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SUBMITTED: NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE [ARCHIVED] [PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLE, NO SECURITY CLEARANCE REQ.]
pertaining to the purchase and sale of stock options. She was released on bail and will await trial from her parents’ apartment
on the Upper West Side.
Shimonova’s father, Ivan Shimonov, is an analyst with the Quaestor Group, although he claims he has never discussed his work
with his daughter. He stated that she was able to obtain his signature from her school forms, which she then used to access
his personal and professional bank accounts.
“She got bored,” Shimonov said. “The school doesn’t challenge her enough.”
Shimonova attends Trinity School, an independent preparatory school on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Trinity is regarded as
one of the most selective and rigorous high schools in the country, with an acceptance rate of 4.5 percent and a Stanford-Ivy-MIT
pipeline of 57 percent. (Over half their graduates go on to attend an Ivy League school, or an Ivy equivalent.) A current
sophomore, Shimonova is class treasurer and captain of the competitive math team, which recently won a national medal under
her leadership.
Trinity’s headmaster, Dr. Malcolm Fromme, reports that Shimonova was one of the school’s most beloved students.
“There are students who you think you don’t have to worry about,” says Dr. Fromme. “My colleagues and I all considered Klaudia
one of those students. We gave her a long leash.”
This “long leash” may refer to Shimonova’s penchant for reading during class, as reported by one of her teachers who preferred to remain anonymous, or the internship that she completed at the consultant firm McKinsey & Company the second semester of her freshman year, for which she was allowed to miss morning classes on Mondays and Wednesdays.
Her coworkers at McKinsey indicated that they never saw her selling or purchasing stocks and did not give her any investment
advice. She did not have access to any analyst reports—professional briefs indicating which stocks are likely to turn a profit—while
at McKinsey. She also did not invest in any companies with ongoing McKinsey projects.
“We knew she was capable of great things,” says Dr. Fromme. “We just didn’t think she was also capable of criminal action.”
It is unclear exactly how much money Shimonova stole from her father’s accounts, but NYPD reports that she was able to achieve
a net profit of $10 million in “no more than two months.”
Mr. Shimonov was alerted to the suspicious activity on his account and advised to contact the police, which he did. After
a weeks-long investigation, NYPD arrested Shimonova while she was in her afternoon English class. Her trial is set to begin
on December 15 and will be covered in future issues of the Times.
When the police raided Shimonova’s bedroom, they found thousands of dollars’ worth of designer clothes, jewelry, and accessories,
as well as a highly venomous black-lipped forest cobra, which was being kept in a tank.
Shimonova and her counsel have refused comment.
More information will be available as the story develops.