Before making an illegal $5 million investment with an overseas hedge fund in 2019, Hmong College Prep Academy founder and superintendent Christianna Hang tried to invest the school’s money with a woman the FBI now thinks was running a Ponzi scheme.
The FBI last month obtained a search warrant for the Mequon, Wis., home of Kay Yang, who is a friend of Hang’s.
Agents were looking for evidence that Yang committed money laundering and wire fraud while managing more than $15 million in investments for clients across the country.
Those clients nearly included Hmong College Prep Academy, the St. Paul charter school, according to documents contained in a lawsuit the school filed against Woodstock Capital, LLC.
In May 2019, while looking to invest some of the school’s money to help pay for a new middle school, Hang contacted Yang, who held herself out to be a successful hedge fund manager.
Hang wanted to invest the school’s funds in Yang’s hedge fund, but Yang refused, saying she was over capacity and couldn’t take on more money, Woodstock said in a court filing. Woodstock’s attorney, Mathew Meyer, later said he spoke with Yang by phone and Yang explained her hedge fund actually was “too small to handle such a large investment.”
In reality, Yang “never funded” her hedge funds and had no hedge fund investors, according to a…
