A crash, some coke and now this hedge-funder's driver's license is on ice.
Sahm Adrangi, founder and chief investment officer of Kerrisdale Capital, was reportedly arrested early Saturday on charges of drunken driving and cocaine possession after a two-car smashup in the Hamptons.
The 35-year-old Yale grad reportedly was behind the wheel of a 2015 BMW convertible at 3 a.m on Montauk Highway in Amangansett, New York, when it crashed into an SUV going in the other direction.
The East Hampton Star, which first reported the arrest, said Adrangi and the unidentified woman who was driving the Ford SUV told police that the other had crossed over the double-yellow line before they collided.
Adrangi, who was also given a speeding citation in addition to the DUI and cocaine-related charges, had his license suspended by an East Hampton justice Saturday morning because of his refusal to take a breath test after the crash, the paper reported. He was released after posting $1,000 bail.
When CNBC called Kerrisdale Capital's office in Manhattan for comment, a receptionist said, "He's in a meeting right now," and took a message. Adrangi, who founded the firm in 2009, has not called back.
His firm's website said Adrangi is "perhaps best known for short research activism," and that he "first made a name for himself shorting fraudulent Chinese companies, with several having since become the subject of enforcement actions by the Securities and Exchange Commission."
"Mr. Adrangi began his career in the leveraged finance investment banking group of Deutsche Bank and was subsequently an analyst at the multi-billion-dollar distressed debt hedge fund, Longacre Management," the site says.
Adrangi was profiled in New York magazine in 2013 in an article that called him "the hedge-fund world's first full-on social-media investor" who "can move markets with the flick of a tweet."
After his success with the Chinese company shorts, "his bedroom operation turned into a $250 million fund," the article said.