Exclusive | Wall Street con man used 87-year-old Obama donor as front to secretly run Nasdaq firm despite SEC ban: suit

A convicted Wall Street swindler was barred for life from serving as an officer or director of a public company — but secretly pulled the strings at a $115 million Nasdaq venture anyway, a bombshell federal lawsuit alleges.Daniel L.Gordon, who served prison time for swiping $43 million from Merrill Lynch, agreed to the lifetime ban in 2003 to settle SEC charges involving the theft and other alleged energy-trading fraud.Named New York’s No.

1 tax deadbeat in 2016, Gordon was exposed by The Post last week as still owing a whopping $59.1 million.The lawsuit claims Gordon secretly controlled Sagaliam Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, while an 87-year-old Florida real estate mogul, Alan H.Ginsburg, was identified in SEC filings as controlling the company’s sponsor — the private vehicle through which insiders held a large block of shares.Ginsburg, a Barack Obama donor and philanthropist whose name adorns a 15-story Orlando hospital tower, was actually “serving as a front for Gordon’s control,” according to the suit.Sagaliam later struck a deal valuing Gordon’s own firm’s Saudi Applebee’s business at $379 million — a proposed takeover that would have handed his investment firm $180 million in stock.

The deal never closed.Meanwhile, Gordon has been living it up in a $5 million California mansion with a swim-up bar, running a prison-reform charity praised by Gov.Gavin Newsom and peddling an inhalable version of Viagra’s active ingredient.The allegations come from BN Holdings Trust, whose Texas trustees bought a controlling interest in Sagaliam’s sponsor in 2023.

They are suing Ginsburg and unidentified defendants in Manhattan federal court for at least $14 million, claiming they were deceived about Gordon’s role and millions of dollars in undisclosed liabilities.Gordon’s involvement had already set off alarm bells among Sagaliam’s original lawyers.In July 2021, attorneys at Ellenoff Grossman & Schole wa...