Two Westchester felons who were convicted for their participation in the Premium Point Investments securities fraud have consented to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sanctions.
Amin Majidi, 56, of Armonk, and Ashish Dole, 39, of White Plains, may no longer associate with any investment advisers or securities organizations, according to SEC administrative proceedings filed on April 14.
Both men, according to documents in criminal and civil actions brought against them, cooperated with the government investigation and testified at trial against their co-workers.
Premium Point Investments was a Manhattan hedge fund that invested in mortgage-backed securities. At its peak, PPI managed more than $5 billion in assets.
From 2014 to 2016, company officials and employees inflated the value of assets by more than $100 million. The scheme made PPI appear to be more successful than its competitors and enabled the firm to charge higher management and performance fees.
When the market weakened in 2015, the phony performance numbers helped the hedge fund forestall redemptions.
The scheme began to unravel when its auditor spotted irregularities and told the firm that it had to restate the values of its funds.
The firm’s founder, Anilesh “Neil” Ahuja of New Rochelle, and a trader, Jeremy Shor, of Manhattan, were convicted of securities fraud after a six-week trial in 2019 and sentenced to prison for several years.
They appealed the verdict and also asked the court to dismiss their indictments or order a new trial, arguing that prosecutors had withheld key evidence. The judge ordered a new trial, the men pled guilty to securities fraud and they were sentenced to time served.
Ahuja has paid more than $18 million in restitution to victims of his fraud.
Majidi, who was the chief risk officer and later a portfolio manager, pled guilty in 2018 to four counts of securities and wire fraud. He was sentenced to time served.
He was born in Tehran and his family emigrated from Iran when he was 12.
He admitted helping Ahuja set up fraudulent performance targets, according to a sentencing letter his attorney submitted last year. He attributed his motivation in part to the desire to live a good life. He made about $1 million in most years and as much as $4 million.
Why did I stay at PPI?, he asked in a letter to the judge. “Except for the pressure on pricing, it was an ideal job for me. … I loved what I did.”
But now he is unemployable in the financial industry, his attorney stated, and as a convicted felon virtually unemployable in any industry.
Dole, who served as a risk manager and trader, pled guilty to securities fraud and was sentenced last November to time served, no supervised release and no restitution.
He was born in India and was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 2017. His attorney described him in a sentencing memorandum as an “eager and ambitious young immigrant … on the path of realizing the American Dream.”
He got mixed up with Ahuja, Majidi and Shor as a “naively loyal employee who followed orders.”
Dole recognized as early as 2014 that PPI was toxic, according to the memo, and tried without success to find a new job. And when he alerted superiors to the pricing scheme, he was “consistently brushed aside.”
In 2016 he knew he was being investigated and began helping the government before anyone had been charged.
Dole was making from $245,000 to more than $400,000 a year, according to the sentencing memo, but felt pressure to support himself and his wife’s medical school training.
He did not profit from the scheme in the way his co-workers profited, the memo states. He profited only by not getting fired for continuing to do his part.
