Billionaire Marc Lasry claims former hedge fund executive tried to blackmail him for $50 million: lawsuit

Hedge fund titan Marc Lasry claimed a former executive at his company tried to blackmail him for $50 million by threatening to spread false claims about the company, according to a lawsuit filed by the billionaire.

The co-founder of Avenue Capital Group accused Gina Strum of threatening to make things “really, really, ugly” for Lasry and his company unless he forked over the money, according to the court complaint filed Friday of New York State.

Strum served as senior vice president and then senior general manager of Lasry’s Park Avenue company from 2009 to 2013, according to public records.

Lasry — the 65-year-old former owner of the Milwaukee Bucks and a top Democratic fundraiser for Vice President Kamala Harris — said in the lawsuit that Avenue gave Strum a severance package in 2013 after threatening to make false accusations against the company. .

The company, which Lasry co-founded with her sister Sonia Gardner, also agreed to keep Strum on as a consultant if she was unable to find other employment “rather than face undue consequences from a public report alleging false accusations,” according to the complaint.

However, his contact with Lasry over the past decade “veered into the personal, obsessive and just plain inappropriate,” the lawsuit says.

“Plaintiffs suffered from Ms. Strum’s behavior because they concluded that if they did not do so, she would carry out her malicious threats to harm them,” the complaint states. “In retrospect, the decision to engage with Ms. Strum and accede to her demands was inappropriate, as Ms. Strum was unable (or unwilling) to find other employment and kept coming back to demand work and money from Avenue .”

Strum — who earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1999, according to his LinkedIn account — allegedly sent sinister emails and text messages to the married Lasry.

In one post, she wrote: “Black and navy are your colors. I remember the first time I met you. . . You were wearing a black turtleneck. I started sweating,” according to the complaint.

In another, Strum reportedly said, “You’re a lovebug to me.” »

His lawyer Daniel Kaiser refuted the allegations, telling Bloomberg News that the lawsuit was “blatantly fabricated and retaliatory, a continuation of his attempt to control and harass Ms. Strum.”

The Post has contacted Strum and Kaiser for comment.

During his time with the company, Strum would accompany Lasry to raise money from pensions like Philadelphia and New Hampshire Retirement Systems, according to public records.

Strum launched his own company, Calamos Avenue Management in 2019, according to his LinkedIn account.

That same year, Strum and Avenue agreed that she would receive $750,000 for certain consulting work, the complaint states. But after Strum received the final payments from that deal earlier this year, she “renewed her threats of extortion,” according to the lawsuit.

A spokesperson for Avenue told the Post: “Ms. Strum…repeatedly threatened to smear the reputations of Mr. Lasry, Avenue and Ms. Gardner, with the stated and malicious intent of destroying their business.” This trial aims to put an end to that.

Avenue, which specializes in purchasing distressed assets, manages $12 billion in assets.

The firm notably hired Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of the former president and former secretary of state, from 2006 to 2009.