Two-Timers Gets Sacked Thanks To Hedge Funds

Michael Lair has been charged basically with talking out of both sides of his mouth, and it took a top hedge fund to shut it.

Michael Lair has been charged basically with talking out of both sides of his mouth, and it took a top hedge fund to shut it. The New York Law Journal reports that Steve Cohen’s SAC Capital got Lair sacked when it became apparent to the firm that he was trying to capitalize by peddling information to both sides of a bitter battle between the hedge fund and Biovail, the Canadian pharmaceutical. SAC and a host of other hedge funds are staring at a multibillion-dollar suit by Biovail, which charges them with engaging in activity to drive down share price. According to the Law Journal, citing a complaint filed in the case, Lair, president of Montana-based consumerdefense.com – which investigates consumer companies and conducts fraud research -- approached the New York-based law firm of Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman, which represents Biovail, earlier this year, purportedly to hand over some interesting information about SAC. Lair, according to Kasowitz attorney Michael Bowe, received around $5,000 – reportedly to cover his travel expenses – but did not deliver on the promised information, nor did the law firm ask him for any, and after that stopped contact with him. Then it was SAC’s turn, as Lair got in touch with its lawyers, telling them and he would share with them – for $50,000 – the “illegal and unethical investigative techniques” he used for digging up dirt on the hedge fund and its staff. The complaint, according to the New York Post, states that Lair doctored an e-mail form lawyers at Kasowitz Benson to make it appear someone at the firm was requesting illegal activity. It was after that incident, that SAC called the U.S. Attorneys office and the feds started monitoring the Lair-SAC communications and then closed in to get their man. This isn’t the only alleged instance of playing both sides against each other. The Law Journal says he allegedly performed the same act involving a large insurance company, identified by sources as AIG, and its former chairman, Maurice Greenberg.