Wall Street investor Hwang, once worth billions, arrested

NEW YORK – The owner of a New York-based hedge fund that collapsed when it defaulted on margin calls was arrested Wednesday on charges alleging he defrauded leading global investment banks and brokerages of billions of dollars.

The charges unsealed in an indictment in Manhattan federal court named Bill Hwang, the founder of Archegos Capital Management, and his former chief financial officer, Patrick Halligan. Prosecutors allege Hwang told the banks and brokerages lies so his private investment firm could grow its portfolio from $10 billion to $160 billion.

Both men entered not guilty pleas to racketeering conspiracy and fraud charges through their lawyers at an arraignment. Hwang was freed on $100 million bail while Halligan was freed on $1 million bail.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said at a news conference that the scheme “nearly jeopardized our financial system.”

“But last year, the music stopped. The bubble burst. The prices dropped. And when they did, billions of dollars of capital evaporated nearly overnight,” he said.

Williams said Archegos head trader Scott Becker, 38, of Goshen, New York, and William Tomita, 38, of Greenwich, Connecticut, the firm’s chief risk officer, pleaded guilty last week in connection with their participation in the conspiracy and are cooperating with the government.

The prosecutor said the defendants lied to banks to get billions of dollars that they used to inflate the stock price of publicly traded companies.

“The lies fed the inflation and the inflation led to more lies,” he said. “Round and round it went.”

Williams said that at one point, Hwang and his firm secretly controlled over 50% of the shares of ViacomCBS.

Hwang, 58, of Tenafly, New Jersey, carried out the fraud from March 2020 to March 2021 by originally investing his personal fortune, which grew from $1.5 billion to over $35 billion, and later the investments he borrowed from major banks and brokerages, which grew from about $10 billion to over $160 billion, the indictment said.

He hid the extent of his market prowess from investors by using derivative securities that had no public disclosure requirement, it said.