Close Close
Popular Financial Topics Discover relevant content from across the suite of ALM legal publications From the Industry More content from ThinkAdvisor and select sponsors Investment Advisor Issue Gallery Read digital editions of Investment Advisor Magazine Tax Facts Get clear, current, and reliable answers to pressing tax questions
Luminaries Awards
ThinkAdvisor

Regulation and Compliance > Litigation

Preliminary Hearing Set for LPL Network Firm Employee Charged in Double Murder

X
Your article was successfully shared with the contacts you provided.

What You Need to Know

  • Double murder suspect Ramy Fahim was a research associate for LPL network RIA firm Pence Wealth Management.
  • He is accused of killing his co-worker, who was a marketing/media assistant, and the co-worker's roommate.
  • Pence Wealth and the owner of the apartment complex where the victims lived face a wrongful death suit.

The next hearing for Ramy Hany Mounir Fahim, the employee at LPL-affiliated RIA firm Pence Wealth Management arrested in April 2022 as a suspect in a double homicide, has been scheduled for 8:30 a.m. on Aug. 15, according to the website of the Superior Court of California for Orange County.

The preliminary hearing will be held at the court’s North Justice Center in Fullerton. The new date was set Friday during the third pretrial hearing for Fahim, according to the website.

Fahim, of Irvine, California, was charged with special circumstances murders for allegedly stabbing his co-worker and the co-worker’s roommate to death in their Anaheim apartment, according to Todd Spitzer, district attorney for Orange County.

The “special circumstances of lying in wait and multiple murders” make Fahim “eligible for the death penalty,” Spitzer said last year.

Fahim was charged with eight felony counts, including two counts of murder and two enhancements each of lying in wait, multiple murders and the personal use of a deadly weapon, Spitzer said in an April 2022 news release.

Fahim is accused of stabbing his co-worker, Griffin Cuomo, 23, and then stabbing Cuomo’s roommate, Jonathan Bahm, 23, in their Katella Avenue apartment in Anaheim at around 6:30 a.m. on April 19, 2022.

Pence Named in Wrongful Death Suit

In October, a wrongful death complaint was filed in the Orange County Superior Court by Los Angeles law firm Boucher LLP on behalf of Cuomo’s mother, Wendy Cuomo, against Pence Wealth Management and Laila Pence and Dryden Pence, president and chief investment officer, respectively. In addition, Advanced Management, owner of the Stadium House Apartment Complex, where the victims lived, was named as a defendant.

The next hearing scheduled in that case is a case management conference at 9 a.m. on July 17, followed by another hearing at 9 a.m. on Aug. 7, according to the court’s website.

Fahim had a “long history of mental health issues and a documented propensity for violence,” Boucher said in announcing the complaint. Pence Wealth Management had been “repeatedly warned that Fahim had a tendency toward violence, but they overlooked it, allegedly due to Laila Pence’s relationship with Fahim’s mother, Nabila Makram, the former Egyptian Minister of Immigration and Expatriate Affairs,” the firm alleged.

Despite not being a resident of Stadium House, Fahim was allowed into the building and “loitered in the complex’s common areas for more than six hours,” according to the law firm.

“This predictable, yet completely unchecked, act of violence is the product of Pence Wealth and Stadium House prioritizing their financial interests while discounting the value of human life,” said Raymond P. Boucher, the law firm’s founder and attorney for Wendy Cuomo.

“When the safety and life of others is at stake, business should not go on as usual,” Boucher continued. “Pence Wealth and Stadium House had duties to protect Griffin and Jonathan from Fahim. Their conscious failure to do so in order to improve their bottom lines has robbed both young men of their futures and their families of their support.”

Griffin Cuomo was a 23-year-old recent graduate of the Chapman University School of Communication, according to the law firm.

“The morning of his murder, he woke up around 6 a.m. to get ready to go to work at Pence Wealth,” the firm said. “As he did every morning, Griffin texted his mother, Wendy, a photograph of his outfit for work that day. Wendy told Griffin he looked handsome. Neither expected this would be their final conversation.”

Only moments after that, Griffin Cuomo left the apartment he rented at Stadium House and was allegedly murdered in the hallway by Fahim, who then allegedly murdered Bahm also.

The complaint made several allegations of negligence leading to wrongful death. It alleged Laila Pence and her husband, Dryden Pence, the co-founders of PWM, hired Fahim because of Laila’s longtime relationship with Fahim’s mother.

“The hiring process for Ramy was carried out with minimum effort and short-circuited anything resembling due diligence,” according to Boucher.

While working at PWM, “Fahim harassed, intimated, and threatened his coworkers,” Boucher claimed. Fahim was also granted “unfettered access to his co-workers’ personal information” through the PWM computer system, a violation of California law, the law firm alleged, adding that, with that info, he discovered Griffin’s home address at Stadium House.

Suspicious Activity

A building security guard encountered Fahim on the roof of the apartment complex around midnight on April 18, 2022, hours before the killings, according to Spitzer. Fahim was also seen on the same floor of the victims’ apartment the morning of the killings.

Fahim was still inside the victims’ apartment and “suffering from a minor injury” when Anaheim police responded to the 911 call, the Anaheim Police Department said in an April 20 news release.

He was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment and was then “interviewed by homicide detectives who ultimately placed Fahim under arrest for the murder of the two victims,” APD said, adding, “A knife believed to be used in the murders was also located at the crime scene” and Fahim’s vehicle was located nearby and seized by APD as evidence.

“These young men were just starting to live out their dreams and find their places in the world. But an intruder who stalked them and then slashed them to death in their own home interrupted those dreams,” Spitzer said in a statement. “The callous way that two young lives were ended cannot be ignored and we will do everything we can to ensure justice is served.”

Cuomo was a marketing/media assistant for Pence, according to the firm’s website. Fahim was a research associate at Pence, according to his LinkedIn profile.

“We send our heartfelt condolences to those impacted during this difficult time,” an LPL spokesperson told ThinkAdvisor in April 2022.

(Photo of Ramy Fahim: Anaheim Police Department)


NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.