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By Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press Writer | May 6, 2005
NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- A New York University student deposited $43 million in bogus cashier's checks and shuffled them between accounts in Switzerland and Greenwich to stay ahead of the bankers, federal prosecutors said Friday.
Hakan Yalincak, 21, whose parents are major university benefactors, was arrested for bank fraud. He also faces civil charges that he charmed Connecticut investors into sinking $2.8 million into a nonexistent hedge fund and spent the money on luxury items and university donations.
He wept in court as U.S. Magistrate Judge Joan G. Margolis ordered him jailed until a detention hearing Thursday.
"I have a graduation on Wednesday," Yalincak said.
Yalincak, a senior mathematics student whose parents donated $21 million to NYU last year, deposited millions in fake certified checks, according to an indictment unsealed Friday.
At one point, he had $25 million in Greenwich and nearly $18 million in Switzerland, prosecutors said. None of the money was real.
In March, he tried to withdraw $1.7 million, prosecutors said, but by then the banks had discovered the counterfeit checks. When told that his balance had been frozen, Yalincak tried to close an account and collect $2.5 million, prosecutors said.
His arrest completed the monthslong unraveling of a number of complicated business deals that Yalincak, a Turkish citizen, participated in, records show. Two Connecticut investors are suing him, saying he charmed them into believing he managed a hedge fund.
Though the investors received statements showing the fund was growing, they said that when they tried to pull their money out, they couldn't.
"He's a smart kid. He has some gift in investing and people had confidence in him," said attorney Robert Chan, who represents Yalincak in the civil case. "The fund shows good returns, assuming it's all real."
But court documents say Yalincak and his partner spent the money. One person involved in the case, speaking on condition of anonymity because many of the documents are sealed, said bank records show a Porsche was purchased with some of the money.
The fund, Daedalus Capital Relative Value Fund I, is not publicly traded. Chan said much of its assets are in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. He said the case is being settled and the investors will receive their money back.
A spokesman for NYU said the university has received $1.25 million of the Yalincak family's $21 million donation. He said the school was reviewing the donations and any money that was improperly donated would be returned.
FBI agents searched the family's Pound Ridge, N.Y., home Friday afternoon.
Yalincak's mother wept throughout the hearing.
"Instead of going to her son's graduation in New York, she's going to be visiting her son at Wyatt" detention center in Rhode Island, defense attorney Eugene Riccio said.
NYU news releases list Yalincak's first name as Hagan, though his indictment identifies him as Hakan. The university also named a faculty seat after Yalincak's parents: The Dr. Omer Bulent Yalincak and Ayferafet Yalincak Professorship of Ottoman Studies.
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