Albert Vilar (October 4, 1940 – September 4, 2021)[1] was an American investment manager who became particularly known as a patron of opera companies, performing arts organizations, and educational institutions.
Amerindo's main investment activities were in technology funds, which the stock market crash of 2000 severely affected.
The value of the Amerindo funds declined sharply, and Vilar began to default on his pledges to arts institutions.
[11] It was alleged that Vilar used the money to pay for some home repairs and to make good on previously-promised charitable contributions.
Stewart continues: "if convicted, Vilar and Tanaka face fines of more than ten million dollars and prison terms of up to a hundred and fifty-five years.
In fact, as with many other funds investing in internet companies, investors had already been pulling out for some time, reducing assets and causing expense ratios to increase.
[16] In April 2014, Vilar was returned to prison, and sentenced to an additional year for preventing the victims' families from recovering their lost funds.
[17] In a 2000 interview with Philipp Blom, Vilar had estimated his donations to opera houses and other performing arts centers in some 150 million dollars granted over the previous 10 years[18] Many of the organizations to which Vilar had pledged donations gradually began to remove his name from parts of their institutions where it had been prominently placed.
In July 2005 the Royal Opera House announced that, following Vilar's failure to maintain the agreed payment schedule, his name would be removed from the building.
(That program was subsequently funded by, and named after, Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s controversial Secretary of Education, and her husband, Richard, and later moved to the University of Maryland.)