NYU Swindler Details

As Gothamist reads more and more about the NYU senior, Hakan Yalincak, and his scamming ways, the more we think we're reading a David Mamet play. The NY Post says that Yalincak and his mom rented an office "furnishing it with mahogany desks and plush, silk-upholstered chairs," "ordered thousands of dollars in computer equipment, hired temporary workers to monitor the Bloomberg stock tickers and shuttled investors in and out of the conference room." The man they rented the space from, Paul Ardaji, says that while the Yalincaks claimed they were started a hedge fund, they had their meetings all in one day and never showed up again - the computers weren't even online either. Even Bloomberg LLP has the FBI trying to help recover money they never got for the computers! The mother and son (and possibly father) are being sued by people who want their money back, and it seems that the Yalincaks bought a Porsche and Tiffany jewelry with the money. The mother, Ayferafet Yalincak, had actually served two years in an Indiana prison for practicing medicine without a license. Are you kidding? The Daily News says that perhaps the son was trying to "help his mom recover from an earlier scam," which sounds not only like The Grifters, but something two steps ahead of the Sante and Kenneth Kimes scandal. And now the question is whether or not the $21 million gift to NYU has real money behind it.