Omar Khan over allegations that he swindled Wall Street bigwigs<\/a>\u00a0and other wealthy New Yorkers out of millions for wine events that never happened, sources said.<\/p>\nSpecifically, the top prosecutor is looking at claims that Khan once doctored an e-mail from the office of Philippe Rothschild, the owner of the upscale Chateau Mouton winery, to falsely showcase his ties to the esteemed winery \u2014 and dupe people into investing with him, according to two people familiar with the DA\u2019s questioning.<\/p>\n
Khan is known in New York business circles for hosting rarified dinners where expensive wines \u2014 some worth more than $30,000 \u2014 are served to about a dozen guests, usually wealthy and important people.<\/p>\n
Guests who have attended Khan\u2019s events include Pierre Lurton, the director of Chateau Cheval Blanc, a high-end wine estate owned by luxury brand LVMH; Sir Ivor Martin Crewe, the master of University College at Oxford, and retired real estate developer Daniel Rose, known for building Pentagon City in Arlington, Va., according to sources and social media.<\/p>\n
As The Post exclusively reported last week, a group of high-profile Wall Streeters, including Sanford C. Bernstein CEO Robert van Brugge, are suing Khan in Manhattan state court, claiming he conned them into investing into fake wine events.<\/p>\n
The group is seeking more than $8 million plus interest \u2014 the bulk of which came from ex-Renaissance Technologies researcher Kresimir Penavic, who invested close to $5 million with Khan through 27 events from 2015 to 2018.<\/p>\n
Three other suits have accused Khan, head of Park Avenue consulting firm Sensei International, of similar allegations. He has denied the allegations in the suits, and has settled one from 2015.<\/p>\n
The probe from Vance\u2019s office, however, shows an escalation in potential woes for Khan.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not civil, it\u2019s criminal,\u201d one person familiar with the investigation told The Post.<\/p>\n
Of interest to the prosecutors on the case, which is being run by Assistant DA Lisa White, is the allegation in the latest lawsuit by the group of Wall Streeters that Khan \u201cmanufactured\u201d an e-mail from Rothschild\u2019s office because, if true, it would suggest he knowingly defrauded investors, the people said.<\/p>\n
Khan said he wasn\u2019t aware of any investigation and declined to comment further.<\/p>\n
But in a 20-minute interview with The Post on Sept. 4, Khan blamed \u201ccash-flow issues\u201d that stemmed from clients who failed to pay him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no e-mail from Philippe Rothschild himself that had anything to do with anything here,\u201d Khan said after calling a Post reporter\u2019s cell phone.<\/p>\n
Later, Khan suggested he never had any specific dealing with the Rothschild winery \u2014 and never claimed otherwise.<\/p>\n
\u201cI shared what I thought some of [Rothschild\u2019s] possible interests would be, and that may have been construed or interpreted as whatever. I\u2019m not saying I misunderstood [the Rothschilds] or they even made any explicit suggestions. They did not.\u201d<\/p>\n
He went on to insist that there was nothing in writing to show otherwise \u2014 before realizing there might, in fact, be written evidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cCertainly, there were not, yeah, there was nothing written to that effect that I\u2019m aware of. I could be wrong. I could be wrong,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
After The Post published the story about his alleged wine scheme. Khan sent a text saying the story could hurt his ability to make amends with investors.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t mention that unfortunately your running the story as we\u2019ve started settling as best we can, will make it so much harder,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can but ask you give that some thought. If we made no progress, it would still be a story later. Right now, everyone stands to lose,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for the DA\u2019s office declined to comment.
\nSee Article in New York Post<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DA\u2019s Office Probing Wine Consultant Accused Of Scamming Wall Street Elite BY KEVIN DUGAN | New York Post A wine-loving business consultant accused of bilking…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60195,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-firm-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seidenlaw.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seidenlaw.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seidenlaw.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seidenlaw.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seidenlaw.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seidenlaw.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seidenlaw.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seidenlaw.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seidenlaw.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}