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Regulation and Compliance > Litigation

Arraignment Set for LPL Network Firm Employee Charged in Double Murder

By Jeff Berman

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What You Need to Know

  • A new hearing has been scheduled for Sept. 6 for Ramy Fahim.
  • Fahim is the employee at LPL Network RIA firm Pence Wealth Management who was arrested last year as a suspect in a double homicide.
  • He was charged with killing a co-worker, Griffin Cuomo, and the co-worker's roommate, Jonathan Bahm.

An arraignment 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 a.m. on Sept. 6, according to the website of the Superior Court of California for Orange County.

The new date was set Wednesday, during a preliminary 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.

Cuomo was a marketing/media assistant for Pence, the firm had said at its 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.

Update on Wrongful Death Suit

Meanwhile, the next hearing in the separate wrongful death lawsuit that Los Angeles law firm Boucher LLP filed in the same court on behalf of Cuomo’s mother, Wendy Cuomo, against Pence Wealth Management and Laila Pence and Dryden Pence, that firm’s president and chief investment officer, respectively, will be Aug. 28 at 9 a.m., according to the court’s website.

Advanced Management, owner of the Stadium House Apartment Complex, where the victims lived, was named as a defendant.

Dryden Pence and Laila Pence didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

Fahim had a “long history of mental health issues and a documented propensity for violence,” Boucher said in announcing the complaint in October.

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.

Griffin Cuomo was a 23-year-old recent graduate of the Chapman University School of Communication.

“The morning of his murder, he woke up around 6 a.m. to get ready to go to work at Pence Wealth,” the law 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 Pence Wealth Management, 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 Pence Wealth Management, “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.

Ramy Fahim. Photo: Anaheim Police Department

Jeff Berman

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