Man Kills His Family and Himself Over Market

[brownsfan019 17]

Really sad that the market can do this to people. I know it's a sad story, but a true one. While most of us here love this business we are in, make sure to always keep things in check...

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/us/08slay.html?ref=business

 

Man Kills His Family and Himself Over Market

 

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By REBECCA CATHCART

Published: October 7, 2008

 

LOS ANGELES — In a suicide note, Karthik Rajaram wrote that he had considered killing only himself because of his financial troubles, but decided to take his family with him.

 

The bodies of Karthik Rajaram and five family members were found in their Los Angeles home.

 

Mr. Rajaram, 45, shot his wife, three sons and mother-in-law in their bedrooms over the weekend, the police said, then shot himself. The police found him on Monday on the floor of a bedroom his youngest sons shared, close to their bodies.

 

On Tuesday, friends and colleagues said they were stunned to learn of the killings and unaware of the family’s financial problems. The police said that in one of his two suicide notes, Mr. Rajaram said he was “broke,” having lost most of his assets in the plummeting stock market. The police said he had been planning the killings for weeks.

 

Mr. Rajaram in 1999 registered a private holding company, SKGL L.L.C., in Nevada to manage his family’s assets, said his lawyer, Christopher R. Grobl of Las Vegas, and renewed the company’s license last December. Mr. Grobl said he had overseen nonfinancial filings for the company and did not know its worth.

 

Mr. Rajaram had been unemployed for several months, the police said. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he worked for Sony Pictures in Los Angeles. He then took a job with the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, said Greg Robinson, a former colleague there.

 

Mr. Robinson said he became friends with Mr. Rajaram and hired him in 2003 to work at Azur Partners, a management consulting firm Mr. Robinson co-founded. But Mr. Rajaram proved unreliable at work, he said, and Mr. Robinson fired him 10 months later.

 

“He was extremely bright and capable but emotionally unstable,” Mr. Robinson said. “We suspected that there was more going on in his life, deeper issues.”

 

A 2001 article in The Daily Telegraph of London said Mr. Rajaram had earned about £875,000, or $1.2 million, after a voluntary liquidation of NanoUniverse, a company he had founded. His initial investment was £12,500, The Telegraph said.

 

Mr. Robinson said that Mr. Rajaram had been involved in various business ventures after that but that the men had not spoken since 2005.

 

“I wish he’d called me; I would have helped him,” Mr. Robinson said, adding: “He was not a violent person. This is very hard to fathom.”

 

Indira Parthasarathy, 72, who was friends with Mr. Rajaram’s wife, Subasri, 39, and her mother, Indra Ramasehan, 69, said the couple’s three sons were standout students. Two of them, Ganesha, 12, and Arjuna, 7, attended schools near their home, and the eldest, Krishna, 19, was in his second year at the University of California, Los Angeles, taking business and economics classes. He had a full scholarship, said Claudia Luther, a university spokeswoman.

 

Victor Bhattacharjee, 22, who was president of the South Asian fraternity Delta Phi Beta when Krishna Rajaram pledged last year, said his friend seemed close to his family, going home every weekend.

 

“He definitely respected his father; he made that obvious,” Mr. Bhattacharjee said. “He mentioned that his father always knew the right thing to do.”

 

Detective Humberto Fajardo of the Los Angeles Police Department said Mr. Rajaram had written two suicide notes, one addressed to the police and one to two friends. In them, he described losing his money in the stock market. He wrote that he had “broken down emotionally, physically and financially,” Detective Fajardo said.

 

On Monday morning, a family friend went to the home after Mrs. Rajaram had missed her usual ride to work at a medical billing company. The friend called the police after finding the house uncharacteristically quiet, with both cars in the driveway and newspapers on the doorstep.

[sdoma 10]

 

“He definitely respected his father; he made that obvious,” Mr. Bhattacharjee said. “He mentioned that his father always knew the right thing to do.”

 

How horribly ironic.

[Soultrader 12]

Yea its a sad story... highlights the struggle of families affected by the current market crisis. You also have thousands of Lehman employees on the job market now.. who lived way beyond their means and even held Lehman stocks. Many are facing serious financial difficulties.

[Kiwi 16]

I can't help agreeing with the average american that a bunch of CEOs etc have been overpaying themselves at everyone else's expense.

 

I'd like to see them exposed to the downside of their companies' performance rather than just the upside. Over here in Aus I saw a bunch of those b'stards running their banks like risk machines and all I could think was "I remember 87 and when they went down the last time." This time "it's the hedge funds' fault" and the government bails them out!

 

 

On a lighter note, these came over IRC while the SPI was pushing -6% for the day (and what a glorious day it has been):

 

CEO --Chief Embezzlement Officer.

CFO-- Corporate Fraud Officer.

BULL MARKET -- A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.

BEAR MARKET -- A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry, and the husband gets no sex.

VALUE INVESTING -- The art of buying low and selling lower.

P/E RATIO -- The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing.

BROKER -- What my broker has made me.

STANDARD & POOR -- Your life in a nutshell.

STOCK ANALYST -- Idiot who just downgraded your stock.

STOCK SPLIT -- When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves.

FINANCIAL PLANNER -- A guy whose phone has been disconnected.

MARKET CORRECTION -- The day after you buy stocks.

CASH FLOW-- The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.

YAHOO -- What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.

WINDOWS -- What you jump out of when you're the sucker who bought Potash @ $240 per share.

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR -- Past year investor who's now locked up in a nuthouse.

PROFIT -- An archaic word no longer in use.

[Soultrader 12]

I can't help agreeing with the average american that a bunch of CEOs etc have been overpaying themselves at everyone else's expense.

 

I'd like to see them exposed to the downside of their companies' performance rather than just the upside. Over here in Aus I saw a bunch of those b'stards running their banks like risk machines and all I could think was "I remember 87 and when they went down the last time." This time "it's the hedge funds' fault" and the government bails them out!

 

 

On a lighter note, these came over IRC while the SPI was pushing -6% for the day (and what a glorious day it has been):

 

CEO --Chief Embezzlement Officer.

CFO-- Corporate Fraud Officer.

BULL MARKET -- A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.

BEAR MARKET -- A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry, and the husband gets no sex.

VALUE INVESTING -- The art of buying low and selling lower.

P/E RATIO -- The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing.

BROKER -- What my broker has made me.

STANDARD & POOR -- Your life in a nutshell.

STOCK ANALYST -- Idiot who just downgraded your stock.

STOCK SPLIT -- When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves.

FINANCIAL PLANNER -- A guy whose phone has been disconnected.

MARKET CORRECTION -- The day after you buy stocks.

CASH FLOW-- The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.

YAHOO -- What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.

WINDOWS -- What you jump out of when you're the sucker who bought Potash @ $240 per share.

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR -- Past year investor who's now locked up in a nuthouse.

PROFIT -- An archaic word no longer in use.

 

hahaha.. nice one Kiwi. :thumbs up:

[Trader333 10]

Really sad that the market can do this to people. I know it's a sad story, but a true one. While most of us here love this business we are in, make sure to always keep things in check...

 

Yes this is very sad and as you say we love this business. But, and in my view, because in most cases this is a zero sum game then when we make money someone else has to lose it. The only lesson this guy needed to learn was to make use of stop losses.

 

 

Paul

[brownsfan019 17]

Yes this is very sad and as you say we love this business. But, and in my view, because in most cases this is a zero sum game then when we make money someone else has to lose it. The only lesson this guy needed to learn was to make use of stop losses.

 

 

Paul

 

Paul,

You have to keep in mind the majority of the American public that invests is long only & just does what their broker tells them to do. Many brokers do not use stops b/c you assume the market always goes up. And while it may over time, there are plenty of corrections like we see now.

 

When I was a broker, we simply bought and hold. No stops. No need - the market will rebound so why get out? That was the train of thought and what was being sold to people and still is.

 

I'm not arguing that it's a good way to run your investments, but that is how the big brokers do things.

[Soultrader 12]

Another follow up on the current crisis affecting families: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/13/economy.violence.ap/index.html

[brownsfan019 17]

Another follow up on the current crisis affecting families: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/13/economy.violence.ap/index.html

 

The domino effect from this is much more than some people losing jobs or 401k's going down. It could get much worse. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

[manojjonam10 10]

This is an unfortunate incident to happen. Economy and the bad management in risky investments are the main culprits. It reminds me of the 1929 period where suicides due to great depression were common.