Horndog CEO in $18M sex case indicted for money laundering
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Benjamin Wey and Hanna Bouveng outside court in June. Photo: (Left) Stefan Jeremiah; (right) John M. Mantel
The Wall Street CEO who was hit with a bombshell $18 million jury award in June for sexually harassing and then trashing online his young, pretty Swedish intern has been indicted on a slew of financial crimes that made him tens of millions in illegal profits, new court papers state.
Benjamin Wey, CEO of New York Global Group, would load up on publicly traded stocks without disclosing his ownership – and then illegally manipulate the price and demand for those stocks, the court papers allege.
Wey faces eight counts of money laundering, and failing to disclose ownership of stocks, according to a Manhattan federal indictment unsealed Thursday.
“Ben Wey fashioned himself a master of industry, but as alleged, he was merely a master of manipulation,” Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement, adding that Wey made tens of millions in illegal profits.
“The indictment charges that Wey used reverse merger transactions between Chinese companies and US shell companies to illegally conceal his ownership interest and then, with the help of his alleged co-conspirator, manipulated the market so that he could sell his interest at artificially inflated prices.”
The indictment also names Seref Dogan Erbek, a Swiss resident, who remains at large.
Wey was arrested Thursday morning at his Battery Park City home and will be presented Thursday afternoon in court.
In June, a federal jury awarded Hanna Bouveng, 25, the payday in her case against her married ex-boss Wey.
Bouveng got $2 million in compensatory damages over the harassment and defamation and $16 million in punitive damages.
Bouveng testified that Wey pressured her into having sex with him at the luxury Financial District apartment he had rented for her.
Wey lasted just two minutes during the pair’s first tryst, her lawyer had said in opening statements.
When he later found another man in Bouveng’s bed, Wey fired her that day, kicked her out of the apartment and emailed her dad in what would be the beginning of a grimy online campaign against her, according to trial testimony.
“I saw a 6-foot-tall homeless black man named James lying on her bed,” Wey wrote to Bouveng’s father, Nils Sundqvist, in one email entered into evidence.
“The man was totally naked, dirty, totally drunk and perhaps on illegal drugs.”
Wey also emailed her family and friends, and called her a “Swedish party girl” and a prostitute on his bizarre website, TheBlot.com.
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