Ex controller of Grant’s Interest Rates Observer pleads guilty of embezzlement

The former controller of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer has pled guilty to embezzling from the publication, reports Alicia McElhaney of Institutional Investor.

McElhaney reports, “Eric Ian Whitehead, 53, pled guilty to one count of wire fraud for ‘a years-long scheme to embezzle approximately $1.3 million from a financial publishing company,’ the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said in an announcement Tuesday. Grant’s controller Whitehead joined the company in 2007 after ten years working as an accountant at Marks Paneth, according to his LinkedIn profile, which was viewed by Institutional Investor before it became unavailable.

“‘It seems that, with this revelation, my profitable publishing business is even more profitable than I thought,’ said James Grant, founder and editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer via email. ‘I hope for peace and better days for the employee I trusted too much.’

“Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, launched by financial journalist Grant in 1983, has long had a cult following on Wall Street. The newsletter, which still comes in hard copy 24 times a year, was memorialized in The Big Short and counts a number of hedge fund giants among its subscribers.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.