This CEO of an investment management company attempted to engage one of our accounting firm clients as the company's auditor. In accordance with the accounting firm's risk management program, SI was retained to conduct background investigations of the company, the CEO, and the CFO. The SI research analyst quickly found and obtained court documents for five pending lawsuits filed in 2008 and 2009 that named all subjects as defendants in government actions to recover pension funding. One case seeks the enforcement of a $100 million judgment and the others, still in discovery stages, allege damages between $10 and $25 million resulting from the defendant officers' breaches of fiduciary duty and fraud.
 
Several articles and lawsuits from 2005 also were located reporting that the subject CEO and a vitamin company he helmed agreed to pay a $2 million civil penalty and $1.58 million to the State of Colorado for deceptive claim charges brought by the Federal Trade Commission. Prior to his stint with the vitamin enterprise, the subject was fired as the CEO of a technology company, despite owning 30% of the voting stock. Four months thereafter, the company filed for bankruptcy and sued the subject for $45 million for defaulting on several multimillion-dollar loans. The subject later agreed to a settlement of $23 million, but then defaulted on these payments too. Further, in the late 1990s, the Justice Department settled a case with the subject for violations of the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act regarding a waiting period requirement in a pre-merger notification. The subject paid a $425,000 civil penalty to settle the charges.