Chip Skowron pleaded guilty to securities fraud, lost his freedom, and found religion. But, as it turns out, federal prison is more forgiving than Connecticut high society. By Chris Pomorski Photography by Jonathan Becker July 2, 2019 LOOK HOMEWARD, HEDGIE Chip Skowron at his home in Greenwich. “I really feel most comfortable in prison,” he says.Photograph by Jonathan Becker. In early 2006, before the indictment and the headlines, before he was abandoned by most of the people he knew, Joseph Skowron III and his wife, Cheryl, were living in a tidy three-bedroom ranch home in Greenwich, Connecticut. In the early 20th century, Greenwich attracted flocks of industrialists and their descendants—Rockefellers and Morgans, beneficiaries of Carnegie Steel—who built manor homes on generous acreages. Always prosperous, the town was in the midst of another boom, and Skowron, who goes by Chip, was a member of the town’s new elite, a partner in a hedge fund called FrontPoint Partners. Since 2000, drawn by Connecticut’s relatively low taxes, the hedge funders had all but taken over Greenwich, occupying much of its office space and replacing its stately Victorians with garish mansions, priced to move at $15 million. As VANITY FAIR observed at the time, “The people who can afford to live in Greenwich these days run hedge funds.” Among the aggressive, often eccentric billionaires who dominated the town, a peacock spirit prevailed. Paul Tudor Jones II, the founder of Tudor Investment Corporation, built a Monticello-like mansion so imposing as to overshadow the yacht club next door. Down the shoreline, Edward Lampert, the founder of ESL Investments, bought a $21 million home, only to tear it down and erect a sprawling new estate in its place. And in the rural backcountry, Steven Cohen assembled a 32,000-square-foot spread that included an ice rink to rival Rockefeller Center’s. At 36, Skowron didn’t quite have ice-rink money. He had begun his career in finance just five years earlier, as an analyst at Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors. But before long, he was overseeing some $1 billion in assets at FrontPoint, where one of his partners was Steve Eisman, the shrewdly bearish housing-market investor profiled by Michael Lewis in The Big Short. Cheryl was expecting the couple’s fourth child, and Skowron wanted a home to reflect his success. In early 2006, he bought a three-acre tract on Doubling Road, a quiet, curving lane lined with old trees and low stone walls, for $4.1 million. Across the street lay Greenwich Country Club, whose membership roll included Gerald Ford, Tom Seaver, and various Fortune 500 executives. Skowron hired an architect to design a New England shingle-style home of more than 10,000 square feet. Completed, it had seven bedrooms, four fireplaces, a pool, a wine cellar, and a seven-car garage. Views stretched to Long Island Sound. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/201...&utm_brand=vanity-fair&utm_social-type=earned
Meanwhile Steve Cohen made/saved BILLIONS on insider information and never stepped foot in a jail cell.
Shit, prison was the best thing that ever happened to me. Everyone should go. First day out I got a 99-cent cup of McDonald's coffee and thought boy, freedom is fabulous. Gratitude and thanks every day, didn't think life could be this sweet. Regards, PTR
These are outrageous statements. Sorry you had to do time in PRISON, but you finding Jesus in a $.99 cup of coffee at your local McDonalds should make you think, every day, to appreciate and be grateful for your freedoms BEFORE you commit a crime. Didn't you ever find Jesus in your coffee before you had to go up the river? We all cherish the lost things we find again. I think they call it nostalgia.
In life we usually take things for granted, until we lose it. Thank you for your post reminding me not to take things for granted.
Thank you for the post. He is a very smart guy, MD PhD and all perhaps that was what made him different than the other hedge fund guys like Cohen who is still chasing money as if he needs more money. Very touching too and I am glad he found his calling. Just wonder why doesn't he go back to practicing medicine for the masses, perhaps joining Dr. Without Borders?
Great perspective! --Small Exercise for those who struggle with Happiness-- Sit quietly and come up with 10 things you are truly grateful for. If you can't think of 10, think of 5...whatever. The point is to think seriously about the items, experiences, people...etc., in your life for which you are truly grateful. ----------------------------------------- It is impossible to be unhappy as long as you can have (or can find) one or two or ten things in life for which you are truly grateful. Gratitude = Happiness. Whether it be as simple as the gratitude of choice to be able to buy your own cup of coffee, or whether it might be the deep personal gratitude you feel for someone who has stuck by you during the lean times, or it might be just the way you feel, the joy you have for the love of your dog when he is consumed with happiness just because "you" happened to walk in the door. Everyone is grateful for something. Use whatever that is to find gratitude. Do that and you cannot help but to be happy. Those who can live with an authentic sense of gratitude are well and truly happy in life. Gratitude is THE key to dealing with this crazy Effed-Up, Me-Me-Me, Insta-Influencer bullshit, Attention-seeking/demanding, Plastic-fantastic, Flashbang thing we call life. It really is all in your head too. Everything...it's literally all in your head. The vast majority of people [assuming sound mind] chooses how we perceive the impulses generated in and by our own minds. We can choose to be selfish and/or angry at electrochemical stimulus; the artifacts of impulse as we generate them and perceive them in our own heads...or we can choose to be grateful for the ability to experience the things that we do. Whether we allow life's experiences, almost always self-created life experiences to be perceived as good or bad is largely a function of one's level of gratitude toward yourself and others as it exists in your own mind. Some people have to go to Prison for whatever reason, some people run off on sabbatical, some people join the U.S.Marine Corps seeking to put themselves in harms way...others live their lives in a bottle, or with a needle and spoon trying to hide from the images and perceptions of ourselves that we have in our own heads. In each instance, much if in not all of our personal freedoms are removed or at least subjugated for the greater mission, or in other cases they are ripped from us entirely as a function of the choices we make as a result of the perceptions we self-generate about our lives, this world and our place in it. All of it begins, exists and ends inside our own individual brain. Metaphysically, we're all in a prison of our own mind...or, we live free and easy filled with happiness as a result of gratitude. People forget, or more often they are never taught how to forgive themselves. Gratitude is the key to dealing with all those perceptions in our head. Gratitude is the key to happiness. And Forgiveness is the path to gratitude. More people should try it, it works. @PTR -- Thanks for having the courage to be open and real.
Don't know for a fact. But I run with a lot of Docs. Vacations, Golfing, Investment Deals, VC/PE/RE deals, Trading...whatever, a large part of my social circle are Physicians. Speaking of a group (by and large) who could use a little "gratitude training," #LittleBallsofHate I'm guessing he was stripped of his license to practice medicine. They have Boards just like some of us have FINRA, CRD, IARD, Sec of State and/or the SEC. Felonies generally aren't a good look for anyone. But, if this is indeed the case it hasn't stopped him from pursuing life, liberty, and happiness. #LessonForAll