Author Topic: CEO stole more than $7M to fund playboy lifestyle: lawsuit  (Read 315 times)

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CEO stole more than $7M to fund playboy lifestyle: lawsuit
« on: April 01, 2014, 02:45:57 pm »
NY Post

CEO stole more than $7M to fund playboy lifestyle:  lawsuit

By Josh Saul
March 31, 2014 | 5:06pm

A playboy Australian mining company CEO embezzled over $7 million to pay for “a high-class lifestyle for himself and his girlfriends,” including private jets, a luxury yacht, Rolex and Hublot watches, and a $171,000 Tiffany engagement ring for his Brazilian fiancée, a bombshell new lawsuit claims.

Aaron Thomas drained English company Oakmont Trading Ltd. of the millions to fund his lavish lifestyle over the course of three years beginning in 2010 before bedding down with fiancée Thaiana Rodrigues in a $14,500 a month NoHo apartment he rented with company cash, the ore company says in the Manhattan Supreme Court suit filed Monday.

“While Thomas has made some disclosures as to the whereabouts of the misappropriated funds, a sum of around [$2.5 million] remains unaccounted for,” the suit states.

The court papers paint a stunning portrait of luxury allegedly paid for with the checkbook of a company that shares a name with, but has no connection to Oakmont Stratton, the pump-and-dump brokerage made infamous by the 2013 Hollywood movie “The Wolf of Wall Street” starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

“During a Caribbean vacation in Turks & Caicos for himself, Rodrigues, and members of Rodrigues’ family, Thomas chartered a luxury yacht and private jet for his travel companions at a cost of over $30,000, both of which were paid for with Oakmont funds,” the suit states.

Thomas also allegedly spent $91,000 in company dough in Las Vegas in May 2013, spent $121,500 on luxury watches made by Jager lecoutre, Rolex, and Hubot, and even paid for “many other flights taken by Thomas’s girlfriends, including Rodrigues, in 2012 and 2013,” the suit states.

Thomas founded Oakmont in the UK in 2010 – the company focuses on iron ore and owns ore operations in Brazil – and over the next few years unloaded about 74 percent of the company’s stock to investors, the suit states.

The Oakmont board fired Thomas in January 2014 and has already launched legal action against Thomas in the UK.

Reached at his Manhattan apartment Thomas told The Post the lawsuit was an attempt by the company board to get his remaining shares. He vowed to file a countersuit but declined to comment further.

Reps for Oakmont did not immediately return a call for comment.