The Advocate – A New York hedge fund manager apparently conned three Louisiana retirement systems out of $100 million in an investment scheme that promised high returns with low risk, a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee says in a recent report.
In 2008, trustees of the pension plans — the New Orleans Firefighters’ Pension and Relief Fund and two statewide funds, the Firefighters’ Retirement System and the Municipal Employees’ Retirement System — invested the money in the flagship fund of Fletcher Asset Management, which offered a guaranteed 12 percent rate of return. If returns fell below that mark, they were told, the gap would be covered by $50 million put up by a subsidiary of the financial services firm Citco Group Ltd.
