US News

A WIDOW OF OPPORTUNITY

The wife of a New York hedge-fund hotshot who was found dead in his pool in September already had three bitter divorce battles in her past before the rocky marriage now at the center of a legal war over his $25 million estate.

Filomena Tobias’ previous marriages ended amid accusations of erratic and violent behavior, wild spending and drug abuse .

On Sept. 4, she found her multimillionaire hedge-fund manager hubby, CNBC regular Seth Tobias, floating face-down in the swimming pool of his palatial manse in Jupiter, Fla.

He was dead of an apparent heart attack.

The real fireworks began eight days, later when she filed a petition to be named the executor of his estate. But then her dead husband’s personal assistant, Billy Ash, told police that Filomena, 41, admitted to him she had drugged Tobias and lured him into the pool with promises of sex with a male go-go dancer named Tiger.

A police report said cops did find several bags with residue of cocaine at the house and at least two empty prescription bottles.

That prompted Tobias’ angry brothers to promptly file papers charging Filomena with killing her husband, invoking a Florida law known as the “slayer statute” that would bar her from getting a penny from his sizeable estate.

“There is absolutely no basis in fact for the claims,” said her attorney, Jay Jacknin, who, oddly, is her third husband, having divorced her in 2002.

Filomena Tobias was born Phyllis Manente to a middle-class family in northern New Jersey in 1966. Her first marriage was to fishmonger Vincent Racanati in 1984 at age 18. The pair had one child, and he divorced her four years later, in part because of her wild spending.

“She wanted the life of the rich and famous. I couldn’t give it to her,” Racanati said.

So she began trading up. Next came Arthur TolenDini, a twice-divorced stockbroker 14 years her senior. The marriage fell apart in late 1991 after just three years.

A year and a half later, she married Jacknin, a successful Palm Beach lawyer. The marriage lasted nine Years, and the pair had two children, but by 2002, Jacknin filed for divorce.

Additional reporting by Austin Fenner in Secaucus, NJ