“A very intelligent young man”

That’s how John Mansch, chief of the Union City, Georgia, jail, described Kirk Wright, the convicted hedge fund fraudster, who committed suicide by hanging himself in his jail cell last Saturday morning.

Mansch also told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that Wright, 37 years old, didn’t give any indication that he was under duress. Gee, you mean after being convicted of 47 counts of fraud and facing the possibility of more than 700 years in prison he wasn’t under duress?

Wright knew his game was up. Although he had been friends with some National Football League players who invested their money in his firm, International Management Associates, all they wanted from him now was their money back.

There was scant chance that Wright would ever have been able to pay all his investors back, and a good chance he would spend the rest of his life behind bars. Although there is an old maxim that “suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem,” it’s doubtful that Wright’s problems were temporary, at least as he saw them.

A lawyer representing some of Wright’s victims, a group of six former NFL players, said Wright’s death will not affect their lawsuit against the NFL and the players union.
Marlon Kimpson said the lawsuit, which accuses the player’s union of endorsing IMA in spite of liens against Wright, will move forward, and the union hadn’t planned to call Wright as a witness.

According to prosecutors, IMA collected more than $155m, of which Wright returned $70m to clients in a Ponzi scheme, lost $31m in his investments, and used the rest of it to live a luxurious lifestyle.