Lakian is the founder and current board chairman of the Fort Hill Group, Inc., an investment banking and venture capital firm based in New York City.
His financial service companies have served a number of high-profile Wall Street firms, including Paine Webber, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank and Solomon Smith Barney.
Bank Clothiers, Peoples Department Stores, Apparel Marketing Corporation, FNEDC, Sheffield Medical Technologies, The Molloy Group, and Standard Life of Indiana.
[5] After a The Boston Globe story revealed that he had made several exaggerations about his background, he was forced to publicly confess and lost the nomination to John W. Sears.
[7] The jury found that the article contained some false information, but awarded no judgment, stating that Lakian had failed to prove any actual harm.
[9] On Friday, February 5, 2016, John Lakian pleaded guilty to two counts of securities fraud for defrauding investors out of millions of dollars in two separate schemes.
[11] According to Robert L. Capers, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, "The defendants played a confidence game, stealing investors' hard-earned money through lies and deceit to use for their own purposes".