HEDGE-FUND HOTTIE By CHRISTOPHER BYRON
September 4, 2003 -- According to a Redmond, Wash., hospital nurse named Sandy Hedin, the newest mystery financier in the hedge-fund spotlight - Boston moneyman Treyton L. Thomas - carried on a torrid two-year love affair with her when she was but an under-age junior high-schooler on a U.S. Naval base in Kenitra, Morocco, in the 1970s.
Hedin says Thomas was serving as a Marine Corps enlisted man at the base at the time.
A decade later, Thomas' first employer in civilian life - Donald Rembert of Falls Church, Va. - reports that the young man turned up at the center of a bizarre case of mistaken identity, travelling internationally for a year and a half in the early 1980s on a U.S. passport, seemingly unaware that it that listed his sex as female.
Such was the career track into business for the self-styled head of a $600 million Boston hedge-fund empire called the Pembridge Group, on which the Securities and Exchange Commission is focusing.
Both Thomas and Pembridge are in the SEC's sights as it widens its probe of hedge-fund fraud.
Others in the Thomas affair include a stock promoter named Altaf Nazerali, and the former head of counter-terrorism for the FBI, Oliver ("Buck") Revell, who now serves as the chairman of a Nazerali-controlled Vancouver penny-stock company called Imagis Technologies Inc.
Hedge-fund angst is spreading throughout every level of government, as regulators, law enforcement officials and media outlets alike either rush to grab the shirttails of this suddenly popular issue, or to sound off on themes they've been warning about all along.
In Miami, the closely read newsletter Offshore Alert reported unearthing a New Jersey-based hedge fund - Cornell Capital Partners - that has brought investors running with more than 10.5 percent annualized returns from investing in a portfolio of penny stocks noted for their "massive losses, going concern warnings, related-party transactions, name changes, reverse mergers, stock splits and litigation."
One Cornell holding, World Wireless Communications, is also a major holding of New York's Lancer Fund, which was closed by the SEC in July on charges of massive market rigging and fraud.
Last week, Lancer's founder, Michael Lauer, returned from a sudden visit to Poland to petition a federal court in Miami to free up $93,000 per month in "living expenses" of his impounded net worth of $114 million, so that he can defend himself as he faces multiplying legal problems.
In the Thomas matter, as first reported by The Post last week, the Boston Enforcement Division of the SEC has now also become involved, subpoenaing Thomas' personal trading records after questions were raised regarding a proposal that Thomas put forth in March of last year in the name of his Pembridge Group.
The proposal: to acquire Vancouver-based Imagis Technologies Inc. for $90 million in cash, or nearly 100 percent over the prevailing market price.
Imagis' chairman, Revell, has claimed that Thomas was thoroughly vetted and judged to be an appropriate addition to the company's board of directors, where he assumed a seat in July 2002.
Thomas himself was arrested (though not convicted) in 1984 on felony fugitive charges in Georgia.
In June 2001, the Bloomberg LP removed its only two terminals in Thomas' apartment and ended its contract with him for failing to pay $12,000 in overdue bills.
Phone calls seeking comment from Thomas went unreturned. |
