'Financial upheavals' ate up US$1m of Gerald Chow's money, court told
College consultant sued for return of money paid by Chow Sang Sang's boss for sons' enrollment blames financial upheavals
An American college-admissions consultant who received US$2.2 million from a Hong Kong family to support their sons' education in the United States says more than half of the money has been lost in investments.
Mark Zimny is facing a US lawsuit filed by Gerald Chow King-sing, executive director of the jewellery giant Chow Sang Sang Holdings, and his wife, Lily, for the return of the money after their sons failed to enter Harvard University.
The plaintiffs did not know about the investment losses until they launched the legal action in a court in Massachusetts in 2010, Zimny told the South China Morning Post this week.
He said the couple had paid the US$2 million for consulting services and support rendered over five years for their two sons to be educated in the US.
That was in 2007, when the two children were aged 16 and 14, court documents showed. The couple now accuse Zimny of fraud and breach of contract after he failed to get the children into Harvard as promised.
Zimny said they had given him the mandate to invest the money, but were not concerned how it was distributed in the stock market.
"Not once did Gerald Chow call me and ask how the investment was going," he said.