(Bloomberg) -- Moore Capital founder Louis Bacon and PJT Partners reached a settlement in a lawsuit over an alleged $25 million theft by Andrew Caspersen, a former managing director at PJT’s Park Hill Group.
Bacon’s Moore Charitable Foundation sued PJT in 2017, alleging the boutique investment bank failed to adequately supervise Caspersen. The previous year, Caspersen pleaded guilty to stealing more than $38 million from his employer, investors, family and friends.
The case was dismissed on Tuesday following joint notices filed Dec. 19 by Bacon’s foundation, PJT and Caspersen stating they were voluntarily ending the case. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
Lawyers for the foundation and a spokesperson for PJT didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Caspersen couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
The parties had agreed to complete fact depositions by the following day and had been fighting over whether PJT founder Paul Taubman would be questioned under oath.
Caspersen’s crimes shocked Wall Street at the time because of his extremely privileged background. The Princeton and Harvard Law School graduate was the son of Finn M.W. Caspersen, the financier and philanthropist who was chairman and chief executive officer of Beneficial Corp., which was acquired by Household International for almost $9 billion in 1998.
According to the suit, Andrew Caspersen duped a Princeton University classmate who worked at Moore Capital into getting Bacon’s foundation to invest in a nonexistent security that promised a risk-free 15% return. Caspersen instead sent about $9 million to PJT to cover a previous theft and wired $16 million to himself, which he then lost, the foundation alleged.
He then tried to solicit another $20 million from the foundation, which ultimately led to his arrest. Caspersen was later sentenced to four years in prison and was released in June 2019.
Part of the suit was thrown out in 2018 by a New York state judge who rejected the argument that Caspersen’s high-risk trading and drinking on the job should have made PJT aware he could commit fraud. The whole case was thrown out in 2019 by an intermediate appeals panel, but the state’s highest court revived the case in June 2023.
New York’s Court of Appeals rejected PJT’s argument that it owed no duty to the foundation because it wasn’t a direct client. It also said the firm should have been on notice about Caspersen because of his previous theft from PJT, which allegedly motivated his fraud against the Moore foundation.
Caspersen said his gambling addiction led him to lose more than $4 million trading in tech stocks even when he was a law student. In addition to the money he stole, he also blew through the $23 million he inherited after his father died by suicide in 2009.
The case is Moore Charitable Foundation v. PJT Partners Inc., 654584/2017, New York State Supreme Court, New York County (Manhattan).
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