Posted on 10/29/2008 1:04:16 PM PDT by RobinMasters
Here is what I received from a friend about the reward (http://dirtyharrysplace.com/?p=5296) :
This appears bogus. There is no listing for Dune Capital Holdings and a search on Aston Grimaldi comes up blank. There is no address or telephone number on the "Dune Capital" letter head. Go to: http://www.dunecap.com and the domain exists and references a hedge fund. Investigating that hedge fund provided the following: Under the refinancing, Dune, formerly controlled by George Soros, the billionaire financier, will invest in at least 15 new films.
It is a safe bet that anything even remotely connected to George Soros would not sponsor this.
If anyone proves me incorrect, let me know ASAP.
Thanks,
Please show evidence that Dune was tied to Soros.
Dune is indeed a legitimate HF.
Wouldnt it make sense for him to buy the tape to MAKE SURE it never gets released to the public?
Googling <”aston grimaldi -khalidi> brings up essentially nothing. No evidence that the guy is real.
What country is dunecap based in?
Their site said not licensed yadda yadda in the U.S. and certain other countries.
It’s a foreign outfit for sure........ but where?
Their site is also very bland - really no links, no names, no nuttin’.
What and who are they really? A front? For who?
(2004 Statement)
STEVEN T. MNUCHIN, 41, joined Soros Fund Management as CEO of SFM Capital Management LP, a newly formed Soros company, in September 2003. Previously, Mr. Mnuchin served as Vice Chairman of ESL Investments, Inc. during 2003 and as Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of The Goldman Sachs
Check near the bottom of the comments. Apparently, there is some confusion about exactly which company this is.
I don't know if the person in question is real, but someone is replying to queries sent to that email address.
Nice find.
I forgot to add: there is some speculation that DuneCap may be offering the reward for the video in order to lock it up away from public view.
That’s my guess........... some foreign outfit, with ties to WHO? They’ll get it safely off-shore and hide it away.
Member since 2001 and can't google?
-------------------------------------------------------
GEORGE SOROS, the billionaire financier, has taken control of the film library of DreamWorks SKG from Viacom, the entertainment giant, in a deal worth $900 million (£510 million). Two of Mr Soros’s investment vehicles — Soros Strategic Partners and Dune Capital Management — will share control of the venture.
I wonder how much I could get for a copy of Obama’s Indonesian passport.
They’re only going to get a copy. The LA Times isn’t going to give up the copy they have, and someone has the original somewhere, and who knows how many other copies there are. This wouldn’t make sense.
The letter shows “Dune Capital Holdings”, and a Google search of that name turns up absolutely nothing that isn’t directly referring to this letter. Safe to say, Dune Capital Holdings isn’t real, unless it’s some ultra-small and ultra-secret family vehicle that has never before seen fit to put any information about itself in any place that it could end up getting even passing mention on the Internet. Very, very unlikely. There is no reason to assume any connection to any other entity whose name includes the words “Dune Capital”. However, a search on <”dune capital” grimaldi> also turns up nothing that isn’t directly referring to this letter. Whole thing looks utterly fake. Faker than the CBS memo.
But there’s no mention of “Dune Capital Management” in the letter. Words have significance. You can set up a limited partnership or LLC tomorrow with the name “Soros Strategic Partnership”, as long as nobody else has already organized an entity with the identical name in the same state you’re organizing yours in.
No signature either.
What is your point? That DCM is not related to DCH?
“Dune Capital was launched in 2004 as a spin-off of Soros Capital Management when it restructured. The firm is led by three former Goldman Sachs guys. “
If this “Aston Grimaldi” was actually Chief Investment officer of an entity spun off from Soros Capital Management and “led by three former Goldman Sachs guys”, don’t you think his name would turn up in a Google search beyond a handful of hits all referring directly to this letter? And don’t you think maybe he’d have some higher placed pals to fire off a letter like this to, than “Citizens of the United States of America” c/o dirtyharrysplace.com? Interesting choice of font used in this letter too . . .
For crying out loud FReepers, we’re supposed to be the people who SPOT obvious fakes like this, not the people who fall for them.
You might want to try this:
Funny how there’s no mention of anyone named “Grimaldi” at any of those links (or of any offices in Monte Carlo, London, or Hong Kong). If he was the “Chief Investment Officer”, you’d think he’d warrant a little bitty mention, wouldn’t you? Of course, he doesn’t even claim to be the Chief Investment Officer of Dune Capital MANAGEMENT, he claims to be the Chief Investment Officer of Dune Capital HOLDINGS.
Which means what exactly? How do you think Walter Alarkon tracked him down? have you called their NY office and asked if he works there? I’m just asking becuase you seem sure you know he does not exist.
Is it possible this guy wants it to destroy it? Yes. It is possible Walter Alarkon, an experienced journalist, was taken? Sure, I guess so. But what I do know is the reward has helped raise the profile of the story of a tape (as evidenced by Rush Limbaugh mentioning it today) that is being suppressed by the LA Times and that’s a good thing.
Fake but useful, eh? That’s an interesting variation on CBS’ “fake but accurate”.
Why can’t you answer a single honest question posed to you?
Ask yourself why a hedge fund manager (taking at face value the stuff in the letter, and the fact that Alarkon now says he’s a “hedge fund manager”) who is so secretive that neither his name nor the name of the firm he claims to be “Chief Investment Officer” of appears at all on a Google search, would suddenly spray his name and the name of his firm out to the world by sending a very unusual letter about a political hot topic to a website which has not indicated any prior knowledge of, or contact with him.
Maybe he cares about the truth. Maybe he wants to get his name in the papers. Maybe he got drunk and thought it would be funny. His motives are his and unknowable.
You on the other hand claim to “know.” Please don’t tell me you “know” becuase you can’t figure out his motive. Because is that’s all you’re going on it’s pretty weak given how much time and effort you’ve put in trying to shoot down this and similar stories.
If you want to prove yourself right, get on the phone, call the NY office and ask if he works there.
Works WHERE? There is no “Dune Capital Holdings” in New York, and I’m certainly not going to make a fool of myself by calling up Dune Capital Management to ask them if they really have a Chief Investment Officer named “Aston Grimaldi” who sent out this goofy letter to dirtyharrysplace.com
It seemed to me that this thread was about how it was a fake.
That was clearly the thread poster’s intent, but it drew a lot of replies from people who seem convinced it’s real. And the notion that it could be coming from someone holding a significant position such as Chief Investment Officer at any entity connected to Dune Capital Management is truly preposterous. The dunecap.com website doesn’t appear to have any connection to Dune Capital Management, and is probably just a fake site cooked up for this hoax.
More correspondence with Aston Grimaldi. This guy sounds like a legit hedge fund guy, i know the types... and they are highly regulated - they aren’t allowed to market themselves on the net, browse SEC website.
Here’s the link:
http://neoconexpress.blogspot.com/2008/10/dune-capital-offers-150000-for-release.html
Sounds like total BS — a laundry list of excuses for why it’s impossible to confirm the existence of himself, his firm, or his attorney. Of course he claims to be a hedge fund manager — few other types of businesses would have an excuse not to have an accessible website.
The last time I bumped into someone claiming to be a hedge fund manager who I couldn’t verify with basic Googling, he turned out to be a complete and total fraud (his name might have been real, but nothing else was). And this was a guy who showed up in person in the offices of the large financial institution I work for, seeking a loan of $50 million plus, and bearing several pounds of paper purporting to contain detailed information about the holdings and performance of this non-existent group of hedge funds. The guy was actually referred to the unit I’m in by a Managing Director in another unit who said the guy was a member of a wealthy family that the MD had done business with in his prior position at one of the largest US banks.
If Aston Grimaldi and his hedge fund have had a “publicist” working so hard to keep their names absolutely completely out of anything that would end up mentioned on the internet, why is he suddenly so eager to sprawl his and firm’s name all over the place? No other way to put out the $150,000 reward? And the best he can do to try to convince neoconexpress he’s real is to suggest that “You may want to research compliance and regulatory issues with the hedge fund industry” and provide a diagram or something of “how these funds are structured”? He doesn’t have a single friend at a reputable law firm, accounting firm, or financial institution who he can give as a reference? And there may well be an entity named “Dune Capital Holdings” organized in the Cayman Islands, and if so it’s probably related to Dune Capital Management (which you’ll note “Aston” is being careful not to mention) since he’ll get his @$$ sued off if he does.
http://www.hedgeforce.com/reward.pdf
more money for the person who turns the video in!
http://www.justdropped.com/drops/070708com.html
Recently dropped (i.e. recently available) domain names, including hedgeforce.com
And naturally, a search on <hedgeforce “richard wilkins”. turns up absolutely nothing (so far, not even a copy of this letter).
And naturally, the website http://hedgeforce.com/index.php turns out to be a dummy with no information at all beyond generic made-up-yesterday stuff about vague “IT solutions” for hedge funds. Gotta love the “Team” tab, the contents of which consist of “coming soon”. “Richard Wilkins” hasn’t even managed to put up his fake name there yet. And do you have any idea how low on the totem pole a VP in Operations is in this industry? Even at a place like Goldman Sachs, an Ops VP wouldn’t have $150,000 to throw around.
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