A sobbing Philadelphia banker offered a $2 million reward yesterday for the safe return of his two daughters, last seen with his ex-wife in June.
Tears welled up in the eyes of Bipin Shah as the former CoreStates Financial Corp executive appealed to the public for help in tracking down Sarah Lynn, 8, Genevive Marie, 6, and his ex-wife, Ellen Dever, 42.
Our offer is for $2 million reward to anyone who can take us to the girls, he said at his Philadelphia estate. I have abandoned my business. I have left the house. All I do is look for my daughters. They are wonderful, wonderful girls.
Shah, a former chief operating officer at CoreStates, is a self-made millionaire who sold his electronic banking business last March for more than $200 million.
He said he last saw his children on June 8 as their mother, buckled them into her Mercedes. In October, the FBI obtained a warrant for her arrest on a charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution for custody violations. The Indian-born Shah, who says his ex-wife has changed her identity, also has mounted his own worldwide search for the children.
He says that over the past six months he has spent more than $700,000 while employing 40 private investigators in cities across Europe, Australia, and the United States including Hawaii. He has recruited former FBI and CIA agents to help with the search. Im appealing to the public for help because weve been frustrated in every attempt weve made to locate my daughters, he said. He hopes for a breakthrough that would have the girls home by New Years Day.
