The Bottom Line has become the school of crock – NYU has named its new lecture hall, on the site of the legendary rock club, after a family accused of conning investors out of millions of dollars, New York magazine reports.
The West Fourth Street nightspot that once featured the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan is now the “Yalincak Family Foundation Lecture Hall,” the magazine notes in a story on the Yalincak clan in its June 20 edition.
The dedication of the lecture hall – which featured a ribbon-cutting ceremony with members of the Yalincak family and NYU president John Sexton – took place just one week before NYU student Hakan Yalincak, 21, was busted as the alleged mastermind of a complex $43 million check-kiting scheme.
Yalincak and his parents have also been named in a civil suit alleging they conned investors into putting $2.8 million into a fictional hedge fund.
The school named the new lecture hall after the Yalincaks after they pledged to donate $21 million to the university. John Beckman, a spokesman for NYU, said the school has only collected $1.25 million of the gift to date. “If the money was ill-gotten, the university will return it,” he said.
The spokesman added the school was keeping an eye on the family’s legal proceedings, and that “no decision has been made” about whether their name will come off the lecture hall, a 202-seat theater-style classroom.
The school booted the 29-year-old Bottom Line from its property at the corner of West Fourth Street and Mercer last year after the club fell $190,000 behind on its rent.
The New York article, which will hit newsstands next week, includes an exclusive jailhouse interview with Hakan Yalincak. Both he and his mother – who’s done time for posing as a doctor – denied the con-artist allegations to writer Steven Fishman.
Update:
The Yalincak family, through their attorneys, challenged the allegations contained in the New York Magazine piece in federal Court and reached a confidential settlement in March 2008 with New York Magazine Holdings, LLC (“NY Magazine”). They deny the allegations in the NY Magazine Article and have no further comment per the terms of the settlement agreement with NY Magazine.
