The business partner of missing California mother Heidi Planck’s boss used Hunter Biden’s name to drum up business and had rumored ties to the Gambino
The business partner of missing California mother Heidi Planck’s boss used Hunter Biden‘s name to drum up business and had rumored ties to the Gambino crime family, it has emerged.
Planck, 39, has not been seen since October 17.
On Monday investigators began combing a landfill north of Los Angeles, where the refuse from an apartment building in which she was believed to have been killed is taken.
Her ex-husband, Jim Wayne, said that he was immediately concerned her disappearance could be connected to her work as an accountant and bookkeeper for an investment management firm.
Wayne previously told DailyMail.com he believes ‘the answer to Heidi’s whereabouts lies with her boss, Jason Sugarman, and his company.’
Sugarman, a minority owner of the MLS team Los Angeles FC, is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for a $43million fraud scheme.
Heidi Planck, 39, has been missing since October 17. Investigators on Monday began searching a trash dump north of Los Angeles
The Los Angeles Police Department recently found unspecified forensic evidence leading them to believe that there was an ‘incident’ resulting in Planck’s death
California police are searching Chiquita Canyon Landfill in the city of Castaic for the possible remains of Heidi Planck, 39, who went missing on October 17
Planck is financial controller for Camden Capital Partners, whose managing partner Jason Sugarman (left) is under investigation for a $43M fraud scheme. Sugarman’s business partner Jason Galanis (right) is currently in prison for fraud
The mother-of-one left her home on October 17 in the Reynier Village district, and was last seen at her son’s football game in Downey. Security footage showed her walking her dog near a luxury apartment building in downtown LA less than an hour after she left the game. Her dog was later found alone on the 28th floor of the building. The alarm was raised when Planck failed to pick her son up from school in Westwood, on October 20
Sugarman’s business partner Jason Galanis is currently serving a sentence of more than 15 years in federal prison in San Pedro, California, for multiple frauds.
He was also ordered to forfeit $80 million when he was sentenced in September 2020.
Hunter Biden, seen during the Thanksgiving break with his father Joe in Nantucket, found his name used by Galanis, Biden’s lawyer said
Galanis’s fraud saw him use Hunter Biden’s name to try and give the veneer of legitimacy and entice investors.
One of Galanis’s alleged co-conspirators in the affair, which took place between 2014 and 2016, was Devon Archer, a longtime business partner and friend of Hunter Biden, having met when they were both students at Yale.
Both Archer and Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company.
Hunter’s lawyer, George Mesires, said Hunter Biden had nothing to do with Galanis and Archer’s scheme.
‘The defendants invoked and used Hunter’s name – without his knowledge – to lend their business venture more credibility,’ Mesires said.
‘As soon as Hunter learned of the illegal conduct, and that his name was being used in this unauthorized and inappropriate manner, Hunter took immediate steps to ensure that his business interests would not be associated with the Burnham Group or with any of the defendants.’
Galanis is also accused of being an associate of the Gambino crime family.
His brother, Derek Galanis, told The Sun his father knew Rosario Gambino, now 79, a Sicilian mobster who was imprisoned in Los Angeles from 1984 until 2006, and then deported in 2009.
In 2019 he was arrested again, in Italy, along with his son Tommy.
The Galanis patriarch, John, was an infamous white-collar criminal indicted at least seven times and sentenced in 1988 to 27 years in prison. In 2019 he was convicted again of fraud, and sentenced to 10 years as part of the same scheme that saw his son Jason imprisoned.
‘My father, John, knew Rosario Gambino and, through him, me and my brother Jason knew Rosario and his son Tommy,’ said Derek Galanis.
‘My brother and my father loved to hang around Tommy Gambino.’
Tommy Gambino is seen in July 2019 being arrested in Palermo in a joint operation between Italian police and the FBI
Planck was last seen on October 17 after leaving her son’s football game in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey at half time
She was then seen on surveillance video walking her dog, Seven, near the Hope + Flower apartment complex – 30 miles away from her home in Downey
Derek Galanis, 49, who was convicted of fraud in relation to another securities conspiracy led by his brother and their father, wrote about his experiences in the book Greed and Fear: The Galanis Crime Family.
Now a personal trainer based in Utah, he told The Sun: ‘I heard my brother and Sugarman talking on the phone all the time, maybe 50 or 60 times.
Derek Galanis, whose brother Jason was a business partner of Heidi Planck’s boss Jason Sugarman, said he did not know if Sugarman was involved in her disappearance
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‘I think it made my brother feel powerful because Sugarman is connected through marriage to the Gubers.
‘Did Sugarman have something to do with Heidi’s disappearance?
‘I don’t know, but I do know my brother and father talked about killing me.
‘Why? Simply because they did not want to pay me my share from the scam.
‘These financial gangsters have God complexes. If you work for them they think you owe them everything, even your right to breathe.’
Sugarman was seen on surveillance camera delivering a bag of muffins to Planck’s home in the Reynier Village section of Los Angeles two days after she disappeared.
Planck worked as a financial controller, overseeing all employees involved in the accounting process at Camden Capital Partners LLC, where Sugarman is a managing partner who is currently under investigation for the $43million fraud scheme.
As previously reported, Wayne said he received a phone call from an official with the Securities and Exchange Commission asking about Sugarman.
‘Heidi knows all of Jason’s and the company’s secrets. She knows where the bones are buried,’ Wayne said.
‘They were interested in Sugarman and his company. They wanted to know what I know about them, and just generally asked me what I thought about Sugarman,’ he said.
Wayne and Planck were married in 2008 and divorced four years later after the birth of their son, who just turned 11
Wayne said he had spoken to Sugarman’s assistant shortly after Planck disappeared and noted that her boss ‘didn’t appear to be too concerned that she had gone missing.’
He claimed Sugarman seemed more interested in making sure that her work computer was returned.
‘While I was on the phone with his assistant, I heard Sugarman in the background barking at his assistant to tell me, ‘make sure he knows I want my laptop’,’ Wayne said.
‘There was no concern at all from my ex-wife’s employer. It’s a multimillion-dollar company, they didn’t offer to hire a private investigator or put up a reward.
‘The only thing they really seemed concerned about was Heidi’s computer,’ he added.
Wayne said he never returned the laptop and instead turned it over to the police.
He then spoke with the assistant again a few days later, but claimed this time the employee accused Planck of ‘siphoning off money from the company.’
When Wayne said he didn’t believe the accusations, the assistant allegedly claimed they had ‘proof’ and sent him several of Heidi’s personal bank statements.
According to Wayne, he never looked at the bank documents in detail and gave them to the police and soon as he got them.
He said cops later told him that Heidi ‘didn’t have a lot of money in her accounts.’
‘It was pretty low of Sugarman and his minions to accuse Heidi of basically embezzling when she’s mysteriously disappeared,’ he said.
He added that he has no idea how her employer had obtained her banking information.
In addition to her connections with Sugarman and his company, court documents reviewed exclusively by DailyMail.com also reveal the California mom has a history of drug abuse, psychotic breakdowns, and bizarre behavior.
According to a statement from her ex-husband, Planck once trashed her then four-year-old son’s bedroom before jumping out of the window and climbing onto neighbors’ roofs semi-naked.
People gather for a candlelit prayer vigil for missing Heidi Planck held on Hope Street in Downtown Los Angeles on November 7
That was after she had told him she had to leave a Rite Aid because it was ‘too intense’ and repeatedly tried to feed him a plate of bacon as he was driving her home.
Wayne made the statement in 2015 as part of his bid to gain custody of their son.
In the 2015 court papers, Wayne, now 63, said he feared his son was in ‘immediate risk of harm,’ from Planck.
Wayne and Planck were married in 2008 and divorced four years later after the birth of their son.
In other papers filed in 2016, Wayne said his ex ‘has a history of acting out in volatile ways.’
Wayne said his ex-wife was addicted to the amphetamine, Adderall.
He claimed she would go to three different doctors so she could get three separate prescriptions, making sure she always paid for two of them in cash so her abuse wouldn’t be discovered.’
Wayne made it clear during the custody hearings that he wanted his son to have a relationship with his mother, but he objected to anything other than monitored visits.
‘I feel her conduct has not shown that she has reached a level that keeps our son out of harm’s way,’ he wrote.
The couple fought for years over who should have care of their son.
Since 2017 they had joint custody, and since her disappearance he has praised her as an ‘incredible’ mother.
Wayne was granted full custody after his ex vanished. In court papers he said he needed to put his son into therapy ‘because he is completely distraught at his mother’s disappearance.’
‘We are at the point where we have to expect the worse and accordingly I am requesting full legal and full physical custody so that I can legally enroll (the boy) into therapy immediately,’ he added.
‘This is an emergency. If we hear from authorities that Heidi has been kidnapped or has died, I fear that (the boy) will be extremely distressed and inconsolable beyond his current mental state.
‘I really want to put (him) into therapy right away to help him cope with whatever news may come our way.’
This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk
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