Samuel Stern

Greenlight has won all litigation with James Fishback. @jamesfishback has been ordered to return every penny of salary and bonus that we ever paid him, to repay the money we lent him, to pay most of our legal fees, and to stop claiming titles, roles and responsibilities he never had. No, Fishback was not the “Head of Macro.” Rather, as the arbitrator found, he was a “faithless servant.” That’s a fancy legal way of saying that Fishback was so disloyal during his employment that he was ordered to refund to us his entire compensation during his tenure at Greenlight. Ordinarily, my style would be to let this decisive ruling speak for itself. However, Fishback has made himself a public figure. He publicly requested appointments to be a governor of the Federal Reserve and a U.S. Senator. He unsuccessfully ran for Florida Governor and has hinted that he intends to run for President in the next election. I therefore feel a civic duty to share additional details and thoughts about Fishback’s character and why he should never be placed in a position of trust. For more than three years, Fishback engaged in a scheme to harass Greenlight Capital and me. While he made a series of false allegations against us, I generally chose to remain silent and allow the legal process to run its course. It has now done so. The result of the final arbitration is that every single claim Fishback ever made about us was either withdrawn or was legally found to be untrue. The conclusion of the arbitration represents the end of all litigation between Greenlight and Fishback, with Greenlight winning a clean sweep and being awarded over $4 million of damages against Fishback due to his tortious actions, false statements and baseless allegations. Fishback has accused us of lawfare. Let’s set the record straight: it can’t be lawfare when he started the litigation. We simply defended ourselves and made now proved counterclaims. This all began with Fishback demanding a $5 million pay-off to spare us the reputational harm and legal costs of defending frivolous accusations of religious discrimination, age discrimination, a politically hostile work environment and defamation. After filing his lawsuit, Fishback told Jack Farley on the Forward Guidance podcast that “discovery is going to be fun” and would vindicate his story. Farley asked how frequently Greenlight employees referred to him as ‘Head of Macro’ and what written evidence supported his claims. Fishback answered “Well, I don’t have access to my company email. If I did, we could produce them up the wazoo.” Well, discovery came and went and not a single piece of evidence supported any of Fishback’s bogus claims. A company-wide email search revealed that the only additional Greenlight emails calling him “Head of Macro” were those where he gave the title to himself in his signature block while sending external emails where nobody from Greenlight was copied. Instead, discovery uncovered some outrageous conduct by Fishback. For example, Fishback and his father concocted a scheme to use a fake reference check to create his fraudulent defamation claim against us. In September of 2023, after his employment ended, Fishback texted his father a draft of a fake reference check email that included an inquiry as to Fishback’s duties as Greenlight’s “Head of Macro.” In the same chain, Fishback texted his father: “We need them to DEFAME us. Which THEY WILL. That’s another $1 MM right there.” Fishback persuaded a friend of a friend who worked at an investment firm to send us the fake reference check. When we responded that Fishback was not the Head of Macro, Fishback promptly sued us, claiming that our response caused the friend’s company to walk away from making a $5 million investment in Fishback’s start-up hedge fund. The friend of the friend testified under oath that he sent the fake reference check as a favor and that his company was never considering investing with Fishback. The friend got fired. It was all a sham to conjure a fake legal claim to extract money from us. There’s more that came out in the litigation: On his final day of employment, Fishback stole Greenlight’s most valuable property, its portfolio of investments, by emailing it to his personal email (in our industry this is a big deal). An even bigger deal is that he and his father were secretly trading positions in Greenlight’s investment portfolio in their personal accounts. Fishback admitted to violating his confidentiality obligations to Greenlight over 60 times, including by sending confidential investment information to third parties. Fishback made numerous statements, including that he ran macro trading at Greenlight and that he was responsible for generating over $100 million of profits – none of which were true. Fishback told various lies about why he left Greenlight, including that he left due to a hostile political environment. In a classic example of “You can’t fire me, I quit,” Fishback resigned right after my assistant scheduled a meeting with him so I could fire him for not doing his job. As for the political environment at Greenlight, Fishback has repeatedly claimed that I am “a Soros aligned hedge fund billionaire.” That’s simply not so. Politically, I am just left of center. I have made large philanthropic contributions to causes supporting bi-partisanship, bridging differences and pluralism. I support centrist Democrat politicians. Some on the far-left have even tried to fight my efforts to have a more civil culture by labeling me a far-right conservative. That isn’t true either. At Greenlight, we discuss politics so infrequently that I was unaware of Fishback’s views during his tenure. And it surprised me when he quoted scripture in his resignation email. His politics have since been made clear to all. We have no view on the sincerity of his religious beliefs but suffice it to say that we’ve been witness to him breaking those Commandments regarding stealing and lying. Fishback campaigned for Florida Governor on an extreme “tough on crime” platform. He threatened homeless people with 15 years in jail for being homeless; he threatened teenagers participating in riots with 5 years in jail, including prosecuting minors as adults; he promised criminal prosecutions of homeowners’ associations; and planned for mass deportations of non-citizens. He even said a black man “should be lynched” for confronting him. And yet, Fishback is a man who believes the laws don’t apply to him. Rules are for other people. During his campaign, Fishback was challenged for living outside of Florida. His testimony that he lived in Florida was certainly news to us. When Fishback worked for Greenlight, he provided his address as being in Washington, D.C. He had us withhold D.C. resident taxes from his payroll. When he visited our New York office, he frequently submitted expense reimbursements for Amtrak trips between D.C. and New York. Before this final arbitration, we had already won verdicts against Fishback to repay the loans that we generously lent to him on favorable terms for what he claimed at the time to be a family emergency (though that’s not what he told Jack Farley). Even with valid court orders of U.S. Federal District Court Judges ordering him to repay us and surrender property to satisfy the judgements, Fishback simply thumbs his nose at the rule of law. He decides on his own that the Judge was a Democrat, or was appointed by a Democrat, or was otherwise politically motivated, rendering the rulings (in his mind) invalid. Fishback was ordered to repay his debt to us: He ignored it. Fishback was ordered to turn over shares in a company and 43 luxury items he owns to us: He ignored it. A company owned by Fishback was ordered to produce documents in discovery: He ignored it. And that is just a partial list. We have little doubt that he will try to ignore the arbitration ruling against him from the arbitration he commenced. Ignoring court orders is a very dangerous way for anyone to behave. But those that do, especially in such a self-serving fashion, should not be put in a position of public trust or have influence in the enforcement of laws against others. It doesn’t matter that I’m a Democrat. What does matter is that we gave a seemingly intelligent college drop-out a chance to achieve what he once said was his dream job. And once he was provided with that opportunity, instead of applying any semblance of a work ethic, he chose to be a “faithless servant”. We have a theory as to why Fishback wishes to continue his political ambitions. We believe that by continuing to seek office, he will find donors to his campaign, PAC and charitable endeavors, and he will use those funds to stay in hotels, rent cars, travel and dine out – all without ever acquiring an asset in his own name that can be used to repay his legitimate creditors, like us. It’s the perfect way for Fishback to continue to grift and continue to avoid paying his debts. It won’t work. James, you owe us over $4 million and interest is ticking. And, when we do collect it, I will in turn donate it to a combination of the National Immigration Forum, The Center for Reproductive Rights, The Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, and The Florida Chapter of the ADL. The best way to fight your hate is to support those you hate.