Marc Dreier
Marc Stuart Dreier is an American former lawyer who was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in 2009 for committing investment fraud using a Ponzi scheme. He was scheduled to be released from FCI Sandstone on June 30, 2025 but was released on December 12, 2024, when President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of almost 1,500 federal prisoners who had served home confinement. On May 11, 2009, he pleaded guilty in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York to eight charges of fraud, which included one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud, one count of money laundering, one count of securities fraud, and five counts of wire fraud in a scheme to sell more than $950 million in fictitious promissory notes. Civil charges, filed in December 2008 by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, are pending. The 2011 documentary Unraveled states that "Drier stole over $740 million from 4 clients, 4 individuals, and 13 hedge funds".
He is the sole equity partner of the dissolved law firm Dreier, LLP. After Dreier was suspended from the New York Bar on December 23, 2008, the New York Supreme Court formally disbarred him on October 8, 2009, effective nunc pro tunc to May 11, 2009. He had been admitted on May 5, 1976.
Early life, education, and career milestones
Marc Dreier grew up on the south shore of Long Island in an affluent area known as the Five Towns. His father, Sidney Dreier was a war refugee from Poland, owned a chain of movie theaters. His mother, Mildred Dreier, was originally from Brooklyn where she was born to Lithuanian and Russian Jewish immigrant parents.Dreier presided over the Lawrence High School student council, and graduated "most likely to succeed". He graduated from Yale University in 1972 with a Bachelor of Arts and earned a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1975. He began his career as a "shining star" in the late 1970s at Rosenman & Colin, Freund, Lewis & Cohen, then a 90-lawyer litigation firm, and was well regarded. "He was a very smart, hard-working guy....Funny, personable – part of the social mix", but what most distinguished him was his ability to think on his feet. "He's very quick. Very smart."
In the early 1980s, Dreier was named a partner at Rosenman. In 1987, he married a Rosenman associate named Elisa Peters. He and his wife separated in 2000, around the time that Dreier broke with a partner and started his own firm. His wife filed for divorce in January 2002. Dreier has since stated that only he was to blame, saying, "I wasn’t attentive enough to my family."
In 1989, he joined the New York office of Fulbright & Jaworski. Dreier would become co-head of litigation in New York, but when Dreier left Fulbright in March 1995, there were only ten New York litigators. He then worked for Duker & Barrett for less than two years. Its founding partner, William Duker, would later plead guilty to four counts of fraud called "one of the most serious cases of legal fraud" ever prosecuted.
In 1996, he teamed with a Florida lawyer named Neil Baritz, who had a small corporate and securities practice, to found a firm called Dreier & Baritz. Though he was able to found the firm, a precursor to Dreier LLP, he struggled to distinguish his practice.
From 1999 to 2002, Dreier, Baritz, & Federman was formed with offices in New York and Boca Raton with most associates in Oklahoma. Dreier ran the new firm's already leased Park Avenue office. He favored plaintiff class-action lawsuits, which brought in large revenue. Federman had problems with Dreier's spending, managerial style, and secrecy, which culminated in a lawsuit.
Dreier, pushing to impress, acquired expensive trappings, buying a house in Westhampton. He bought first a place in Quogue, then the house next door. He purchased the $18 million yacht Seascape, which included a crew of 10 and a Jacuzzi, and docked it in New York City and St. Martin. Dreier owned a waterfront home in the Hamptons, a Manhattan triplex, and a penthouse on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica, California, which he leased out. He drove a Mercedes 500 in New York and an Aston Martin in California. He was a member of the Harmonie Club and maintained a high profile at charity events.
Dreier LLP
In 2006, Dreier founded his own firm with offices in five cities, promising lavish compensation. The headquarters at 499 Park Avenue had $30 million to $40 million worth of art, including works by Picasso and a Warhol depiction of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.Dreier operated like a corporation and not like a partnership. Marc Dreier was the sole equity partner owner, controlled all of the firm's finances, and handled all administrative functions. There was no executive committee and no partners meetings. All deals were structured so that only he knew all the specifics and had access to all accounts. Dreier convinced lawyers that such an arrangement was best by emphasizing that it would allow them to concentrate on law while he worried about running the firm. He hired lawyers on three-year contracts, fixing their salaries and paying bonuses based on the fees each lawyer brought in. According to court filings, some lawyers received more than $50,000 in salary every two weeks.
In 2007, Dreier expanded to Los Angeles and brought in Hollywood superstar lawyer Stanton "Larry" Stein, whose clients included Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen and Hilary Duff. The expansion boosted Dreier LLP's revenue from $60 million in 2006 to $90 million in 2007. Despite the burgeoning volume of business, the office actually operated at a net loss of approximately one million dollars a month. On January 27, 2009, Paul S. Anik, a partner at Dreier Stein Kahan Browne Woods George, LLP died from a sudden stress-related heart attack at 54.
On September 28, 2008, New York Magazine stated that 20 attorneys of the firm and its affiliates were selected for inclusion in "New York Super Lawyers, 2008 Edition" by Law & Politics, the legal publisher and independent researcher of multiple nationwide surveys. In 2007, 16 attorneys were named.
Dreier's two children were on his payroll, and he spent $10 million of the firm's money at New York's Gagosian Gallery in 2008.
In March 2009, the law firm Fox Rothschild acquired Pastore Osterberg, a firm in Stamford, Connecticut that was founded by Dreier attorneys in late 2008. Joe Pastore and Eric Osterberg joined along with seven other Dreier attorneys. The practice focused on litigation, telecommunications, technology, securities, and intellectual property.
Traub Bonacquist & Fox
In September 2006, Dreier acquired a well-known bankruptcy law firm Traub, Bonacquist & Fox. Founding member and managing partner Paul Traub participated in several of the largest retail bankruptcies in previous years, including Kmart, FAO Schwarz Inc., KB Toys Inc., Stage Stores, Office Max, and eToys.com. During his legal career, Traub has had his own ethical controversies, especially conflict of interest issues which continue to shadow him. Traub became a Dreier partner, earning in the range of $1 million or more, and was co-chair, with Norman Kinel, of the bankruptcy practice.On December 5, 2008, Traub sent a letter to clients announcing that he and other bankruptcy lawyers had resigned from the firm, but would continue to practice together as their former partnership, Traub, Bonacquist & Fox LLP. "In light of recent developments, of which we were unaware until yesterday, we have resigned from Dreier LLP, effective immediately", the letter states.
In February 2009, Epstein, Becker & Green, a firm specializing in government contracts, brought the seven-member Traub/Dreier bankruptcy team into their New York office, which included Paul Traub, Steven E. Fox, Wendy G. Marcari, and Maura I. Russell. Associates included Brett J. Nizzo, Anthony B. Stumbo, and Bradford Tobin. The firm has 400 attorneys based in eleven US cities., Harold F. Bonacquist, a passive partner, is a political attaché at the United States Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.
Sheldon Solow
From 1998 to 2006, Dreier handled much litigation for Sheldon Solow, a billionaire real estate dealmaker. The most recent case was the unsuccessful eviction of Bank of America Securities LLC from his flagship Manhattan building, 9 West 57th St., on the dubious grounds that one of the bank's brokers had been accused of illegal trading.In 2000, Solow decided to litigate for ownership of a $10 million oceanfront house in East Hampton. Peter Morton, co-founder of the Hard Rock Cafe restaurant chain, had signed a contract to purchase the home from Dr. Gary Feldstein. Solow tried to break their contract and buy the place himself. Years of litigation ensued. Dreier filed suits in state courts in Manhattan and Suffolk County, in federal court in both the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York, in bankruptcy court in Florida, and in several corresponding appellate courts. "He had a certain glibness, this certainty that he could get away with that which other lawyers couldn't", says Feldstein's lawyer, Kevin Smith, whom Dreier named as a defendant in one of the suits. "He was like Gatsby without the charm." In 2003, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, citing their "extensive history of persistent, repetitive, and vexatious litigation", ordered Solow and Dreier to pay double costs to Morton and Feldstein. The litigation cost Solow an estimated $6 million in legal fees, much of it going to Dreier.
In February 2004, advertisements labeled "legal notices" ran in The New York Times and the New York Post. The bogus ads, a costly embarrassment, informed "all unsecured creditors" in developer Peter Kalikow's 1994 Chapter 11 reorganization that they "might have additional rights of recovery" because of Kalikow's failure "to make truthful disclosure". More than 50 calls and 18 faxes came in to the Evergence Capital Advisors, Inc., by creditors. Evergence was a Florida corporation run by Kosta Kovachev, a Belgrade-born, one-time Morgan Stanley broker facing SEC charges for his participation in a $20 million Ponzi scheme, for which he ultimately paid the SEC $358,148 in penalties and interest. The Evergence phone and fax numbers went directly to telephone lines at 499 Park Ave. – the offices of Dreier, LLP. It was Dreier who had purchased the newspaper ads, using Evergence and Kovachev as a front. After Manhattan federal bankruptcy court Judge Burton Lifland, who oversaw Kalikow's bankruptcy and presided in the Madoff Investment Scandal bankruptcy, ordered Dreier to disclose his client's identity, it became clear that Solow had hired Dreier to place the ads. Lifland ordered Dreier and Solow to pay about $300,000 in sanctions to Kalikow. Those sanctions were eventually overturned on technical grounds.
In November 2008, Dreier claimed that Solow was looking to raise $500 million by selling short-term, high-interest notes, which were supported by an audit report that Dreier had forged. The report had been used to try to dupe a hedge fund, Whippoorwill Associates, into buying bogus Solow Realty promissory notes. On October 15, fund managers, who had bought $115 million of the notes in 2006 or 2007, demanded a meeting at Solow's offices when they weren't repaid on schedule. Dreier arranged it, with Kovachev posing as Solow's CEO. In October 2008, Dreier sent a Connecticut hedge fund's managing director documents that he said were Solow's audited financial statements, and the fund bought a forged $25 million note for $13.5 million. Dreier sent a New York hedge fund the same documents he'd given the Connecticut fund, but portfolio managers wanted more information. Dreier forwarded four e-mails that purported to be from other funds that had purchased Solow notes, as well as a Dreier LLP opinion letter vouching for the notes. A portfolio manager subsequently asked to speak directly to someone at Solow Realty. Dreier scheduled a conference call for October 23, and provided a telephone number located in the conference room at Dreier LLP's offices in Stamford, Connecticut. Kovachev got on the phone and, pretending to be Solow CEO Steven Cherniak, answered questions about the notes and Solow's finances. The next day the hedge fund bought about $100 million in notes. Both the Connecticut and New York funds were dubious and brought their doubts to Solow Realty and its audit firm. In November, one hedge fund manager told Dreier that he'd called Solow Realty and copied him on an e-mail to Solow about the notes. Solow's attorneys subsequently contacted federal authorities, that Dreier might be engaged in financial fraud.