Brian Kahn’s Secrets Led to Broken Promises and FRG’s Collapse

Brian Kahn’s secrets are finally catching up with him.

Kahn, a Florida businessman, won industry plaudits as he assembled a sprawling publicly traded retail company called Franchise Group Inc. that was worth billions of dollars at its peak. Yet all the while, he acted as a top trader for a troubled hedge fund called Prophecy Asset Management.

These two careers collided when Prophecy collapsed in 2020. Kahn failed to tell shareholders in Franchise Group, or FRG, about his role at the hedge fund or that he’d promised to repay the fund’s investors more than $300 million in losses, according ...