Empiricus founder arrested in the US confesses to crime.

Do Infomoney - Arrested in June 2018 in Switzerland and later extradited to the United States, manager Marcos Eduardo Elias, one of the founders of Empiricus, confessed to the crime of conspiracy against US financial institutions last Monday (4), according to a statement issued by the local Justice Department on behalf of New York prosecutor Geoffrey S. Berman.

According to the prosecution, Elias, an investment manager and analyst, allegedly misappropriated more than US$750 belonging to US financial institutions using falsified documents from Brazilian clients and a shell company in Panama, according to the statement. His trial will take place on April 4th and could result in a 4-year prison sentence.

A mechanical engineer who graduated from the Polytechnic School of USP (University of São Paulo) with an MBA in the USA, Elias was considered a prodigy: at age 30 he reached the position of chief analyst at the French bank BNP in Brazil. His first internship was at the investment bank Bozzano Simonsen. "The engineering internship at Poli could only be started in the fifth year, but I needed to earn money before then. That's how I entered the financial market," Elias himself said in 2014 during an interview with InfoMoney.

At 22, he had already become a stock analyst. Since he always liked taking risks, he used the bonus he earned (common in the financial market) to engage in forward contracts – which allow for high leverage.

From analyst, Elias became a fund manager and entrepreneur in the financial market. In 2001, he began working at the asset management firm Gas, which years later was acquired by Vinci Partners – a firm created by former directors of Pactual and which today has over R$ 22 billion in assets under management. In 2010, he was one of the founders of the independent research firm Empiricus Research, from which he left in 2012. In addition, he was a director at Guiar Investimentos and Gradual Investimentos, a professor at FGV, and a partner at Link Investimentos.

His LinkedIn profile currently lists him as a partner at the analysis firm Modena Capital. However, one of the partners stated that the company's operations ceased in early 2018. Check out a profile of Elias published at the time of his arrest last year here.