Mike Lynch’s lawyer posted a haunting LinkedIn post just two months before he and his wife went missing when the British tech tycoon’s superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily.
Chris Morvillo was glowing in his remarks as he praised his colleagues for getting Mr Lynch acquitted in one of the biggest ever fraud cases.
It was his only post on the platform just months before he and his wife Neda went missing while on the billionaire’s £30 million superyacht Bayesian after it sank in a freak storm.
They are two of six missing passengers feared dead alongside Mr Lynch, 59, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy.
Mr Morvillo, a partner at Clifford Chance, was full of cheer in his 495-word LinkedIn message after Lynch and his colleague Stephen Chamberlain were acquitted in one of the biggest ever fraud cases.
He praised the ‘superstar lawyers’ for making ‘this gargantuan task seem manageable even in the darkest hours’, and thanked his ‘patient and incredible wife’ and two daughters for their love and support.
He then hauntingly signed off the post: ‘And they all lived happily ever after.’
Mr Morvillo wrote: ‘And, finally, a huge thank you to my patient and incredible wife, Neda Morvillo, and my two strong, brilliant, and beautiful daughters, Sabrina Morvillo and Sophia Morvillo. None of this would have been possible without your love and support. I am so glad to be home.’
Mr Morvillo and his wife Neda have not been seen since the Bayesian foundered off Palermo Monday morning after being caught in bad weather.
Christopher, 59, worked as a lawyer for the British tech billionaire, who had chartered the vessel to celebrate a recent legal victory.
He is a partner at the prestigious Clifford Chance law firm, which has offices around the world.
Christopher previously served as an assistant US attorney for the Southern District of New York between 1999 and 2005.
Neda, 57, has her own luxury jewellery line run under her maiden name, Neda Nassiri.
The couple have an apartment on New York’s Upper East side. They also own a luxurious four-bedroom, five bathroom home worth $2.3 million in South Kent, Connecticut.
They have two daughters – 27 year-old Sabrina, a voice actress, and 23 year-old Sophia, who studied the prestigious theater course at Northwestern University.
Mr Lynch, dubbed ‘Britain’s Bill Gates’, placed his head in his hands and was embraced by his wife, Angela Bacares, when he was cleared of conducting a massive fraud relating to a £8.64 billion sale of his firm, Autonomy, to US company Hewlett-Packard in 2011.
The three month trial on the 17th floor of San Francisco’s federal courthouse brought an end to a 13-year legal saga that had been hanging over the entrepreneur’s head.
It was an unexpected ‘second life’ he was going to grab with both hands.
He had invited family and friends onto the yacht to celebrate after being acquitted of all charges in a US fraud trial, and in an extraordinary twist his co-defendant Chamberlain has also died after being hit by a car while running in England over the weekend.
That ‘second life’ appears to have ended in tragedy when the luxury yacht capsized early on Monday morning after being hit by a waterspout at around 5am.
The captain of the doomed vessel said ‘we didn’t see it coming’ after he and 15 others were rescued from the water.
The ship’s chef Ricardo Thomas was found dead in the sea by search teams yesterday and hopes that survivors will be found alive in trapped air pockets are rapidly fading as the rescue operation continues.
Specialist divers involved in the search operation say the vessel has come to rest on the seabed 164ft (50 metres) below the surface with ‘virtually everything intact’, with furniture blocking attempts to get inside.
Those involved in the rescue efforts have compared the incident to the ‘Costa Concordia disaster on a smaller scale’, adding that they would do ‘everything to recover the bodies’ amid worsening weather conditions.
Tornado-speed winds flipped the superyacht so quickly there was no time for those on board to raise the alarm or call for help before they were left swimming for their lives, with those who made it off stranded in the pitch black water as the storm raged around them.