The family office of secretive billionaire Harald McPike has accused US gaming investor Jason Ader (pictured) of fraudulently inducing it into backing his SPAC because he was under pressure to return $16 million to his mother, Financial Times reports.
Rimu Capital alleges Ader pocketed the $25 million it had invested in the SPAC to use for his “own personal purposes”, according to a filing made last month in the Southern District of New York. Ader’s mother had hired lawyers to help dispose of a $16 million stake in SpringOwl, her son’s investment firm, the filing states.
Ader faces a growing number of legal headaches from the ill-fated attempt to merge his SPAC, 26 Capital Acquisition, with a casino business in the Philippines owned by Japan’s Universal Entertainment in a deal that would have seen it list in New York at a $2.6 billion valuation.
The deal collapsed last month after a US judge in Delaware ruled Universal Entertainment would not be forced to complete the deal, as 26 Capital had petitioned.
Once a gaming analyst on Wall Street, Ader shot to prominence in 2016 as an activist investor when he took on US media company Viacom and helped oust its chief executive. Read more.
