166K followers. The situation was criticaleven Joe admitted it, Dean saidbut Hunt never showed any sign that his resolve was weakening. Everybody thought I was rich., Within hours of his second arrest, Hunt was calling from a pay phone at County Jail, Dean recalled. Sometimes renewed attention on a case can affect public opinion enough that something shakes loosebut treatments of Hunt's story haven't exactly been sympathetic toward the man who became the poster boy for '80s excess run amok. The Karnys put up $150,000 to stake Joes trading account, and persuaded friends to add another $250,000. Ron regarded the swindle as an art form and loved to boast of his accomplishments. Three thousand miles away, however, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, new complications were developing. While they waited out the police investigation, the Mays decided to remain with the BBC as members in good standing. Joe was concerned that Ron would think, once they pulled a gun on him . My reaction was that we should look into the possibility, Dean recalled. Within the hour, however, Browning decided that Joe Hunt was the most articulate person I had ever met. A biochemist, Browning had invested eighteen years of evenings and weekendsplus $480,000 of his own moneyin the development of a machine he called the Attrition Mill, an enormous metal cylinder capable of reducing ore to ultrafine powder to separate precious metals. Joe called that one correctly: through Bens mother, Dean said, they learned from a reporter at the Los Angeles Times that the Beverly Hills Police Department had not even bothered to send a detective to the missing mans house. box and a phone-answering service, actuallybut Ron called it Network News and with business card in hand paid a visit to a man named Jack Friedman at the Clayton Brokerage office in Beverly Hills, where he identified himself as assignment editor. Joe hadnt gotten Ron to invest any money, and he was kind of wondering whether Ron took him seriously as a businessman, Dean remembered. The money became a river now. Pittman remains at the main County Jail in downtown Los Angeles, where he is currently the only BBC member behind bars. Handsome and charismatic with a boyish charm, Hunt led the Billionaire Boys Club, a social and investment fraternity. "Absolutely 100 Percent Not Guilty": 25 Bizarre Things You Forgot About the O.J. This time, Tom was included. Reza hated his father, Ben told Dean, and guaranteed that if they could arrange to kidnap the man and force him to sign over his assets, they would split the money equally. By the second week of September, the Securities and Exchange Commission had alerted Financial Futures trading partners to its investigation into the activities of Joe Hunt. . An hour later, Joe, Ben, and Jim entered the condominium complex wearing their brown outfits, Dean said; within ten minutes, the three returned with the loaded truck, and the plan proceeded on schedule through the transfer at the U-Haul agency. The two of them wrapped the body in the comforter before carrying it outside, where the most difficult part of the evening was loading the stiffening corpse into the trunk of Joes car. Ron was really amazed and said that Joe had found a real fish, Dean remembered. Your source for entertainment news, celebrities, celeb news, and celebrity gossip. The trials for the murder of Hedayat Eslaminia were held in Northern California. The junior brokers clustered around Hunt, dazzled by his daring, until the day a senior executive named Finebaum told Joe that his margins had been tripled, giving him twenty-four hours to come up with another $1.5 million to cover his bets. The new divisions came between the Mays, as Tom, anxious to be declared a Shading, moved closer to Joe, while Dave, always skeptical, increasingly became the object of Hunts lectures on Norminess. Eventually, the twins stopped speaking to each other. Tom and Dave had grown into a pair of lanky lady-killers, outrageously good-looking but regarded as not terribly bright. Dean would find happiness, Joe explained, only if he achieved purity of action. The starting point was an understanding that the impediments between what you had and what you wanted were external, not internal. Joe kept the master list and told the others he would personally conduct the interrogation. [It] was labeled At Levins, TO DO. Below were fifteen numbered items, a crude map of mountain roads, and the words Jim Digs Pit, all composed, Zoeller would learn within the next few weeks, by a young guru who taught his disciples that internal guilt was what caused criminals to fail. After graduation, he enrolled at USC to study accounting, passing the CPA exam when he was only 19, after which he promptly dropped out. Weiss would bring in many of Financial Futures first scores of investors, among them Hunts single largest trading partner, Woodland Hills businessman Chester Brown, who deposited $250,000. And not only because he rode his bike there and back. The future was terrifying and the past unthinkable. Nelsonreturned to the story to play Hunt's father in the more recent film, which was announced in 2010and shot in 2015 in New Orleans with Ansel Elgort as Hunt, Taren Egertonas Karny and Kevin Spacey as Ron Levin. Twenty-four-year-old Dean Karny, on summer vacation from law school and still wearing the gray business suit he had put on in Los Angeles that morning, climbed into the back of the truck and sat down. Ben, suddenly cautious, had brought along a can of air freshener and this spray-on Band-Aid that he thought would help avoid leaving fingerprints, Dean remembered. After she told Hedayat that Reza was outside, Olga recalled, he became very upset and told me never to allow him in the apartment.. [8] In 1987 a Southern California Court found Hunt guilty of Levin's 1984 murder and sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. "There is one voice that will never be stifledand that's the voice of an innocent man talking about his innocence," Hunt said in court. Soon Hunt really did have a few million dollars in his investment accounts and he leased a suite of offices in Beverly Hills. Authorities found bones in the spot Karny led them to, and the remains were identified via dental records. Four days later, Evan Dicker reported that the BBC office had been burglarized and filed an insurance claim in excess of $100,000. They will pay for it forever. In August 1984, two of Hunt's fed-up associates went to authorities to report that they had been swindledand thatthey had reason to believe Hunt and his bodyguard, Jim Pittman, had something to do with Levin's disappearance. It was probably inevitable that someone would bring his attention to Ronald G. Levin of Beverly Hills. While Dean and Brooke were at the movies on the night of June 6, Joe said, he had shown up at Levins with two take-out dinners from La Scala. Inside were file folders labeled REZA: ASSETS RE CONSERVATORSHIP, SWARTOUT, and one stamped THE MAYS, in which Zoeller found a two-page contract between Microgenesis and Ron Levin. Behind the cover of his new name, he had begun trading at the Beverly Hills brokerage house of Cantor, Fitzgerald & Company in accounts that had been set up under the names Tom May, Dean Karny, and Alex Gaon. His duplex on Peck Drive was worth at least a million dollars, Ron said, but hed gotten it for a fraction of that, negotiating a lease option with the old woman who inherited the building, convincing her that $100,000twice what her dead husband had paid for the place thirty years earlierwas a fair price. Two months before his twentieth birthday, he went to work full-time as a junior accountant in the Arco Tower downtown, but had discovered almost immediately that the corporate world stifled capable people. Yet Levin seemed affectionately oriented toward Joe, Dean thought, and both relished the adversary relationship. The two of them argued constantly about little factual questions, and would run to reference books to prove their point. Joes mother had disappeared when he was in high school. Another mystery. Cantor, Fitzgerald even subpoenaed Levin. Within weeks Hunt had fabricated a gangster mystique for Pittman, reinventing him as a Penn State all-American who had run back kicks for the Baltimore Colts, then gone to work for the mob as an enforcer. The first to break the circle was Jeff Raymond. Hunt was charged with Eslaminia's murder, too, in 1985. Their whole case is: Joe Hunt was this manipulative guy who told people a lot of stuff for a fact. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., an attorney who represented Levin in one of his many civil actions, described him as the most fantastic, complicated character Ive ever encountered. Levin described some amazing stunts over the years: he once sold a new BMW to a computer salesman only weeks after he had begun leasing the car. Ben and I always felt we were doing this for such a good reason that ultimately everyone would understand, Dean would explain later. The BBCs ranks were thinning. Investigators were closing in on the BBC from both the north and the south now. Joe got Ben Dosti to take Jim shopping for clothes, promised to send him to UCLA to improve his vocabulary, even bought him a tuxedo for the BBCs black-tie New Years Eve party. Their leader, Joe Hunt, and his first two disciples, Dean Karny and Ben Dosti, presented it to the others as this new type of group, an organization where not the structure is important, but the merit of the individuals. A member would need no more than an idea to create his own company to be financed by Joes genius for commodities trading. Actually Jim Pittman asked me once in the lobby if I would be interested in meeting Joe and Dean because he thought that I would fit in with the group. Though he had married several times, the elder May was without children of his own; he not only adopted the twins, but made them his heirs, maintaining the paternal relationship even after their mother divorced him and remarried. Black is white and white is blackthat was the paradox, Joe said. Eight young men and Brooke Roberts pulled the pieces of a playpen sofa into a semicircle. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. and I felt very strongly about the group of boys we had gathered around ourselves. By the first of the year Hunt had Pittman on salary as the BBCs director of security and had given him a black BMW. As he reached into the back seat for his briefcase, Swartout said, the black man threw the contents of the cup on his back. He was charming and handsome - and even if you wanted to, you couldn't resist. Editors Note: The drama and intrigue did not stop there. Several former disciples testified that they believed Hunt was still attempting to have them killed. He said that you could find out anything in a library.. "They cannot charge me for the murder of Ron Levin because they dropped it," Pittman said. All its going to cost me is a suit of clothes and another car.. As Hunt drew the others in, the BBC began to assume the shape of concentric circles, or layers of understanding, as Joe called them. Karny and Hunt rode together to the office that morning, where Joe paraded the check all around and showed all the boys, Dean recalled. "He had this quality about him. On the morning of June 4, Dean came into the office early and saw Joe making notes on a yellow legal pad. Brian McNamara was born on the 21st of November, 1960. He is a mentor of sorts to burgeoning scammers Joe Hunt (Elgort) and Dean Karny (Egerton) in their get-rich-quick scheme, delivering ham-handed platitudes like "Billionaire or bust" and "You're a . The eternal silence, which would be great for anyone to have, is there. With him was Martin Levin. With no word from Ben or Reza, money was growing tight. It was a sweet moment for the former class idiot and supreme geek, who had met most of the young men now gathered around him for the first time back in 1972, when they had been students together at the exclusive Harvard School in North Hollywood. That, Hunt says, was the trial at which jurors got to hear the truth about his activities. Evan Dicker was asked to prepare the minutes of a nonexistent June 7 meeting of the Microgenesis board and to fabricate a discussion of the Levin deal. The exclusive club, however, was a giant, high-stakes investment scam. They had agreed in advance that the place they chose would have to be remote, Dean explained, so that the screams could not be heard. What convinced them to rent the house, though, was a hidden trapdoor in the hall closet that led directly to the basement. The club enticed the sons of wealthy families from the Harvard School for Boys (now Harvard-Westlake School; not affiliated with Harvard University) in the Los Angeles area with get-rich-quick schemes. Joe continued to solicit Rons respect. As his crisis deepened, Joe reacted not by lowering expectations but by raising them, describing his plan to expand the BBC into a national organization of kids close to their inheritances. Joe worked relentlessly, formalizing the BBCs structure in a nine-page document provided to all members, envisioning an organization of 2,187 individuals divided into cells, sections, and divisions, with a hierarchy of nexuses, axes, and thraxes. Joe was always out to prove himself better and smarter than the rich kids, remembered one classmate. Bobby Roberts disapproved vehemently of his daughters relationship with Joe Hunt, but at the Manning, Brooke went to almost any length to capture her young mans affection. His corporation wanted a stock position, Joe saidI believe the figure mentioned was $5 million, Browning recalled. Jack Nicholson and Warren Beaty, photgraphed in 1976. They were the sons of some of the most powerful families in California, never at a loss for money or kicks. Their mother, a bit player in television during the late 1950s, had given birth to the twins after an affair with actor Ty Hardin, who had his own series at the time, a horse opera called Bronco. Defense attorneys also pointed out that Levin had restructured his already-made bail arrangements to release his parents from liability, and asked one witness for information about Brazilian extradition treaties. Hunt's direct appeal was denied on July 12, 1996. Hunt maintains that Levin's con artistry extends to having faked his own death, as no body was found in the case. Ron, of course, was a little slow about producing the money, stalling for nearly two months before telling Joe that he had invested the $13 million in a suburban shopping center near Chicago, where the BBC had an equity position that was worth maybe twice the $4 million he owed them. The young executives were ensconced in a suite of offices in West Hollywood, taking an entire floor of an office building on Third Street. According to the governments star witness at trial, Hunt and his bodyguard forced Levin to sign a check for $1.5 million at his Peck Drive home in Beverly Hills. . [citation needed]. This was the perfect crime. In the kitchen she found two partially eaten take-out dinners on the dining table, and in the living room discovered that Rons poodle Kosher had urinated on the Persian carpet. At his next appearance in court, Karny wore a bulletproof vest. Even Dean and Ben contributed, putting in their combined savings of $12,000, and by the time Joe set up shop in Chicago, he had a trading fund in the neighborhood of half a million dollars. When the gentleman reached the French doors at the Fifth Avenue entrance, Vega recalled, four of my units were waiting for him. The gentleman then did something that no one had ever done in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel: he dropped his suitcases, let out a yell, and assumed a karate stance. They had considered posing as police officers, and had even rented blue uniforms from a costume shop in Hollywood, Dean recalled, but then Joe had decided that policemen attract more attention than delivery boys.. The murders are also the subject of the song "Things to Do Today" by Chicago band Big Black. She thought he would fall head over heels, the BBC member recalled, and Joe acted like, No big deal.. As the plan grew more definite, each of them was assigned a list of duties. . More than two hundred people attended, taking chairs in rows that faced the table where Hunt sat flanked by the BBC. The next target would be human. Two days later, on June 6, Joe asked Dean to take Brooke to the movies that night. Brown was fascinated by the young mans facility with figures, recalled his wife Mary, and watched him add, subtract, multiply, and divide whole columns of five- and six-digit numbers in his head. The first rule was, Never feel sorry for anything you do, and the second was, Its all right to lie if you know the truth.. Before covering it, he and Jim had disfigured the body with shotgun blasts, Joe said. To top it all off, the deal with Kilpatrick and UFOI was coming unglued. From a high of about thirty, BBC membership collapsed to a core of sixteen. Whatever it was, Joe was like this rock.". The trial lasted for nine months and, in the end, he managed an 8-4 hung jury after 26 days of deliberations. He put all his BBC guys in control, passed forty resolutions, and took all the power away from us immediately, Swartout recalled. One week later, the Shadings held a second meeting on the subject of disclosure. In Tehran, Eslaminias name had been written on walls with blood. Joe doesnt deserve to be out of jail at all, said Leslie H. Zoeller, the Beverly Hills police detective who led the investigation into the Billionaire Boys Club. Dean Karny, Hunt's best friend who had previously stuck by him when other investors started to drop out, agreed to testify in exchange for full immunityand he also said that Hunt was behind. Basically, I supported him.. On her own, Brooke claimed, she won a part on the TV series Diffrent Strokes, but when her father found out, he made a single phone call, and the next day the job was no longer hers. He was bothered that Ben had stopped to wash his hands in the middle of the abduction. Look, I am innocent. This is the spot, he said. At the BBC office in West Hollywood, they didnt let it worry them much: the profit Joe had made with the Levin account would more than cover their escalating overhead until the Microgenesis contracts were signed. Tom and Dave sported complicated but thoroughly impressive pedigrees. The first indication that Joe was serious about the direction things appeared to be taking came during a dispute with a Santa Ana company called FCI Laboratories.

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