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Saturday, April 07, 2007

Absent-Minded Professor

His university, Charleston Southern, is on the Templeton Foundation's Honor Roll of Character Building schools. CSU recently named him an "outstanding faculty member."

But Al Parish, professor of economics, local media personality, and wearer of loud suits, seems to be guilty of fraud:


An economics professor known for his flamboyant suits and million dollar pen collection claimed amnesia after federal investigators discovered about $134 million missing from several investment funds he managed, according to court documents.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said Al Parish and Parish Economics LLD provided false statements to his 300 investors indicating the five funds were trading profitably, when “in fact, brokerage accounts represented to hold millions of dollars of assets for the funds do not hold significant funds.”

The SEC said after it attempted to contact Parish, “he checked into a local hospital claiming to have amnesia.”

The Charleston Southern University professor reported dizzy spells and blurred vision while teaching on March 29 and was taken to Trident Medical Center, The (Charleston) Post and Courier reported in Friday’s edition. Five days later, the SEC filed its lawsuit.

School officials did not return phone calls to the Associated Press on Friday, and the hospital would not confirm that Parish was a patient. The newspaper reported that Parish remained hospitalized Thursday.

... A federal judge has frozen his assets.

The SEC said Parish’s funds had been operating since 1986 and four of the funds were “informal pools of money.”

The pools allowed investors to put money in commodities and securities futures products, bonds, stocks and hard assets such as expensive watches, jewelry and fine art. The fifth fund was Summerville Hard Assets LLC, which purported to invest in various hard assets such as jewelry and collectibles.

The SEC said investigators began looking into Parish’s funds in February and found that statements Parish sent to clients and would-be investors did not match the amounts in his brokerage accounts.

Parish was known in Charleston to cut a flashy figure in his colorful suits and offered investment tips at speaking engagements. ... In November, Parish purchased a diamond-studded fountain pen worth $170,000. He put it on display at a Charleston store along with others from his $1.2 million pen collection.