CLUE Whenever he was cornered, he played the race card.
The con man's MO----he had nothing else in his bag of tricks.
Posted on 03/05/2012 10:30:48 AM PST by reaganaut1
EVEN IN THE DAKOTA, the storied apartment building on New York’s Upper West Side, home to such cultural icons as Yoko Ono and Lauren Bacall, Buddy Fletcher stood out. African American, fantastically accomplished, and wealthy, Fletcher had grown up in modest circumstances, gone to Harvard, and graduated as “first marshal” of his class in 1987. From there he hit Wall Street, earned millions before he turned 25, and started his own firm, Fletcher Asset Management. By the time he was 30, the company was operating as a hedge fund and boasting of triple-digit returns. Fletcher made multimillion-dollar donations to Harvard, and gave away millions more to museums, arts groups, and civil rights causes.
BusinessWeek and the New Yorker, among many other publications, wrote glowing profiles, and in 2009 Forbes named him one of the country’s 20 richest African Americans. With a net worth of $150 million, Fletcher was just a few spots down the list from Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, and Tiger Woods.
Fletcher dressed in a Gatsby-esque cavalcade of beautifully tailored suits and traveled around Manhattan in a Bentley driven by his full-time chauffeur. He bought a $5.9 million castle in upstate Connecticut. In New York, he rented offices for his hedge fund at the top of the GM Building on Fifth Avenue. There, rising 48 floors from the southeast corner of Central Park, he could gaze down upon the city in every direction.
Then there was his home, Apartment 52 at the Dakota, which, as the New Yorker put it, was “decorated with the apparent intention of recreating, as nearly as possible, the fusty, woody interior of the Harvard Club.” That was just one of four Dakota residences Fletcher had purchased over the course of two decades.
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonmagazine.com ...
Government affirmative action now gives a 5% advantage to “minority” owned bidders. All they have to do is find a minority company to name as a “partner”. In other words whole firms exist only to reap the benefits of not being the lowest bidder any more.
FYI.. a good read..
1.The Dakota, as most hi-end NY coops, will only allow apts to be purchased for all CASH... It seems that JP Morgan Chase gave him a loan, based upon the value of the co-op shares...i.e., a mortgage..again..a normal transaction, but to secure their loan, the bank would have to record the lien against the proprietary shares of the co-op, and the board would have found out...so, did JPMG NOT file the lien, which meant that he got very special treatment...
2. Re the lawsuit at Kidder, Peabody...while I guess he could refuse to divulge his trading strategy, since he was trading FOR KP, all the trades were cleared through the firm..will all the tickets, it isn't hard to reconsruct what he was doing..
I notice that whenever he was cornered, he played the Race Card..........
Thanks for the ping——v-e-r-y intresting.
I guess it worked......for a little while : )
Thnks for the interesting reading.
“in the manner somewhat similar to the British Barings Bank when its Singapore-based trader Nick Leeson tried to cover up what grew to about $1.4B in failed derivative bets on the direction of Japanese Yen.”
Whatever happened to Neeson? He seemed to disappear(not that I blame him........ : )
” “When you’re running a Ponzi of this magnitude,” Rothstein testified, “you want to reward the people that are taking care of you and helping you sustain the Ponzi scheme.”
By gum, the man has a point there...... : )
In 1999 he was diagnosed with colon cancer in Singapore's prison, which got him an early release from his 6.5 years sentence. He recovered and "settled" in Ireland with Leona Tormay, his second wife he married in 2003.
Like many such characters (Barry Minkow of ZZZZ Best, Kevin Mitnick etc.) he wrote a book or two and is a speaker on the "curiosity" (usually "rubber chicken" conferences and dinner lecture) circuit.
The latest: Rogue trader Leeson Belfast bound for Business Awards - BT, 2012 February 28
I'd forgotten about Jett. Obviously, what Welch failed to say was that KP wouldn't question his methods for two years because of fears of being tagged as racist. Also, the fact that criminal prosecution was declined, in so obvious a case, is why many more later on turned to illegal financial crimes. Even if you got caught, there was no risk. Do you know if the ever recovered the $$$..or did JJ manage tospend it all ?
Particularly because at just that period of time there was a "racial discrimination" lawsuit filed by Buddy Fletcher against KP in June 1991. It is also not a stretch to assume that it was a consideration behind hiring Jett in July 1991 - also a Harvard grad, with similar "accomplishments" and CV profile - to help fight the charge, which they did successfully in court, but eventually paid even greater price for it.
Do you know if they ever recovered the $$$..or did JJ manage to spend it all ?
No, they didn't.
Jett never appealed the March 05, 2004 SEC decision which ordered a return of $8.21M in fraudulently obtained bonuses and a fine of $200K. He was also barred from the securities industry and any professional association with a securities broker or dealer.
In 2006, when the SEC started an enforcement action in the US District Court, Jett filed a court complaint that he never received 2004 decision notice from the SEC, and because he didn't know of the 2004 decision he didn't file an appeal.
The Court rejected his explanation when the 2004 article was discovered in which he said that he he didn't care about SEC decision because it was still legal for him to trade securities outside of the US. (OPENERS: REFRESH BUTTON; Repentant? No. Bitter? Less. - NYT, by Robert Johnson, 2004 May 02)
"So the Securities and Exchange Commission won't let me work on Wall Street," said Mr. Jett, 47, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Business School. "Who cares? I'm still legal on the exchanges in Toronto, London and the Cayman Islands." ..... < snip > ..... Still haunted by legal fees from that battle, Mr. Jett says he is dubious about chasing financial success too hard these days. "I could earn a lot of money, but most of it would be turned over to attorneys," he said. "So I structure employment contracts in ways that allow me to have a roof over my head and pay child support."
Orlando Joseph Jett was banned from Wall Street trading in the wake of a spectacular bond-trading fraud that brought down the prestigious brokerage house Kidder, Peabody a decade ago. But that is not stopping him from keeping busy working for investment clients.
On September 11 2007, the Court issued the disgorgement order against Jett.
His third book was titled "The Art of War: New Strategies for Black America" (published by Jett's company The Cambridge Matrix).
At the time he said he was charging $4,000-$8,000 on lecture circuits for speaking to accounting groups about corporate fraud (same path as Nick Leeson, Barry Minkow, Kevin Mitnick et al).
His Princeton, NJ firm, Jett Capital Management LLC (http://jettcapital.com/inManAccts.htm) seems more like a shell company / "presence" sign on the web than an actual actively managed financial company, which touts his "glory" and his appearances on the old TV shows, many of which no longer exist.
The latest on his SEC and custody battles with his longtime live-in ex-companion, "lap dancer" / Merrill Lynch Global Investment Director Melissa Leonardo, is in this article from NYP (article is incorrect about Jett having been cleared of administrative charges and fine, apparently confusing it with charges not filed in the criminal investigation):
Ex-Street big snared in domestic, SEC battles - NYP, by Paul Tharp, 2010 February 25
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