A few months ago we wrote that the Dallas Police and Fire Pension Fund was on the verge of collapse after a series of shady real estate investments resulted in massive markdowns of pension assets, the ouster of the fund’s CIO and an FBI raid of it’s largest real estate investment manager (see “Dallas Cops’ Pension Fund Nears Insolvency In Wake Of Shady Real Estate Deals, FBI Raid“). We summed up the fund’s dilemma as follows:
The Dallas Police & Fire Pension (DPFP), which covers nearly 10,000 police and firefighters, is on the verge of collapse as its board and the City of Dallas struggle to pitch benefit cuts to save the plan from complete failure. According the the National Real Estate Investor, DPFP was once applauded for it’s “diverse investment portfolio” but turns out it may have all been a fraud as the pension’s former real estate investment manager, CDK Realty Advisors, was raided by the FBI in April 2016 and the fund was subsequently forced to mark down their entire real estate book by 32%. Guess it’s pretty easy to generate good returns if you manage a book of illiquid assets that can be marked at your “discretion”. The rampant fraud at the DPFP left the fund over $3BN underfunded and its board of directors with no other option but to seek a $1.1BN infusion from taxpayers to keep the fund afloat. Even worse, a review of the pension’s financials revealed $2.11 of annual benefit payments to members for every $1.00 contributed to the plan by members and taxpayers (mostly taxpayers)…the typical pension ponzi whereby plan administrators borrow from assets reserved to cover future liabilities (which are likely impaired) to cover current claims in full.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Nov 21, 2016.
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