Financier’s death could be suicide

Newport Beach police detectives now believe the death of embattled Newport Beach financier Danny Pang was a suicide, a law enforcement official said Saturday.

“Our police detectives are of the opinion that the Danny Pang death is a suicide with no evidence of any foul play,” Newport Beach Sgt. Shontel Sherwood said.

It could take the Orange County Coroner two to three months to make a ruling as to what caused Pang’s death because the agency is still waiting for toxicology test results, according to a news release.

“At this time there is no suspicion of foul play,” the release said.

Paramedics rushed Pang to Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian the afternoon of Sept. 11 after police received a call of a dead body at his home in a Newport Beach gated community.

Pang, 42, died in the early the next morning at the hospital.

An Orange County federal grand jury indicted Pang in July on criminal charges he had evaded currency reporting laws. Pang had been forced to wear an electronic monitoring device on his ankle and was confined to his home in Newport Beach before his death.

In April, FBI agents arrested Pang on federal charges that he structured cash payments to keep them under $10,000; amounts exceeding that limit require a report to be filed with the federal government.

Pang was the founder and former chief executive of the Irvine-based firms Private Equity Management Group Inc., and Private Equity Management Group LLC.

The Securities and Exchanges Commission obtained an emergency court order earlier this year freezing the assets of Pang and his companies, alleging they bilked investors out of millions by misrepresenting investments in seniors’ life insurance polices and time share real estate.

The criminal complaint accuses Pang of using his employees to cash checks for amounts less than $10,000 to avoid the filing of currency transaction reports, which financial institutions are required to file for all currency transactions that are more than $10,000.