<table><tr><th>From:</th><th>Richard Kahn</th></tr><tr><td>Sent:</td><td>Monday, February 6, 2017 4:11 PM</td></tr><tr><td>To:</td><td>Jeffrey Epstein</td></tr><tr><td>Subject:</td><td>Fwd: (BN) 'Hamilton' Ponzi Schemers' Victims Said to Include Tudor Jo</td></tr></table>

Looks like there are many not to shrew= billionaires....

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'Hamilton' Ponzi Schemers'=Victims Said to Include Tudor Jones 2017.02-06 10:00:00.17 G=T

By Matt Robinson, Kathe=ine Burton, Zeke Faux and Christian Berthelsen

(Bloomberg) -- When U.S. authorities busted a P=nzi scheme that centered on marked-up tickets to the hit Br=adway musical "Hamilton" last month, prosec=tors described phone calls about a "big name"=investor who'd demanded his money back. &nbs=; As it turns out, there were several big names -- including billionaires Paul Tudor Jones and Michael Dell, as well as an</=pan> executive at Och-Ziff Capital Management Group -- among the m=re than 125 people who had unwittingly poured cash into the=/span> sprawling scam, according to people with knowledge of the</=pan> matter.

The ringlead=rs would approach people and encourage them to
put money in=a pool to buy blocks of tickets for the hottest
concerts an= plays, the government said. The most prominent was

"=amilton," whose popularity pushed prices to the highest inBroadway history. Victims were promised their money back and at

least a 10 percent profit.

&n=sp;It's rare that any Ponzi scheme ensnares business luminaries so highly skilled in the art of scrutinizing in=estment pitches. But to veteran securities lawyers, the case has some of the hallmarks of an affinity fraud like Bernard Madoff's -- in which a con man's familiarity can help inst=ll trust, even with a pitch that sounds too good to be true=

&nbs=; Hamilton Tickets a 'Give=way'

40=9CWhen the promise of a quick buck is being made by someone

a former Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement=attorney now in private practice. Still, "the idea t=at there were blocks of Hamilton tickets available for purc=ase should have been a giveaway."

&=bsp; Three men have been charged. One is Joseph Meli, a Ne= York $=,00O-a-ticket event concert promoter series and Hamptons in the enclave, socialite featuring&nbs=;Billy who once ran a Joel,

Prince and James Taylor. Photos show him party=ng with co-defendant, executives and Steven celebrities Simmons, including was allegedly Renee Zellwege=. the midd=eman His tasked with raising money from investors for hedge fun=s. Both appeared in court on Jan. 27 and remain free on bai=.

A third, Mark Varacchi, pleaded g=ilty to fraud on Wednesday and was released on $250,000 bai=. Varacchi was an investment fund manager whose firm was ba=ed in Connecticut. He turned to Meli to help repay $4.2 mil=ion he'd taken from investors, according to prosecu=ors. It isn't clear how he met Meli or the others. M=Ii and Simmons haven't entered pleas yet. Meli*=99s lawyer called the allegations untrue while Simmons' <=pan>lawyer declined to comment.

&nb=p; &=bsp; Hedge Fund Informant

The criminal complaint described=an informant who contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigat=on through his attorney late last year, saying he'd=conspired with Meli and others to raise money under false p=etenses to pay off an earlier investor. He offered to help i= the investigation and became an informant, according to th= complaint. The informant was Varacchi, according to people=with knowledge of the case.

The sc=m went on at least two years, according to a parallel c=vil case the SEC filed against Meli and Matthew Harriton, M=li's business partner. Harriton couldn't be reached<=r>for comment, and the men's companies didn't respond=to requests

for comment. Harriton wasn't named in t=e criminal case. Meli, 42, used hi= music connections to ingratiate himself with Wall Street t=aders, according to one of the people with knowledge of the=case. He hung out at the exclusive Bridgehampton Tennis and=Surf Club and he'd get tickets to "Hamilton=E24). and other shows for his friends, the person said. = Meli lied to at least one victim, claiming he had a=cess to another 35,000 tickets for "Hamilton"=and could sell them at a markup, according to authorities. H= really did contact the show's producer to resell b=lk tickets but was rebuffed, they said. In August 2015= when the show moved to Broadway, they said Meli talked to t=e "big name" investor, offering to introduce him to the show's producer. He repeatedly put it off and while the meeting never happened, the investor sent $3.5 million to</=pan> Meli's company after several weeks to help buy ticket=.

&nb=p; &=bsp; Och-Ziff as Bait

hi=h-profile &n=sp; investors Meli also including lured potential Och-Ziff victims had bough= by claiming in, according other to people who said he approached them. One s=id he was shown a contract with the hedge fund's na=e on it. Executives there considered investing on behalf of=clients but passed, according to a person with knowledge of=the firm.

However one Och-Ziff exe=utive, Boaz Sidikaro, was friends

with Meli and invested pe=sonally, according to people familiar with the case. Sidika=o didn't respond to a request for comment. Accordin= to his Linkedln profile, he's an executive managing director at the firm, where he's worked for almost 20 years.

To be sure, not every investor was neces=arily pitched a chance to profit on "Hamilton.Q=9D The SEC says Meli and Harriton gathered money for four i=vestment vehicles. The first promised to resell tickets for=a variety of "high-profile events," the age=cy said without identifying them. But the musical featured =n at least some pitches for the three other vehicles, it said.

Dell has a net worth estimated at $19.6 billion= according to the Bloomberg Billionaires index, and the com=any he founded, Dell Technologies, is the world's l=rgest closely held tech company. Jones runs the $11 billion=Tudor Investment Corp., one of the oldest hedge funds. He h=lped start the Robin Hood Foundation, a charity whose goal i= to end poverty in New York City.

&=bsp; = Shell Game

=nbsp;There's no indication the investors were aware of a scam and their spokesmen declined to comment. Jim Margolin, aspokesman for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, declined to

comment on the case.

W=ile Ponzi schemes can last years or even decades, they can*=804ot go on forever. According to prosecutors, Varacchi recorded calls in December in which Meli said he was running a "shell<=span> game," taking money from new investors to pay off ol= ones. Meli said he'd just gotten another $7 millio= from one, enough to pacify the big investor so he wouldn*=80.t raise alarms. "I wa= able to avoid it by shell-gaming it," Meli said, a=cording to prosecutors. "But I'm running out of that game</=pan> too."

To contact the=reporters on this story: Matt Robinson in New York at mrobinsonS5@bloomberg.net; Katherine Burton in New York at kburton@bloomberg.net <mailto:kburton@bloombe=g.net> ; Zeke Faux in New York at <= href="mailto:zfaux@bloomberg.net">zfaux@bloomberg.net; Christian Berthelsen in New York at cberthelsenl@bloomberg.net

<mailto:

To contact the edito=s responsible for this story:
Jesse Westbrook at jwestbrook1@bloomberg.net;
=span>Margaret Collins at mcollins45@bloomberg.net <mailto:mcollins45@bloomberg.net> ;
Peter Eichenbaum at peichenbaum@bloomberg.net
David Scheer, Heather Smith

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