from www.nydailynews.com – The wealthy banker brought down by a porn star has been living large in suburbia while claiming he desperately needed to “borrow” from his family trust fund, his relatives say.
James McDermott, the high-living executive busted for giving insider stock information to his girlfriend, porno queen Marilyn Star, lives with his wife and kids in a 1929 mansion that was once a hunting lodge for the Rockefellers.
His wife, Darian, also owns a luxury condo in Palm Beach, Fla., bought in her name after McDermott pleaded guilty to insider trading charges.
Family lawyer Bill Neary questions how McDermott keeps up the lavish lifestyle while crying poor mouth.
“This guy is living in this house, he’s got mortgage payments . . . he’s supposedly not employed,” Neary said.
“His businesses have gone belly up, he tells us.
“Somehow he’s got to be paying all these bills.”
McDermott pleaded guilty to insider trading in 2001 and served about five months in prison.
In 2005, he settled civil charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission by agreeing to pay $230,000 in restitution, interest and penalties.
A few months after his father died in June 2003, McDermott began moving money from the family trust into bank accounts he and his wife controlled, his siblings claim in court papers.
A woodworking company he tried to start failed, and court records show he was swimming in debt, including liens of more than $1 million by the IRS and multiple lawsuits.
While his mother, Mary, was confined to a nursing home with Alzheimer’s disease, McDermott lives in a Tudor-style mansion called White Oaks in Briarcliff Manor, Westchester County.
A recent real estate listing shows off the $7 million mansion with its leaded-glass windows, a pub room, an oak library with a 17th century fireplace, a master bedroom with a separate dressing room, a sauna, a media room, a heated pool, and tennis and basketball courts.
The upscale condo on the Atlantic in Palm Beach has a beach cabana.
It was bought in 2003, a few months before the withdrawals began from the trust, records show.