Florida money manager Arthur Nadel likely planned his disappearance, police say. According to a report in the Associated Press, investigators in Sarasota believe Nadel “doesn’t want to be found.”
Nadel was president of Scoop Management Inc., a firm that managed six private investment funds. The funds managed by Scoop included Viking IRA, Valhalla Investment Partners LP, Viking, Victory, Victory IRA and Scoop Real Estate. Viking IRA, Valhalla and Viking funds were managed by Nadel under contract with his partner and Valhalla founder Neil Moody. The other three were Nadel’s own funds.
According to The New York Times, Nadel was first reported missing by his family last Wednesday. He is said to have left a suicide note, and his family said he sounded “distraughtâ€. The note apparently expressed his guilt over losing his investors’ money.
A statement from the Sarasota sheriff’s office said that foul play was not involved in Nadel’s disappearance. The office also said it traced a weekend phone call he allegedly made to his wife from Slidell, Louisiana, and had concluded that Nadel did not follow through with his suicide threat. While the Sarasota sheriff’s office has discontinued its search for Nadel, the FBI and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are still looking for him.
Scoop Management managed money for around 600 investors.  So far, about 45 have made complaints to law enforcement authorities about Nadel since his disappearance.
According to the Associated Press, Nadel was supposed to deliver a payouts totaling $50 million to some of his estimated 600 investors from across the country on January 15. The six funds Nadel managed had sustained losses in October, but an internal accountant for Scoop Management told the Associated Press that Nadel did not seem nervous about the redemption. Scoop apparently was telling investors as early as October that redemptions from its funds could not be made until January 15 – one day after Nadel’s disappearance.
