Billionaire Marc Lasry says former hedge fund executive is trying to blackmail him for $50M: lawsuit
Hedge fund titan Marc Lasry claimed a former female executive at his firm was trying to blackmail him for $50 million by threatening to spread false allegations about the firm, according to a lawsuit filed by the billionaire.
The Avenue Capital Group co-founder accused Gina Strum of threatening to make it “really, really, ugly” for Lasry and his company unless he forked over the money, according to the complaint, which was filed Friday in New York State court.
Strum was a senior vice president and then a senior managing director at Lasry’s Park Avenue firm from 2009 to 2013, according to public records.
Lasry — the 65-year-old former owner of the Milwaukee Bucks and a major Democratic fund-raiser for Vice President Kamala Harris — said in the lawsuit that Avenue gave Strum a severance package in 2013 after she threatened to make false accusations about the firm.
The company, which Lasry co-founded with his sister Sonia Gardner, also agreed to keep Strum on as a consultant if she could not find another job “rather than face undue fallout from a public report of false accusations,” according to the complaint.
However, her contact with Lasry over the past decade “veered towards the personal, obsessive and simply inappropriate,” the lawsuit said.
“Plaintiffs suffered through Ms. Strum’s conduct because they concluded that, if they did not, she would carry out her malicious threats to damage them,” the complaint said. “In retrospect, the decision to engage with Ms. Strum and accede to her demands was misplaced, as Ms. Strum was unable (or unwilling) to find another job and always returned to demand work and money from Avenue.”
Strum — who got her undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1999, according to her LinkedIn account — allegedly sent the married Lasry lurid emails and texts.
In one message, she wrote “Black and navy are your colors. I remember the first time I met you . . . You were in a black turtleneck. I started sweating,” according to the complaint.
In another, Strum allegedly said, “You are a lovebug to me.”
Her lawyer Daniel Kaiser refuted the allegations, telling Bloomberg News the lawsuit was “blatantly fabricated and retaliatory, a continuation of his attempt to control and harass Ms. Strum.”
The Post reached out to Strum and Kaiser for comment.
During her stint at the firm, Strum would accompany Lasry to raise funds from pensions like Philadelphia’s and the New Hampshire Retirement Systems, according to public records.
Strum started her own firm, Calamos Avenue Management in 2019, according to her LinkedIn account.
That same year, Strum and Avenue agreed she would be paid $750,000 for some consulting work, the complaint said. But after Strum was paid the final installments on that deal earlier this year, she “renewed her extortionate threats,” according to the lawsuit.
An Avenue spokesperson told The Post: “Ms. Strum … has repeatedly threatened to smear the reputations of Mr. Lasry, Avenue, and Ms. Gardner, with the stated and malicious intent to destroy their business. This lawsuit aims to bring that to an end.”
Avenue, which specializes in buying distressed assets, has $12 billion in assets under management.
The firm had famously hired Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of the former president and the former secretary of state, from 2006 to 2009.
