A banker's anecdote how Jacob Wohl tried to swindle $25 million from a bank with a forged letter.

[DetlefK]

Twitter-thread

Link to tweet

My little Jacob Wohl story: August 2016, we're sitting around the trading turrets at my office on a bored to tears slow day. Our receptionist said someone was here for his 2pm appointment. None of us had an appointment on schedule. Who is it? we ask? Some guy named Jacob Wohl 1/

Jacob Wohl, for those out of loop, gained quite a bit of notoriety for becoming the youngest guy to ever get himself barred for life from the financial industry. Now he's waiting in our lobby to pitch something. We're a large merchant bank. 2/

Send him in, we said. In walks young Jacob asking to be seeded with $25mm to start a new hedge fund in exchange for an ownership stake in it. Oh, & he needs an office. And a Bloomberg station. And needs to borrow staff until he can hire some guys. And he needs a leased car... 3/

And he needs an answer today. Right now. Because there's a competing offer from Izzy Englander's firm Millenium (we know those guys well). We fight the urge to literally start laughing, but do ask him...hey, you the same guy who got banned by regulators? He didn't even flinch 4/

He went on about that being untrue & handed over a letter he said was from his lawyer who had confirmed he was not barred, had been vindicated but it 'just wasn't in the system yet at the SEC, CFTC'...whatever that means. 5/

One of my colleagues politely told Jacob that we don't usually do seed deals & when we do it's only after someone works here as a PM for a few years, so no. Take the deal with Izzy, kid. We ended the meeting right there. 6/

The attorney letter was on obviously forged letterhead for Davis Polk (including a wrong address). Less than an hour later we get a call from someone we know at Millenium asking who the hell this kid using our name to get a meeting is. We had a laugh. Hey, the kid tried. /fin

[Vinca]

1. It's clear Jacob didn't take Trump's "How To Scam Bankers" course.

[malaise]

2. The club of MAGACons

Lock him up.

[SWBTATTReg]

3. He will be locked up ... looks like he tried pulling a stunt on Mueller and of course, ...

this feeble attempt fell flat on its face.

Mueller, with the reputation that he has (FBI), should prosecute to the fullest extent of the law Jacob's attempts to interfere with an ongoing FBI investigation.

Well, at least the guy's mother probably will be glad her son will finally be out of the basement.

[uponit7771]

4. If Whol was brown skinned and 18 and doing this he'd be thrown under the jail and never heard from

[dalton99a]

8. Without a doubt.

[Baitball Blogger]

5. Next evolution of the warped political-business dirty tricks.

I've thought of this for some time. Those my age, (old), know what integrity looks like, so those my age who rely on appearances to game the system know what they're supposed to imitate.

But the young have no clue. They can only mimic what the last generation of cons did, without realizing where they give themselves away.

That young man needs to go to prison, where he'll probably round out his education.

[Blue_Tires]

6. LOL

Link to tweet

[blitzen]

7. Kick.... (Wohl is a professional con man--a bad one, but still...) n/t

[Quiet_Dem_Mom]

9. Puh-lease. Cassie Chadwick won this fraud scheme years ago!

to the ladies @ Stuff You Missed in History Class podcast!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassie_Chadwick

Following her marriage to Dr. Chadwick in 1897, Chadwick began her largest, most successful con game: that of establishing herself as Andrew Carnegie's daughter. During a visit to New York City, she asked one of her husband's acquaintances, a lawyer named Dillon, to take her to the home of Andrew Carnegie. In reality, she just visited his housekeeper ostensibly trying to check credentials. When she came back, she dropped a paper. Dillon took it up and noticed it was a promissory note for $2 million with Carnegie's signature. When Dillon promised to keep her secret, she "revealed" that she was Carnegie's illegitimate child. Carnegie was supposedly so wracked with guilt that he showered huge amounts of money on her. She also claimed that there was $7 million in promissory notes tucked away in her Cleveland home, and she was to inherit $400 million upon Carnegie's death. Dillon arranged a safe deposit box for her document.

This information leaked to the financial markets in northern Ohio, and banks began to offer their services. For the next eight years she used this fake background to obtain loans that eventually totalled between $10 and $20 million.[6] She correctly guessed that no one would ask Carnegie about an illegitimate daughter for fear of embarrassing him. Also, the loans came with usurious interest rates, so high in fact, that the bankers wouldn't admit to granting them. She forged securities in Carnegie's name for further proof. Bankers assumed that Carnegie would vouch for any debts, and that they would be fully repaid once Carnegie died.