The personal fortune of prolific writer Patricia Cornwell and her spouse has vanished. The suspect in this caper is an accounting firm. With an almost nonexistant paper trail to follow, will the mystery of the missing $40 million be solved?
"The Mystery of the Missing $40 million" could be the title of Patricia Cornwell's next novel. Cornwell and her spouse, Staci Gruber, a Harvard neuroscientist, have lost a $40 million fortune, reports
Daily Finance.
Whodunnit? Well, it appears that wiley bean counters are at the center of the Cornwell caper. Earlier in October, Cornwell and Gruber filed a complaint in the Federal Court in Boston claiming "that they are victims of their New York-based accounting and financial advisory firm, Anchin, Block & Anchin LLP."
According to
Daily Finance, the complaint indicates the following:
The financial management firm controlled every aspect of the financial lives of its clients and provided them with no information about their assets, liabilities, expenses or net worth. In the four and a half years in which Anchin ran the couple's finances, they allegedly lost approximately $40 million, while paying themselves almost $1 million "all without providing bills, or billing detail or back-up.
It seems that Cornwell may need to trade-in her forensic pathology skills for some forensic accounting expertise. A total of $40 million has vanished, but where did it go? That is the puzzle. Few clues can be found in the complaint.
According to
Daily Finance, the "complaint does not specify a single investment that was made by Anchin, Block & Anchin." Yet, some pesky unauthorized expenses were disclosed. The daughter of a principal of Anchin received a $5,000 bat mitvah gift. The twist? Cornwell has never met this person.
And then there was the "gift" of $11,000 to a business associate. Interestingly, the business associate "denies ever receiving the funds."
As investigators pursue the case of the missing personal fortune of the novelist and the neuroscientist, this reporter will keep you posted.
