biggest donor. That honor belongs to right-wing creep Sheldon Adelson.

While he has been a big contributor to conservative super PACs like Chris Christie's America Leads, Cohen has also been a big backer of Dem. candidates, including Connecticut Gov. Malloy.

Cohen is not in jail. But he should be. Federal prosecutors in New York decided against criminally charging Cohen for fraud. Instead, they charged his investment firm (remember, corporations are people now) SAC Capital. SAC Capital pled guilty and paid a total of $1.8 billion in fines.

Cohen is one of the major underwriters of privately-run charter schools. The couple's Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation is a top donor to the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCAN), Achievement First, Families for Excellent Schools.

He has also given $40 million to support his six charter schools operating in the Bronx. The Cohen's are sponsors of the Amistad Academy in New Haven, which is described here as, "a charter school serving minority students...using chants, rewards, and consequences."

I'm not sure what it is about hedge-funders like Boykin Curry of Eagle Capital, Whitney Tilson of T2 Partners, David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital, Michael Novogratz of Fortress Investment Group, Carl Icahn and the rest that attracts them to the charter world. But I suspect it has more to do with free-market ideology than anything to do with teaching and learning.

According to the Hartford Courant:

Wall Street billionaires who have invested heavily in the expansion of charter schools contributed more than $200,000 to Democrats in the 2013-14 election cycle, helping Gov. Dannel P. Malloy secure re-election.

The campaign contributors earned their fortunes as hedge fund managers and private equity investors before earning reputations as "education philanthropists." They have helped bankroll charter school movements throughout the country, spending to influence elections and to support advocacy movements.

If you want to know more about Cohen, read New Yorker writer Sheelah Kolhatkar's book, Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street (Random House, 2017).

Elizabeth Warren calls SEC's approval of Cohen's firm 'a mockery'. Corrupt hedge-funder, charter supporter.

Hedge-funder Steve Cohen

“The commission has permitted a recidivist hedge fund manager, well-known for his former company’s willingness to evade and ignore federal law, to once again profit from – and potentially exploit – investors.” -- Sen. Elizabeth Warren

Whenever I read about some crooked hedge-fund billionaire mired in scandal, I always check to see if and how they're involved with charter schools. I rarely come up empty. 

Billionaire hedge-funder Steve Cohen is one of the major underwriters of privately-run charter schools. The couple's Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation is a top donor to the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCAN), Achievement First, Families for Excellent Schools Cohen, whose SAC Capital paid $1.2 billion in a security fraud case last year. 

The Guardian reports:

On Thursday, [Sen. Elizabeth Warren] sent a missive to Mary Jo White, SEC chair, telling her she was making “a mockery” of the regulator’s core mission.

Warren, a scourge of Wall Street, is disappointed with the agency’s decision to approve Stamford Harbor Capital to act as investment adviser to outside clients. The reason? The firm is associated with Steven Cohen, former manager of SAC Capital Advisors, who pleaded guilty to insider trading in 2013 and paid a record $1.8bn fine.

Turns out, Cohen indirectly owns Stamford Harbor Capital. He is to receive as much as 50% of client profits, but won’t have any supervisory role, according to Bloomberg.
“Steve Cohen owns the entity, but consistent with his January agreement with the SEC he will not supervise the activities of anyone working on its behalf,” Jonathan Gasthalter, a Stamford Harbor spokesman, told Bloomberg.

 “The commission has permitted a recidivist hedge fund manager, well-known for his former company’s willingness to evade and ignore federal law, to once again profit from – and potentially exploit – investors,” Warren wrote in her letter on Thursday. “This is an unacceptable outcome from the nation’s primary enforcer of securities laws, and it is the latest example of an SEC action that fails to appropriately punish guilty parties, deter future wrongdoings and protect investors.”

Why is the White House covering for Cohen? While he has been a big contributor to conservative super PACs like Chris Christie's America Leads, he's also a big backer of Dem. candidates, including Connecticut Gov. Malloy.

The Hartford Courant's Jenny Wilson reports:

Wall Street billionaires who have invested heavily in the expansion of charter schools contributed more than $200,000 to Democrats in the 2013-14 election cycle, helping Gov. Dannel P. Malloy secure re-election.

The campaign contributors earned their fortunes as hedge fund managers and private equity investors before earning reputations as "education philanthropists." They have helped bankroll charter school movements throughout the country, spending to influence elections and to support advocacy movements.

Major U.S. hedge fund managers are on pace this year to more than double the amount they gave in the 2012 election campaign, with independent fundraising groups backing Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton and Republican rival Ted Cruz receiving the most so far.

Bernie Sanders has eschewed donations from Wall Street. He has racked up a string of wins in early state nominating contests with attacks on Wall Street and calls for a more equitable distribution of the country's wealth.

How Wall St. billionaires built charter movement in Conn. Bought a governor.

Gov. Malloy speaks at charter rally paid for by hedge-funders

The recent pro-charter school rally in Hartford was organized by ConnCAN and Families for Excellent Schools — two of the top lobbying spenders this year. Tax filings and donor reports reveal that both groups receive funding from people who spent on Connecticut Democratic campaigns in the past election cycle. Also, Democrats for Education Reform, a pro-charter school political action committee primarily funded by hedge fund managers contributed heavily to the campaigns. 

Gov. Malloy’s insistence on increasing funding for charter schools has more than a dozen Democratic legislators questioning whether they can support the next state budget if it means their neighborhood public schools are flat-funded or cut.

Malloy's campaign is already under state investigation for misuse of campaign funds. The State Elections Enforcement Commission has issued subpoenas to the Democratic State Central Committee as it investigates the committee using money from a federal fund to pay for a mailer benefiting Gov. Dannel Malloy’s re-election race.

The Hartford Courant's Jenny Wilson reports:

Wall Street billionaires who have invested heavily in the expansion of charter schools contributed more than $200,000 to Democrats in the 2013-14 election cycle, helping Gov. Dannel P. Malloy secure re-election.

The campaign contributors earned their fortunes as hedge fund managers and private equity investors before earning reputations as "education philanthropists." They have helped bankroll charter school movements throughout the country, spending to influence elections and to support advocacy movements.

The campaign contributions last cycle came from board members at and top donors to pro-charter school groups such as the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCAN), Achievement First, Families for Excellent Schools and others that have spent nearly $800,000 lobbying the legislature this year.

Malloy pushes charter expansion in CN legislature.

They include hedge-funders and Wall Street-ers like:

•Jonathan Sackler, an investment manager from Greenwich, the founding chairman of ConnCAN, and an Achievement First Inc. board member. Sackler, his wife, and his mother and father gave a combined $91,000 to state Democrats last cycle in contributions to various party and political action committees.

•Greenwich hedge fund manager Stephen Mandel, the founder of Lone Pine Capital, and his wife gave a combined $40,000 to the state Democrats' federal account in the past election cycle. Mandel, a Teach for America board member, is a top donor to local and national charter school advocacy groups through his Lone Pine Foundation. The Lone Pine Foundation funds three public policy fellowships in Malloy's office; it also has awarded grants to Families for Excellent Schools.

•Alexandra Cohen gave $20,000 to state Democrats in the past cycle. Cohen is the wife of embattled hedge fund manager Steve Cohen, whose SAC Capital paid $1.2 billion in a security fraud case last year. The couple's Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation is a top donor to ConnCAN.

•Arthur Reimers, a former Goldman Sachs partner who is on the ConnCAN board of directors, gave $20,000 to the state Democrats' federal account.

•Another ConnCAN board member, Andrew Boas, gave Democrats $10,000 last year to the state Democratic account.

•Petra Real Estate CEO Andrew Stone, a board member at the Success Academy, a New York-based charter school management company, gave $10,000. The Success Academy has worked closely with Families for Excellent Schools; it closed all of its schools in New York earlier this year to bus students and parents to a rally.

•ConnCAN donor Mariana McCall, a trustee in the McCall-Kulak Foundation, gave Democrats $10,000.

Connecticut is not the only target of these lobbying efforts: Some of the same donors contributed to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's campaign prior to a record-expensive charter school lobbying push they helped fund in that state.

Billionaire hedge-funder and charter supporter Cohen tops Forbes 2013 scandal list

Cohen tops Forbes Scandal List

Net Worth: $9.4 billion

Nationality: American

Source of Wealth: SAC Capital Advisors (hedge fund)

What happened:  Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors in November pleaded guilty to insider trading violations while agreeing to pay a $1.2 billion penalty and to stop managing money for outside investors. The U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, described insider trading at SAC as “substantial, pervasive and on a scale without precedent in the history of hedge funds.” 

Back in July, I posted about scandal-ridden billionaire hedge-funder Stephen Cohen and revealed his ties to corporate reform and charter schools. I wrote then that Cohen and his wife Alexandria, turn out to be big players in the charter school world.

Through their tax-sheltered family foundation, they have given $35 million to "school choice" projects and more than $10 million over the last six years to Achievement First, Charter Network,as a way of pushing the development of  charter schools across Connecticut. Cohen, who strikes me as anything but a Robin Hood, is also on the board of the Robin Hood Foundation, which helped spawn Achievement First. He has also given $40 million to support his six charter schools operating in the Bronx.

Today, Cohen tops Forbes list of the biggest billionaire scandals of 2013. At least he's tops in his field, even if that field is fraud and insider trading.

As the old saying goes, “Where wealth accumulates, men decay.” Events of the past year bear this out. Never more so than in the case of Steven A. Cohen, the billionaire hedge fund chief who has been reduced to running nothing more than a family office. Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors pleaded guilty to insider trading violations in November while agreeing to pay a $1.2 billion penalty and to stop managing money for outside investors. The U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, described insider trading at SAC as “substantial, pervasive and on a scale without precedent in the history of hedge funds.”

Hedge-fund billionaire Cohen big player in charter schools. Fraud scandal could bring him down.

Whenever I read about some crooked hedge-fund billionaire mired in scandal, I always check to see if and how they're involved with charter schools. I rarely come up empty. The latest is possibly the biggest fish and the dirtiest one in the hedge-fund swamp.

Hedge-funder Steve Cohen

Steve Cohen, whose personal wealth is estimated at close to $10 billion, is the founder of the supposedly too-big- hedge fund,  SAC Capital Advisors. Cohen's firm, which once managed more than $15 billion in assets, is at the center of one of the biggest insider-trading fraud cases in history. Four employees have already been criminally charged with insider trading – two of whom have pleaded guilty. And an SAC affiliate has agreed to pay $615 million to settle SEC charges of insider trading.

Federal prosecutors have served grand jury subpoenas on Cohen and others at the firm seeking their testimony but Cohen took the 5th and refused to testify.

Cohen, who lives in Greenwich, Conn., is one of the highest profile figures in American finance and one of the world's richest men. He is among the handful of upper-tier hedge fund managers who pull in about $1 billion a year in compensation.

Now he faces possible fines and could be barred for life from managing investor funds.

According to NewsTime,

He's seen at least nine of his trusted associates charged or implicated in a rapidly metastasizing insider trading scandal, one that has cost his firm a record $616 million regulatory settlement and can be felt from hedge fund row on Connecticut's Gold Coast to Wall Street.

As I suspected, Cohen and his wife Alexandria, turn out to be big players in the charter school world. Through their tax-sheltered family foundation, they have given $35 million to "school choice" projects and more than $10 million over the last six years to Achievement First, Charter Network,as a way of pushing the development of  charter schools across Connecticut. Cohen, who strikes me as anything but a Robin Hood, is also on the board of the Robin Hood Foundation, which helped spawn Achievement First.

He has also given $40 million to support his six charter schools operating in the Bronx.

The Cohen's are sponsors of the Amistad Academy in New Haven, which is described here as, "a charter school serving minority students...using chants, rewards, and consequences."

I'm not sure what it is about hedge-funders like Boykin Curry of Eagle Capital, Whitney Tilson of T2 Partners, David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital, Michael Novogratz of Fortress Investment Group, Carl Icahn and the rest that attracts them to the charter world. But I suspect it has more to do with free-market ideology than anything to do with teaching and learning.