A former Goldman Sachs investment banker who went to prison in 2018 for stalking his ex and beating her new beau with a hammer claims his then-business partner stole their tech company out from under him while he was behind bars.
But the other man, Dennis Thankachan, a serial entrepreneur backed by Mark Cuban, argues that he’s the one who was wronged by the “lovestruck loon” and his computer-savvy mom, who allegedly hacked into his email accounts to destroy a much-needed corporate rescue deal. She then duped the techie into selling the firm to her for $1, Thankachan says, calling it a price he would never have agreed to had he known what was going on behind the scenes.
“I partnered with a guy that did some pretty messed up things… And he sort of ruined his own life,” Thankachan told The Daily Beast. “I tried to pull away from the business, and he tried to make my life difficult in different ways.”
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“Difficult” is a dramatic understatement, according to a lawsuit Thankachan filed Tuesday in New York State Supreme Court. It accuses Alexander Hsu Pugmire, along with Pugmire’s mother, Helen, of carrying out a “misguided revenge campaign” against Thankachan after becoming jealous of his success during Pugmire’s three-year incarceration. In Thankachan’s complaint, which alleges tortious interference and breach of fiduciary duty, he claims Pugmire’s mom ultimately sunk their venture after Pugmire got sent up the river on felony charges.
Pugmire, in his own lawsuit against Thankachan, tells a very different story. He argues that Thankachan—who also worked at Goldman Sachs before transitioning into the telecom sector—swiped confidential and proprietary information from their old company to launch a competing carbon copy behind his back. (Thankachan denies this, contending in his complaint that Pugmire’s felony conviction so severely damaged the company’s reputation that it became virtually worthless.)
Pugmire is now calling himself “Alex Parker” in an attempt to distance himself from his felonious past, according to Thankachan’s complaint.
In response to a request for comment, Pugmire’s attorney, Kenneth Giancola, directed The Daily Beast to Pugmire’s counterclaim. “Mr. Thankachan appears to be lashing out to personally attack the shareholder of Nexus and his mother with baseless claims in this new action,” he added. “We will continue to litigate both actions to a just conclusion.” Helen Pugmire could not be reached for comment.
Dennis Thankachan and Alexander Pugmire both worked at Goldman Sachs before co-founding a venture of their own in 2018.
Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesIn February 2018, Thankachan and Pugmire, armed with degrees from the University of Texas and Penn, respectively—as well as several years of combined finance experience—co-founded broadband provider Nexus Connectivity, Inc.
“I have always been a bit of a tinkerer and builder-type person,” Thankachan later said in an interview with an industry newsletter . “I started all sorts of ventures in high school and college. Early on I started a website selling eBooks that I had pieced together on how to make money from home. I also used to import low-cost video game consoles from Japan and sell them in my high school. I even used to produce hip-hop beats and sell them to artists.”
However, Nexus began to collapse in October 2018, just eight months after it was established, when Pugmire was arrested, Thankachan’s lawsuit says. Things first began to spiral out of control in late 2016, when Pugmire’s girlfriend of three years dumped him, according to a separate tranche of court filings related to his criminal case.
Soon after, he allegedly installed hidden cameras in the woman’s apartment and began snooping on her online activity. Pugmire became convinced that another man, Benjamin Timsit, had begun seeing his ex. And, by all accounts, he did not react well.
According to a lawsuit later filed by Timsit, Pugmire put on a ski mask and attacked him on the streets of New York City in January 2017, smashing him over the head with a hammer. Timsit later said he had never previously met Pugmire or even heard of him.
Less than two weeks after the attack, Pugmire showed up to Timsit’s residence sporting “black latex gloves and a fake black mustache,” the suit said. He claimed to be a maintenance worker who needed to conduct work inside the apartment. When Timsit denied Pugmire entry, he allegedly tried to force his way inside.
“Pugmire’s arrest was detailed in newspaper articles that detailed how the ‘lovestruck loon,’ among other things, installed hidden webcams in the ex-girlfriend’s apartment and gained entry to another apartment using a false mustache,” Thankachan’s new complaint states.
Timsit’s lawyer, Matthew Galluzzo, said the accusations outlined by Thankachan seem entirely plausible. “I wouldn’t put it past him, let’s put it that way,” he told The Daily Beast. In particular, Galluzzo argued that Pugmire’s prior use of disguises showed his affinity for “deception.”
Pugmire eventually pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and was sentenced to three years in prison. Nexus subsequently began to struggle, and Thankachan used his own money to keep the firm afloat, according to his complaint. It adds that he attempted to attract potential partners to invest, hoping for a turnaround.
But even though Pugmire transferred his ownership share of the company to his mom prior to his incarceration, his “notoriety for his criminal activities was deeply harmful to Nexus, as potential investors were wary of being associated with a convicted felon,” the complaint goes on. Further, Pugmire’s mother—acting as his proxy—refused to authorize Thankachan to issue new shares as a deal sweetener to both investors and new employees. The mother also impeded Nexus’ operations in other ways and “refused to cooperate with Thankachan on potential business plans/ventures,” says the complaint, which also accuses her of snooping through Thankachan’s emails at her son’s behest.
After illicitly gaining access to Thankachan’s email account, Helen Pugmire “maliciously torpedoed a corporate transaction” involving a last-ditch Nexus deal he was trying to orchestrate, upon realizing her son was being cut out of the company’s future plans, according to the complaint.
“Once she accessed Thankachan’s account, Ms. Pugmire learned the details of a transaction that Mr. Thankachan had negotiated that was essentially an ‘acqui-hire,’ by which Thankachan and other Nexus employees would team up with another company acting in the same space, and, in exchange, Thankachan was to receive equity in the partner company and Nexus was to have its corporate debt cleared,” the lawsuit states.
It describes the deal as a “fantastic” one for both Thankachan and Pugmire, “as Nexus was worthless and had no prospect of future success with Pugmire behind bars and his reputation in tatters.”
In a nutshell, Pugmire would have received a cash payment, plus “the resume bullet of having ‘sold’ a company, when in reality he was incarcerated and was doing nothing to advance Nexus’s interests,” the complaint continues.
Alexander Pugmire spent three years in an upstate New York prison on assault charges.
Eric Thayer/Getty Images“Nevertheless, Ms. Pugmire was angered when she learned the terms of the transaction because her son was specifically prohibited from having any involvement in the venture,” it says, noting that the new partner company insisted on this clause. “Apparently taking this as a slight to Pugmire—even though his incarceration had destroyed Nexus—Ms. Pugmire reached out to the counterparty and derailed the prospective business deal, thereby severely damaging Thankachan.”
When the deal fell through, Thankachan, still unaware that Helen Pugmire had undermined it, finally threw in the towel, his complaint asserts. Believing “there was no workable solution to Nexus’s financial woes,” it says Thankachan sold his shares in Nexis to Pugmire’s mother for $1 and exited the company.
“If Thankachan had known that Ms. Pugmire had illegally accessed his Nexus email, he would never have agreed to the terms,” the complaint states. (Pugmire’s countersuit says Thankachan was planning to ice his mom out of any profits and that he “misled” the buyer about the older woman’s stake in the company.)
Pugmire, for his part, is proceeding apace with what remains of Nexus, which he now fully owns. (Thankachan claims in his lawsuit that Nexus is defunct, and that Pugmire is only using its name to “shield himself from personal liability.”)
“Everyone deserves high quality broadband access,” the latest iteration of its website tells prospective customers. “At Nexus, we're innovating to bring crazy fast, affordable, and reliable gigabit speed fiber internet to your community.”
Thankachan, who is now running a B2B telecom called Lightyear, called the chaos overwhelming. “I used to work at Goldman Sachs, and I worked at a hedge fund after. I’ve never gotten in any sort of trouble in my life,” he told The Daily Beast, adding that he was unprepared for so much drama. “I am desperately trying not to have anything to do with any of this.”
Thankachan is asking for damages from Pugmire and his mom, in an amount to be determined at trial, plus legal fees, expenses, and interest. Pugmire has not yet filed a formal response to Thankachan’s complaint. His lawsuit against Thankachan, which seeks a minimum of $500,000 for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, and unfair competition, remains ongoing.
