Owned Home On Charter Ridge Road—

Man Of Mystery: Investors No Match For NYU Undergrad

 By John Christoffersen and Matt Apuzzo

Associated Press Writers

GREENWICH — Hakan Yalincak arrived in this center of high finance wearing khakis, needing a haircut, and carrying his financial records in a plastic grocery bag. Before long, court documents show, the college student was persuading sophisticated investors to invest millions in his offshore hedge fund.

Yalincak was supposed to celebrate his graduation from New York University this month, but instead he’ll face a bail hearing in a $43 million bank fraud case.

His arrest has veteran investors wondering how the 21-year-old persuaded portfolio managers to open their wallets last summer in a town where outsiders are typically met with suspicion.

For those who knew him, the answer lies in his brilliance and his upbringing.

“Everybody concluded this kid was a genius. He had an answer for everything,” said movie producer Paul Ardaji, who rented space to Yalincak but went unpaid for months.

When Yalincak looked disheveled, Ardaji said Yalincak explained that he was up late at night monitoring foreign markets. When investors weren’t getting paid, Yalincak told them he needed an audit before he could wire the money, according to federal court documents.

His answers masked a history of family fraud. Though Ardaji said the Yalincaks introduced themselves as Turkish royalty, they actually came from blue-collar Bristol and his mother had served jail time.

“He was a shy, quiet kid,” said Christopher Clouet, former principal of Bristol Central High School.

But even as a teenager, Yalincak showed signs of what was to come.

Classmates remember him as eccentric, wearing a winter coat year-round. When teased, he didn’t pick a fight or run away. Friends said he threatened to sue.

An honor student, he was once accused of offering a teacher a gold watch in hopes of a good grade, though Clouet would not discuss details of the matter.

He raised $5,000 for earthquake victims in his native Turkey and wrote a fundraising guide for students, Clouet said.

But his family remained a mystery. When Yalincak landed an interview at Dartmouth, they didn’t show up, said Sharon Passig, a parent of a high school classmate.

“I know he wanted to do big things,” Passig said. “I know he wanted to go to a good school.”

He told classmates and a reporter in a 2000 interview that his parents had immigrated to the United States in 1995. But phone and residential listings before that show his family living in Indiana, where his mother was jailed for posing as a doctor in 1995.

Yalincak’s mother, Ayferafet, has been named in at least seven civil cases accusing her of breaching contracts. His father, Omer Bulent Yalincak, is also named in several lawsuits and though he uses the title doctor, his son’s attorneys say they’re unsure what his degree is in.

The family moved frequently, buying a house in Newtown on Charter Ridge Road in the summer of 2000 and mortgaging it until the debts exceeded the value, court records show. When sued by creditors, the Yalincaks never showed up for court and their house was ordered foreclosed, records show.

Ardaji said Yalincak regularly arrived at work in a chauffeured Lincoln but his mother drove a Honda. She incorporated a mortgage business in Greenwich and began looking for investors to start a bank, said Brian Desrosier, a computer store owner who said he attended a meeting she set up.

Yalincak and his mother set up their investment office under the name Yasam Trading, which supposedly had 1,200 employees and offices in Istanbul, London, and Hong Kong, according to the company’s now-defunct website.

They furnished it with mahogany desks and plush chairs upholstered in silk, ordered computers, hired temporary workers, and shuttled investors into the conference room, Ardaji recalled.

“He’s extraordinarily persuasive,” said attorney James Pickerstein, who represents Matthew Thomas, a trader who partnered with Yalincak and is now being sued by investors who say they lost their money. “I think everyone who met him would describe him as being a very talented and skilled trader of very sophisticated financial instruments.”

Yalincak’s fund attracted at least $2.8 million from two respected hedge fund investors who later sued, saying they couldn’t get their money. In court records, they said at least some of the money was spent on Tiffany jewelry and a Porsche.

And some of the money allegedly went to New York University as part of the initial $1.25 million installment on the family’s $21 million donation pledge. In a town that cherishes privacy, investors were hesitant to pry into the Yalincaks’ past and the NYU donation was reassuring.

“I think that opened a lot of doors for them, that they were such heavy hitters,” said Desrosier, a business owner the Yalincaks courted.

Yalincak was arrested last week after FBI and postal inspectors say he passed tens of millions of dollars in fraudulent checks between banks in Greenwich and Switzerland.

Now Yalincak sits in a prison cell, still a mystery to even his attorneys. One lawyer, Michael Sherman, said Yalincak was a math graduate student. Another, Robert Chan, said he was in law school.

NYU officials say they are now trying to determine exactly who they accepted $1.25 million from. As for Yalincak, he is a history major.