The founder of Archegos Capital Management, a hedge fund, was sentenced Wednesday to 18 years in prison for securities fraud and market manipulation in a scheme that prosecutors said bilked global investment banks of billions. Dollars lost.
Bill Hwang was sentenced to prison in Manhattan federal court when he told Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein that he felt “really terrible about what happened in Arkigos,” three years ago. Indicates the death of
The judge did not complete the sentencing hearing, though, and said it would resume Thursday. But he said he had “declared” the prison term he was imposing.
Hellerstein estimated that nine financial institutions lost more than $9 billion to fraud.
At Huang’s July trial, prosecutors accused Huang and his co-conspirators of artificially inflating the values of about a dozen stocks before the investments collapsed in March 2021, allowing him to $100 billion in market value was wiped out with the company created by
Huang was convicted in July of 10 criminal counts, but was acquitted of one charge of market manipulation while convicted of six others.
Prosecutors said Huang lied to banks to get billions of dollars to grow his New York-based investment firm, before growing his portfolio from $10 billion to $160 billion.
At the opening of Huang’s trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexandra Rothman told jurors that Huang was already a billionaire when he tried to “become a legend on Wall Street” by trading stock derivatives that It involved the construction of unusually large positions in secret. Only a few companies.
According to an indictment, the investing public was unaware that Archegos had come to dominate the trading and stock ownership of several companies because it used securities that did not require public disclosure. For example, prosecutors said, Huang and his firm once secretly controlled more than 50 percent of the shares of ViacomCBS.
However, risky moves left the firm’s portfolio of a handful of stocks vulnerable to price volatility.
In late March 2021, margin calls wiped out more than $100 billion in market value in just days, the indictment said.
