Subject: FW: Third Point
From: "Arlene Busch" <[email-masked]>
To: "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>, "Eric Schwerin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2012 13:01:43 -0400

FYI

Arlene Busch

202-333-1880

[email-masked]

Hell Hath No Fury Like a RICO Action: Racketeering Charges Filed in Hedge
Fund Divorce

How angry an ex would you have to be to file racketeering charges against
your spouse?

That’s a question *Elizabeth Bingham-Perry* could answer. The Scarsdale
resident filed a civil RICO action against her husband *Jeffrey Perry *in
the U.S. Southern District’s Westchester courthouse last week.

Mr. Perry, it so happens, is an executive at Third Point LLC, the hedge
fund founded by *Dan Loeb*.

In the complaint<http://dockets.justia.com/docket/new-york/nysdce/7:2012cv05294/398980/>,
Ms. Bingham-Perry alleges that Mr. Perry lied on net worth statements
submitted by mail in the divorce proceedings, concealing assets in excess
of $1 million in offshore and other accounts. That’s just the start. Mr.
Perry’s entire career, his wife alleges, “has been marked by repeated
criminal activity in his quest to amass his fortune,” a claim she rests on
Mr. Perry’s alleged participation in a scheme to drive down the share price
of a Canadian company called Fairfax Financial.

Which is a pretty nasty thing to say about your husband of 23 years, and a
crude but potentially useful cudgel for hammering out a settlement.

A little background: RICO is the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations
Act, passed by Congress in 1970 to allow the government to prosecute mafia
godfathers for crimes committed by their organizations, but written broadly
enough to apply to any person who uses an enterprise to engage in a
continuous pattern of criminal activity.

“You see it a lot in divorce cases,” said Jeffrey Grell<http://ricoact.com/>,
a lawyer at Grell & Feist who teaches a course on civil RICO at the
University of Minnesota School of Law and has represented plaintiffs and
defendants in civil racketeering charges. “Particularly when there have
been efforts by one spouse to fraudulently conceal assets from the other.”

Indeed, Ms. Bingham-Perry isn’t the first hedge fund wife to play this hand.

In 2009, Patricia Cohen brought a civil RICO suit against SAC Capital
founder and longtime ex *Steven A. Cohen*. A judge dismissed the case in
March 2011, though it’s currently under
appeal<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-22/sac-s-cohen-hid-5-5-million-from-ex-wife-lawyer-says-in-lawsuit-appeal.html>
.

Coincidentally, attorney *Howard W. Foster*, who’s listed on Ms.
Bingham-Perry’s complaint as a *pro hac *vice counsel, also represented Ms.
Cohen.

The first half of Ms. Bingham-Perry’s complaint is fairly straightforward.
She says that Mr. Perry used “U.S. mails and wires to perpetuate frauds and
enrich himself in the divorce actions,” wiring assets into secret accounts
after hiring a divorce lawyer in 2005, then intentionally omitting those
assets in documents mailed to Ms. Bingham-Perry and the New York State
Supreme Court last year.

Whether the plaintiff’s counsel—*Clifford James*, who once sued the Andy
Warhol Foundation on behalf of the Velvet Underground—can convince a judge
that the Mr. Perry’s alleged actions support a civil RICO case is no sure
thing, but there are clear incentives to filing claims like this one:
Plaintiffs are entitled to three times the damages, plus lawyer’s fees, in
civil RICO suits.

“I sometimes like to challenge my students with the question, ‘Is it
professional malpractice *not *to characterize a claim as civil RICO?’”
Sara Sun Beale, a law professor at Duke University, told *The
Observer,*referring to the outsized damages available. “If nothing
else, it moves the
settlement needle closer to the plaintiffs.”

Arlene Busch

312-498-9595

[email-masked]