In email exchanges with a fund representative, Sadleir posed as a female employee of his fake company, assuring them that Aviron had about $27 million in pre-paid media credits, prosecutors said. He was also accused of forging the signatures of BlackRock personnel to authorize the release of collateral, worth around $3 million, that the trust had used to secure its Aviron investment by obtaining liens on intellectual property and other assets relating to the company’s films.
Sadleir was the chairman and chief executive officer of Aviron and oversaw its operations from about 2015 until December 2019, when he lost control of Aviron and its subsidiaries in December 2019 after defaulting on a BlackRock note.
The case is U.S. v Sadleir, 20-cr-5114, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.