Anson Funds Update – Wire Fraud Charges & Money Leaving the Fund

Important Reading:

I: Anson Funds Full Lawsuit Files Revealing Their Criminal Business Practices (Court docs)
II: All Documents of email between Hindenburg Research and Anson Funds – Securities Fraud
III: Canntrust Fraud and Manipulation – Whatsapp Conversations (Court docs)
IV: Andrew Left & Anson Funds – How Two Crooks Conned Investors out of Billions
V: Anson Funds Throwing Everyone Under the Bus & Moez Kassam Charity Con
VI: Genius Brands – The Story Anson Funds Doesn’t Want you to Read
VII: Anson Funds and the Great Con
VIII: Moez Kassam & Anson Funds: The Big Secret

Anson Funds and Moez Kassam in particular have had a terrible March. The pressure from the DoJ is increasing and Moez and Anson are rolling on everyone. (This is from a source within Anson Funds)

What we know is that the Anson Funds case is being handled by the California division of the DoJ that specialize in racketeering charges.

We also know that Moez is heading along to see this department in the DoJ on Monday 31^st March – we imagine to rat a few more people out.

The same source tells us that Moez has been caught dead to rights on multiple charges of wire fraud and a myriad of other charges. It is apparently so egregious and of such a scale that Anson will be unable to fight the charges as authorities have text messages, Slack conversations, Whatsapp messages, Bloomberg chats, etc…

Moez was incredibly sloppy and arrogant in his dealings and left a mountain of evidence for authorities as we saw in the Canntrust messages that we covered in a previous piece.

Jail!

Moez will be going to jail. As things currently stand, he is looking at 20 years behind bars, and so is making a desperate final push to roll over on people and that this will reduce his sentence to 18 months (we hear that’s the rather ambitious goal; 5-7 years is more likely).

In order to accomplish this, he has to give up some big fish–and who is bigger than the banks and brokerages? With that in mind, Moez is currently putting together files and is planning to hand the banks to the DoJ on a platter. These negotiations have been going on for over 12 months and have not been going well, which is why Moez is desperate to give them someone big.

We imagine TD Bank tops the list, with yet another scandal soon coming that way.

But it’s not just the banks. Moez is rolling on everyone, as we mentioned in a previous post. Anyone who has had shady dealings or any sort of tie-in to any Moez’s DoJ-targeted activities should be in full preparation mode. It’s time to run for cover.

Moez is also doing a whirlwind donation tour, gifting tens of millions to various charities (all tax write offs) in an effort to boost his public image and show that he is in fact a lovely person and not a grubby white collar criminal who has destroyed tens of billions of dollars of value in the markets and stripped away the savings of hundreds of thousands of retail investors.

Whether the snitching and the charitable donations will make a difference will become clear soon enough. We are doubtful, as our inside source believes he will be seeing the inside of a jail cell fairly soon. The next 6-9 months are crucial for Moez. What happens during this period will dictate how much time he actually gets.

The other problem for Moez is that as a Canadian citizen he will not be going to a club Fed facility. There are restrictions for non U.S. people and he will most likely end up in a medium security facility. Not a place for a tubby little hedge fund manager at all.

This means that Anson Funds is finished. 

Word is spreading on the street about these developments and legitimate assets are leaving the fund like rats abandoning a burning ship.

At the end of Q1 2024, the Fund had $1,544,514,000
At the end of Q4 2024, the main Fund had $991,227,000.

We have been told that there have been some big withdrawals over the past few months, with a number of big accounts pulling their money and the fund losing a large mandate, and as such, we expect this number to fall further.

In fact, soon, the only money left in the fund will be that of Kassam himself. The other partners and the dirty money that is now trapped. It can’t run for the exit because there is now so much scrutiny on the fund and every move they make.

Legitimate investors cannot be associated with them any more following the charges and the growing number of scandals.

With money now bleeding from the fund, Anson will have trouble paying its monstrous legal bills, which we hear are well north of $5 million a quarter.

Note to Anson Funds lawyers: Make sure you get paid up front!

Moez Greatest Fear: Paying all of the money back

Legal Expenses will have to be paid back to the LP’s.

As we mentioned above, Moez is getting the fund to spend a fortune on legal fees on both the criminal/regulatory side of things and also with respect to multiple civil lawsuits that are growing in number.

He needs the investigations and charges to go away, and he needs the noise generated from the civil lawsuits to be turned down exponentially (and also this website). Why? Because if the fund is criminally charged, as the key person controlling the Fund and directing the staff, not only will he be going to jail, but he could also be forced to pay back all gains made not only to the authorities in fines but also to unitholders and the LPs who could sue him for their funding of his legal fees that were spent trying to defend his criminal behavior.

The level of expenses he has been running up on the Fund’s tab is phenomenal. These funds aren’t coming out of management fees, and the unitholders who are footing the bill will seek retribution and recompense. If the unitholders are smart, they will sue Kassam personally to recoup the funds for themselves.

The LP’s have little choice if they are run correctly. If you are an institutional investor, you’re not going to bear the cost of these lawsuits that defended criminal activity, which would constitute a failure to fulfill their fiduciary duty to the institution. They will be duty bound to recover it from Anson/Moez.

This applies to both the regulatory and civil lawsuits and it’s why Kassam is fighting so hard throwing everything the fund has into these legal battles.

Ill Gotten Gains clawed back

We imagine that Moez’s greatest fear is this: When the criminal charges are brought down, the Fund will be shuttered, huge fines will be paid, and all illegally obtained gains will probably be clawed back, as happened with Madoff.

Old unitholders that had money in Anson Funds and made gains from these improper actions could be contacted by the authorities, who may demand they pay the gains back.

They might fight it, but that is unlikely. Who wants to get into a fight with the DoJ  and be named a co-conspirator in a criminal fraud case? No one. They will all give the money back.

The same will be true with the charities to which he has been so vocal about giving. He will have breached the agreements he has in place with them, and his name will be removed from the hospitals and schools to which he and Marissa have donated. These institutions cannot be associated with money gained from illicit actions. The issue is whether the charities will have to give back the money, and typically they will in such cases.

These clients would then have every right to sue Anson Funds or Moez directly for the fraudulent activities and the fees/losses they incurred.

Asset-Tracing and Seizure

Every Dollar that Moez paid himself from the fund can be traced and pulled back, even if he put it in his wife’s name or he bought a house or a restaurant. Regardless, the regulators and LPs can pull it back.

They can even go after assets abroad, so his little pile he has building in Dubai could also be seized.

This is potentially the most dangerous thing for Moez. It would cripple him financially, and all of his illegal activities will have been for nought.

This is also terrible for Anson Funds employees.

Any employees involved in any of the transactions deemed to have been improper by the funds (and awarded bonuses for it), will be forced to talk and will be subject to criminal prosecution, depending on how much they knew.

Sunny Puri is going down, for starters. Amin Nathoo, Tony Moore, Taheer Datoo and Laura Salvatori are going down, too. They cannot hide from what is coming, and there is sheer panic amongst them about what the future will bring.

Is Andrew Left turning against Anson Funds?

This wouldn’t be a surprise to us as he has probably learned by now that Moez gave him up. Left had held strong until the end, telling numerous people that Moez would never betray him. He was wrong, and is likely just now realizing this.

This may be one of the reasons why Left put out a Tweet on Gorilla Technologies, claiming they are issuing false statements.

It just so happens that Anson Funds is the largest institutional holder of Gorilla Technologies, owning 600,000 shares of the company (3.25%).

That’s it for this piece. Just a short update. But we have another longer piece coming out in 2 weeks time.