Date: 03-18-2025

Case Style:

United States of America v. Jonathan Moynahan Larmore

Case Number: 24-cr-140

Judge: Paul A. Engelmayer

Court: The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York

Plaintiff's Attorney: The United States Attorney’s Office in New York

Defendant's Attorney:

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Description:

New York, New York criminal defense lawyer represented the Defendant charged with Manipulating WeWork Stock With Fraudulent Tender Offer Scheme
Former Real Estate CEO Sentenced To Five Years In Prison For Manipulating WeWork Stock With Fraudulent Tender Offer Scheme

JONATHAN MOYNAHAN LARMORE was indicted for manipulating the stock price of WeWork, Inc. (“WeWork”) with a fake tender offer designed to fraudulently inflate the value of LARMORE’s own WeWork securities.

LARMORE is the former CEO of Arciterra Companies LLC, a real estate investment and management firm. In the fall of 2023, LARMORE perpetrated a scheme to use a false and fraudulent tender offer to manipulate the stock price of WeWork, a co-working space company that was publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

To execute his scheme, LARMORE created a sham real estate investment firm called Cole Capital Funds LLC (“Cole Capital”). LARMORE then spent more than $775,000 buying tens of thousands of cheap, short-dated, out-of-the-money WeWork call options and hundreds of thousands of shares of WeWork common stock. On November 3, 2023, LARMORE published a fake press release announcing that Cole Capital proposed to acquire 51% of all outstanding shares owned by minority shareholders of WeWork at a more-than-700% premium in an all-cash offer worth more than $77 million. At the time, WeWork was on the verge of bankruptcy. The press release itself contained a number of false and misleading claims about LARMORE and Cole Capital, and their ability to carry through with the purported tender offer.

In fact, neither LARMORE nor Cole Capital had the intent or ability to execute the announced tender offer. Instead, LARMORE intended for news of the tender offer to fraudulently inflate WeWork’s share price and, thereby, to increase the value of LARMORE’s newly acquired WeWork call options and shares.

Approximately one minute after LARMORE’s press release about his fraudulent tender offer was published, WeWork’s share price quickly increased during after-hours trading by more than 70% and continued to rise to a high of more than 150% over the stock price prior to the publication of the press release. The WeWork call options LARMORE purchased could have made him tens of millions of dollars with a big enough spike to WeWork’s stock price, but the vast majority of the options expired before LARMORE could publish his manipulative press release. The following Monday, November 6, 2023, WeWork filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. LARMORE never followed through on his fraudulent tender offer.

Outcome:

Defendant was found guilty and sentenced to Five Years In Prison and three years of supervised release during which the defendant must perform 500 hours of community service.

Plaintiff's Experts:

Defendant's Experts:

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