A Manhattan couple was swindled out of nearly $1 million by a money manager who claimed he parked their funds in his good friend, billionaire investor Carl Icahn’s bank– except the fraudster didn’t know Icahn and the bank didn’t exist, according to a new lawsuit.
Harvard and Columbia-educated attorney Albert L. Jacobs Jr. started receiving Charles Lewis’ daily financial email blast called “The Lewis Letter” in 2011.
The former vice president of the now-defunct Shearson Lehman Brothers gave daily insights into the financial markets. He called himself “one of Wall Street’s most experienced investment professionals,” according to the Manhattan civil suit.
A year later Lewis, of E. 85th Street, enticed Jacobs to give him $860,000 by saying the money would be invested by his colleague, Carl Icahn, according to court papers.
The stake would yield a 15 percent return, Lewis promised.
But when Jacobs, a patent lawyer at the firm Tannenbaum Helpern Syracuse & Hirschtritt, wanted his money back this past January, Lewis claimed he couldn’t deliver because he had rolled it into an entity called the “Icahn Bank,” the suit says.
When Lewis still refused to return the funds months later Jacobs wrote to Icahn’s lawyers in March who told him “There is no Icahn Bank nor does Icahn have any outside investors.”
“In particular we have no investments from Chuck Lewis nor do we have an business dealings with him,” Icahn’s general counsel Keith Schaitkin wrote in a March letter attached to the suit as a court exhibit.
Shaitkin continued that a January 2013 call Lewis purportedly made to Icahn, documented in an email, never happened.
Upon closer inspection Lewis’ email, that begins “Dear Carl,” details the Jacobs’ investment in the ‘Icahn Bank’, and says in parenthesis in closing “(Confirmed with Icahn by telephone this afternoon)” was sent both to and from Lewis’ own email address.
Lewis, reached by The Post on his cell phone, said the suit is all a big misunderstanding.
He said the investment was actually a personal loan made by his “good friend” Albert Jacobs. He spent the money on his rent and other expenses, Lewis said. He plans to repay the funds within 30 days, he said.
Lewis claimed he never told Jacobs that he was associated with Icahn, even though he said the two where old pals who first met at a business dinner in 1963 and frequently played tennis together at the Tennisport in Long Island City, Queens.
A rep for Icahn did not immediately return calls to confirm their relationship.