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N.Y.U. Student Faces Charges in a $43 Million Check Scheme
The Associated Press
May 7, 2005
NEW HAVEN, May 6 (AP) - A New York University senior was arrested on
Friday and charged with concocting a $43 million scheme to shuffle
bogus multimillion-dollar checks between banks in Switzerland and
Greenwich, Conn.
Hakan Yalincak, 21, whose parents are major donors to N.Y.U., wept
in court as Magistrate Judge Joan G. Margolis of the United States
District Court ordered him held at Wyatt Detention Center in Rhode
Island until a hearing on Thursday. "I have a graduation on Wednesday,"
Mr. Yalincak said.
Mr. Yalincak, a mathematics major from Pound Ridge, N.Y., whose
parents donated $21 million to the university last year, spent months
opening bank accounts under fake corporate names, then deposited fake
certified checks for millions of dollars, according to an indictment
unsealed on Friday.
At one point, he had $25 million in Greenwich and nearly $18 million
in Switzerland, prosecutors said.
By the time he transferred $2.5 million from Switzerland to an empty
bank account in Greenwich and tried to withdraw $1.7 million, bank
executives had discovered the counterfeit checks. When told that his
account had been frozen, Mr. Yalincak tried to close out his account
and collect the entire $2.5 million, prosecutors said.
He is also being sued in civil court by investors who say he tricked
them into investing $2.8 million in a nonexistent stock fund. According
to court documents filed in that case, federal investigators think
some of that money was donated to N.Y.U., where a professorship in
Ottoman studies is named after Mr. Yalincak's parents, Dr. Omer Bulent
Yalincak and Ayferafet Yalincak.
A spokesman for the university did not return a phone call seeking
comment. Mr. Yalincak was arrested by United States Postal Inspection
Service agents at his family's Pound Ridge home. His mother wept
throughout Friday's hearing.
"Instead of going to her son's graduation in New York, she's going to
be visiting her son at Wyatt," the detention center in Rhode Island,
said a defense lawyer, Eugene Riccio.
The Associated Press
May 7, 2005
NEW HAVEN, May 6 (AP) - A New York University senior was arrested on
Friday and charged with concocting a $43 million scheme to shuffle
bogus multimillion-dollar checks between banks in Switzerland and
Greenwich, Conn.
Hakan Yalincak, 21, whose parents are major donors to N.Y.U., wept
in court as Magistrate Judge Joan G. Margolis of the United States
District Court ordered him held at Wyatt Detention Center in Rhode
Island until a hearing on Thursday. "I have a graduation on Wednesday,"
Mr. Yalincak said.
Mr. Yalincak, a mathematics major from Pound Ridge, N.Y., whose
parents donated $21 million to the university last year, spent months
opening bank accounts under fake corporate names, then deposited fake
certified checks for millions of dollars, according to an indictment
unsealed on Friday.
At one point, he had $25 million in Greenwich and nearly $18 million
in Switzerland, prosecutors said.
By the time he transferred $2.5 million from Switzerland to an empty
bank account in Greenwich and tried to withdraw $1.7 million, bank
executives had discovered the counterfeit checks. When told that his
account had been frozen, Mr. Yalincak tried to close out his account
and collect the entire $2.5 million, prosecutors said.
He is also being sued in civil court by investors who say he tricked
them into investing $2.8 million in a nonexistent stock fund. According
to court documents filed in that case, federal investigators think
some of that money was donated to N.Y.U., where a professorship in
Ottoman studies is named after Mr. Yalincak's parents, Dr. Omer Bulent
Yalincak and Ayferafet Yalincak.
A spokesman for the university did not return a phone call seeking
comment. Mr. Yalincak was arrested by United States Postal Inspection
Service agents at his family's Pound Ridge home. His mother wept
throughout Friday's hearing.
"Instead of going to her son's graduation in New York, she's going to
be visiting her son at Wyatt," the detention center in Rhode Island,
said a defense lawyer, Eugene Riccio.