June 28, 2012 MARIN Michael James Marin was an American financier, lawyer, ex-Wall Street trader and millionaire. He made a fortune trading in complex investments in the 1980s and 1990 working for Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Salomon Brothers mainly in their operations in Asia. In the late 1990s Marin returned to the United States after being let go by Lehman Brothers in 1997. He led a lavish life buying a multimillion-dollar home in Arizona. He bought a 930 m2 mansion at 71 after a friend and business partner lost it to foreclosure and he paid for it through a complex series of transactions. It came with a monthly mortgage payment of $17 250 and an imminent $2.3 million balloon payment. In spring 2009 Marin devised a lottery to sell the house with profit with some funds going to a charity he had chosen - a crisis center for children. The state authorities determined that the lottery was illegal and shut it down. The lottery drawing was supposed to be on July 4, 2009. The following day Marin called 911 to report that his house was on fire. He reportedly climbed from the second floor of the burning estate using a rope ladder and wearing a scuba-diving suit. Fire Department investigators determined the fire was deliberate after finding several points of origin for the deliberate fire throughout the estate. Marin was tried on suspicion of arson for setting his home on fire. Court hearings started on May 21, 2012 and conviction would have led to decades in prison. Soon after hearing the conviction on June 28, 2012 and learning that he was to be taken into custody immediately after the hearing he committed suicide in court. He was seen in court videos closing his eyes as the verdict was being read before appearing to put something in his mouth and washing it down with a liquid in a plastic water bottle. He then fell to the floor a few minutes later in convulsions. He was rushed to a central hospital in Phoenix and was pronounced dead. Authorities confirmed he had taken a lethal dose of cyanide. He had bought a canister of cyanide in May 2011 from a California mail-order chemical supplier.
