A hedge fund mogul who helped oust former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is being sued by his own mother in an ugly dispute over unpaid debts, The Post has learned.
Jason Ader — CEO of Spring Owl Asset Management — was sued last month by his 81-year-old mom after he defaulted on a $13 million mortgage he took out in 2016 against his late father’s swanky townhouse on New York’s Upper East Side, state court filings show.
Pamela Ader’s lawyers claim her 56-year-old son failed to keep up with payments on the massive loan, leaving his father’s estate on the hook for the crippling principal as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest and unpaid taxes.
The court papers did not elaborate on the younger Ader’s reasons for borrowing the money.
At the time, his star was rising on Wall Street with activist shareholder calls that eventually led to the downfall of Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer and former Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman.
According to the explosive lawsuit, Ader — a sometime CNBC contributor who is also known for investing in the casino industry — kept mum about the missed mortgage payments.
His mother only found out when lender Bank of America got in touch, filings show.
Pamela claims she begged her deadbeat son to settle the debts and stop “the hemorrhaging of cash” — with obligations to BofA totaling $75,000 a month, according to the filing. But Jason responded that he didn’t have the money, court documents show.
“During one call, Jason’s counsel claimed that Jason was tapped out’ and was unable to cure such defaults, and the parties’ counsel discussed taking steps to promptly sell the property,” the documents state.
Pamela’s legal eagles drew up a deal to offload the posh pad on East 73rd Street, according to court papers. “Jason, however, became evasive and refused to execute the agreement,” the filing states.
An attorney for the Ader family matriarch did not reply to the Post’s request for comment. Jason has still to name his legal team in the case. The younger Ader did not return calls and messages seeking comment.
It’s not the first time signs of a mother-son conflict have emerged in court. Last fall, a filing in a separate fraud case brought against Ader said Pamela had hired lawyers to try and ditch a $16 million stake in her son’s hedge fund.
In that case, which is still ongoing, Austrian billionaire Harald McPike claims Ader scammed him out of $25 million in a 2021 agreement to back a $2.6 billion bid to buy the largest casino in the Philippines.
The ill-fated deal surfaced in a Sept 11. letter to Spring Owl investors obtained by The Post — warning that the firm faces “significant challenges” recovering their money. The letter, signed by Ader and his partner Barry Koenig, blames a Delaware judge for refusing to order the Philippines deal to close.
The pair also point the finger at a move by Nevada regulators to deny a casino license to GameCo, a firm that Ader had decided to invest in.
One angry Spring Owl investor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said backers have struggled in vain to find out what has happened to their money.
“We were only getting BS responses. You see multiple accusations of fraud, you see multiple accusations of wrongdoing. And now he’s being sued by his own mother after his father died,” the client griped.
“It feels like I invested into the world’s worst hedge fund with the world’s worst son,” the frustrated investor added. “Meanwhile he is living it up in Miami.”
Florida property records show that Ader resides in a $6 million luxury apartment in the same Miami tower where English soccer star David Beckham, the owner of MLS side Inter Miami, also has a plush pad.
He is a regular fixture on the city’s party scene and regularly flanked his glamorous new partner, Hana, who is 10 years his junior.
The money man is meanwhile locked in an ongoing row with his second wife, Julie, over the terms of their divorce and their four children.
A New York County Supreme Court ruling on June 6 last year found that the under-fire hedge funder was refusing to pay agreed child support.
“Despite the terms of the parties’ prenuptial agreement and several court orders, the father continually interfered with the children’s third-party providers, such as tutors, by refusing to timely pay their fees or refusing to pay them at all,” the ruling said.
A lawyer for Julie Ader did not reply to The Post’s request for comment.
After making a name on Wall Street in the 1990s as a gaming analyst, Ader co-founded Spring Owl in 2013. He once served as a board member of Las Vegas Sands, the Nevada-based casino giant founded by the late Sheldon Adelson.
Spring Owl was originally founded in New York, but SEC filings from 2023 show that its new headquarters are at the upmarket 701 Brickell skyscraper in downtown Miami. No-one answered the phone when The Post called on Friday afternoon.
Richard Ader died last September at age 81 having made his fortune founding US Realty Advisors that says it manages $18 billion of assets nationwide. His widow’s lawsuit does not spell out how much his estate is worth.
The irate Spring Owl investor warned that Jason could face yet more legal woes unless he coughs up their cash.
“Among the investors, there are many talking about about a class action,” the source said. “I would say people are very concerned.”
McPike, 65, accused the hedge fund boss of fraud and simply pocketing the money for “his own personal purposes” in the failed merger between his 26 Capital special acquisition vehicle and Japan’s Universal Entertainment, the owner of the casino.
A Delaware judge last year refused to order the takeover to go ahead, scuppering plans to list the Okada Manila on the New York Stock Exchange for $2.6 billion.
Another investor, Alex Eiseman, was negotiating a separate deal for the casino with an investment vehicle backed by ex-Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez.
They planned to organize a concert with his then-fiancee, Jennifer Lopez, but that bid fell apart when the celebrity couple broke up in 2021. The former MLB star and the one-time Grammy nominee are not accused of any wrongdoing.
But it emerged that Eiseman was also advising Jason Ader on his bid and had reportedly struck a secret deal with the Spring Owl CEO to buy 60% of his stake in the casino for just $4.5 million, a price well below McPike’s investment.
Eiseman’s double dealing was one of the reasons that the Delaware court refused to sign off on Ader’s takeover, court documents show.
The buyout saga took a bizarre twist in 2022 when its ousted founder, Japanese businessman Kazuo Okada, stormed the premises using armed guards to retake control of the casino using brute force.
Okada, 81, was then slapped down by the Philippines Supreme Court in November 2023 that confirmed Universal, a Japanese gaming firm that has no links to the American music giant, as its rightful owner.