Yesterday afternoon, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it had frozen the assets of "purported" Boston-based quant named Andrey C. Hicks. Purported because, was he actually a quant? Not so much! Other small inaccuracies in his story with which the regulator took issue, describing the total as Hicks' "brazen web of lies":
* The claim that Hicks received his Ph.D in Applied Mathematics from Harvard in two years (2005-2007). This is a thing that did not happen, most likely on account of the fact that Hicks, who also claimed he received an undergraduate degree from Harvard in 2005, after having earned a grade point average of 4.0, natch, was asked to leave the school after three semesters, during which he took one math course, in which he received a D-.
* The claim that he took a job at Barclays Capital after graduating, where he, in just over a year, he "grew his book nearly two-fold and expanded his group's assets under management to roughly $16 billion." (For its part, BarCap says they've never heard of the guy.)
* The claim that following his time at Barclays, he decided to apply "quantitative strategies based on mathematical models he developed at Harvard" (i.e. the place his math skills didn't exactly shine) at a shop of his founding, Locust Offshore Management LLC
* The claim that Ernst & Young was the fund's auditor, while Credit Suisse served as its prime broker and custodian (like Barclays, neither E&Y nor Credit Suisse have ever heard of Hicks)
* The claim that Locust's assets under management clocked in at approximately $1.2 billion. In fact, they were more in the ballpark of $1.7 million.
In related news, it appears that Kim Kardashian, who Hicks seems to know through her husband, dodged a bullet on this one.
SEC Halts Fraud by Purported Quant Hedge Fund Manager [SEC via BI]
@andreyhicks [Twitter]
