The NYU whiz kid nailed in an alleged $43 million check-kiting scheme was being criminally investigated by the feds for at least six months previously for other suspect activities, The Post has learned.
When he was busted on a Connecticut indictment Friday, brainy 21-year-old Turkish immigrant Hakan Yalincak was overseeing a massively complex web of dealings that purportedly involved tens of millions of dollars, sources said.
He also had been behind a botched deal with two wealthy investors who had prior ties to billionaire Steven Cohen, one of Wall Street’s biggest hedge-fund managers.
Despite the fact that Yalincak’s family bequeathed $21 million to NYU last year, he and his supposedly rich parents lived in a $525-per-month apartment in Bristol, Conn., while he went to high school. They now live in the exclusive Westchester community of Pound Ridge, while he commutes to NYU by cab.
Sources said Yalincak’s mother, Ayferafet, was eyed by feds in their prior probe of him. The sources would only say that probe was unrelated to the check-kiting scheme.
In the most recent scheme, Yalincak first allegedly deposited three counterfeit checks totaling almost $43 million in different banks in March and then tried to withdraw at least $1.7 million.
After his arrest, a weepy Yalincak was ordered held without bail. He was scheduled to graduate with a master’s in mathematics this week from NYU, where he also is finishing his first year of law school.
His criminal lawyer, Mickey Sherman, yesterday said, “The allegations, of course, are serious, but I’m just not so sure that anybody lost a penny.”
Yalincak’s civil lawyer, Robert Chan, said his client is “young and emotionally unsophisticated.”
Yalincak earlier had been sued by investors Arthur Cohen and Joseph Healey, who claimed they were unable to withdraw much of nearly $3 million they had invested in a Yalincak hedge fund. Chan said Yalincak settled that suit with Cohen and was settling with Healey. As recently as 2001, both Arthur Cohen and Healey ran a hedge fund partnered with a fund controlled by Steven Cohen.
Update:
The lawsuit filed by Mr. Healey and Cohen was settled in May 2005 and the lawsuit was voluntarily withdrawn.
Additional reporting by Michael White
