DEL.ICIO.USThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 06/07/08
His last days on the lam seemed fitting for a con man of his means: lolling on Miami's South Beach, ordering poolside cocktails at a Ritz-Carlton, inhaling the new-car smell of a just-bought Mercedes-Benz as he shuttled between the hotel and a Biscayne Bay condo he'd dropped a year's rent on.
It all came courtesy of what remained of the more than $150 million that almost 500 clients – from all-pro athletes to his mother – had entrusted to the charismatic hedge-fund manager. Federal agents collared him right at the pool.
 Keith Hadley/AJC | ||
| Kirk Wright spent $1 million remodeling his home in Marietta home, described in a Wall Street Journal blog as 'a junior-varsity version of the Soprano family's... McMansion.' | ||
 Bita Honarvar/AJC | ||
| From left, Colin Lord, Kasandra Pantoja and Kirk Wrightstand in front of Booker T. Washington High School, the pilot school for their Stock Market Scholars program. The three college friends founded the program to teach students the basics of the stock market and investing | ||
 Keith Hadley/AJC | ||
| Kirk Wright's Marietta house was put up for auction. | ||
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His last days on the planet were another matter. He awaited sentencing in a two-man jail cell in Union City, facing up to 710 years in prison after he was convicted in federal court on 47 counts of fraud and money laundering.
He had the cell to himself, but ate meals with 10 other inmates outfitted in the same government-issue jumpsuits — his own Hugo Boss suits, 50 pairs of shoes and $50,000 watch auctioned off long ago.
Yet many who knew him were shocked when Kirk Wright, who arrived eight years ago with a Harvard degree to remake Atlanta into a center of African-American finance, hanged himself with bedsheets over the Memorial Day weekend.
Few believed Wright, 37, would ever give up on getting back his old life — mansions, fast cars, a corporate box at the Georgia Dome. Smooth, smart and maniacally focused, he once confided he might chuck investing for preaching. He said it could be less problematic and more profitable.
"I thought he was going to go down like a kamikaze," said Bruce Kirwan, an Atlanta lawyer who once represented Wright. "A person who does what he did always thinks he can talk his way out of any situation, because he talked his way into it."
Though he leaves behind a wife and four sons from a previous marriage, some cheered Wright's departure.
"What, you think I was pulling on his torso while the bedsheet tightened around his neck?" said Scott Baker, a Massachusetts building contractor who lost about $3 million with Wright's firm. "I would've liked to."
Wright's story is a smoke-and-mirrors tale centered in the newest New South, one where many of the players, including doctors and athletes, were part of black Atlanta's new-money elite.
In its wake, it leaves outraged investors, wrecked futures, ongoing lawsuits and rumors of millions still stashed in secret overseas accounts.
It also leaves endless questions about how he became who he was, and why he killed himself. Few expect answers. Most see Wright's death as his last revenge.
Baker: "All the answers died with Kirk Wright."
Broke-student model
The son of Jamaican immigrants, Wright grew up in a working-class neighborhood in the Bronx, N.Y. A bright, personable kid, he went on to Binghamton University in New York, on a financial-need scholarship.
A political science major – he took a lone economics course – his college life appeared lifted from the broke-student handbook: he ate spaghetti, gave haircuts out of his room, partied. He was also active in the black student union and talked about community work.
"The Kirk I knew spent a lot of hours trying to figure out the best ways to improve the lot of people of color," said Colin Lord, a fellow student who became godfather to one of Wright's sons.
At 19, Lord said, Wright was in a car accident that killed his closest friend, whom he sat beside in the back seat. Surgeries left permanent scars on Wright.
"He became a lot more serious about school work," said Darryl Thomas, whom Wright worked for as a teacher's assistant in Thomas' political science class.
Wright went on to Harvard and in 1995 earned a master's degree in public policy. He also joined investment clubs, he once said in an interview, with settlement money from the accident.
Wright married his college sweetheart and worked for a consulting company outside Washington, D.C. He left at the height of the day-trader craze, and in 1997 started International Management Associates from his suburban Virginia home. Initial investors were family and friends.
IMA soon attracted two black Atlanta anesthesiologists, who then steered Wright to other local African-Americans in the medical community. Wright moved to Atlanta in 2000, touting returns of almost 30 percent.
"He went to the hub of black society in the South knowing full well there was great opportunity there," said Calvin Paris, a retired black businessman in Florida who lost $1 million with IMA. "He did his market research well."
At first, Wright appeared interested in helping the community, just like he talked about in college. He created a nonprofit foundation to teach money management to inner-city high school students. Lord moved to Atlanta to help run it, but soon left, disillusioned by his college buddy's money fixation. Other old friends also became estranged from Wright, and he and his wife divorced in 2003.
"He evolved into something I couldn't recognize," Lord said.
He did live the life. His six luxury cars included a Lamborghini, Bentley and Aston Martin. He bought houses in Florida and California, and put $1 million into remodeling his Marietta home, which a Wall Street Journal blog once described as "a junior-varsity version of the Soprano family's... McMansion." When he remarried in 2006 – only months before IMA's accounts were found virtually bare — he threw a $500,000 reception.
IMA boomed beyond Atlanta and black clients. Offices opened in Los Angeles, New York and Las Vegas. Investors included Bill Johnson, former CEO of Scientific Atlanta.
"There was never anything about Kirk Wright that seemed suspicious," said Johnson, who lost millions. "He was not the kind of guy who would even blink when telling you a lie."
In 2004, former football star Steve Atwater invested $1.5 million.
Shown huge returns on what turned out to be sham statements, other players rushed in, investing almost $20 million.
Prosecutors said at trial that Wright ran a Ponzi scheme at least since 2001: paying some investors to avoid suspicion while pocketing much of the rest. It began to unravel in December 2005, when the football players demanded money back. In January 2006, the checks they were sent bounced.
They filed suit, and the feds moved in.
'Zero conscience'
The Web site of a corporate investigations firm entered Wright on its "White Collar Rogues Gallery," in league with disgraced heavyweights like Bernie Ebbers, Leona Helmsley, even Carlo Ponzi. A magazine devoted to Harvard graduates named him to its top-five list of "Most Embarrassing Alumni."
Many investors not only felt ripped off, but personally betrayed. Among those who lost everything: a retired nurse who knew Wright from his childhood, and the father of the boy killed in the car accident back in college.
Wright blamed the losses on mismanagement, mostly on the part of others.
"Here's a guy who had zero conscience," Johnson said.
Lord saw something else during a jail visit after Wright's arrest. Estranged for years, Wright talked that afternoon about how sorry he was for abandoning old friends, how he wished he could take make it all up.
"He said, 'I hurt a lot of people. I can't do this anymore,'" Lord recalled. "I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'I'm ready to check out.'"
Wright didn't leave a note when he took his life two weeks ago. His body was flown to New York for burial this week.
"There's nothing you can take with you when you leave this world," said Baker, the contractor who lost about $3 million. "It's what you leave behind. He left behind 500 shattered lives and four children who have no father.
"I can't believe that's a legacy somebody would sign up for."
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