New Arraignment Set for LPL Network Firm Worker Charged in Double Slaying

What You Need to Know

Ramy Hany Mounir Fahim is accused of murdering a young co-worker and the co-worker's roommate.
Fahim was a research associate at Pence Wealth Management.
Court records suggest a parent's civil suit against the firm may be at least partly settled.

The employee at LPL-affiliated RIA firm Pence Wealth Management accused of fatally stabbing a co-worker and the co-worker’s roommate in April 2022 is scheduled to undergo a second arraignment in late May, according to the prosecutor’s office.

Ramy Hany Mounir Fahim, of Irvine, California, has been charged with murdering co-worker Griffin Cuomo, 23, and Cuomo’s roommate, Jonathan Bahm, 23, at their Anaheim apartment.

The arraignment expected on May 24 in California Superior Court in Orange County follows a preliminary hearing last August in which Fahim was held to answer on the charges, a spokesman for the Orange County district attorney’s office told ThinkAdvisor by email Tuesday.

“Generally speaking, a defendant is arraigned after charges are filed and again if a judge finds enough evidence was presented at a preliminary hearing,” the spokesman said.

Fahim, who was 26 in April 2022 when the stabbings occurred, was charged with “special circumstances murders” in the case (#22NF1025); the special circumstances of lying in wait and multiple murders make him eligible for the death penalty, prosecutors said in a press release after his arrest.

In addition to two murder counts, Fahim was charged with use of a knife to commit the crimes, lying in wait to murder Cuomo and murdering Bahm to avoid arrest, according to a court document.

Wrongful Death Suit

In October 2022, Cuomo’s mother, Wendy Cuomo, filed a wrongful death civil lawsuit against Pence Wealth Management and its co-founders, Laila Pence and Dryden Pence. The suit also named other defendants, including Advanced Management, which owned the apartment complex where the victims lived and were killed.

Among other contentions, the lawyer representing Wendy Cuomo alleged at the time that the Pence firm 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.”

Civil court records in California Superior Court in Orange County indicate that Cuomo’s lawsuit and cases filed by the victims’ other parents have been consolidated, and suggest that settlements have been entered between the Pence defendants and the parents. Various hearings are scheduled in the consolidated civil cases.