The Impersonator
by Robert Kolker
New York Magazine
April 3, 2009
The whole operation was audacious to the point of sheer recklessness””from the start, he was just one due-diligence phone call from being found out””yet the very boldness of his plan was central to its success. Who would believe that such a respected and apparently successful attorney would knowingly peddle hundreds of millions of dollars worth of nothing?
Like Bernie Madoff, Marc Dreier bilked unsuspecting investors out of many millions of dollars. But Dreier did it with flair.
There was a time when Marc Dreier thought he could talk his way out of anything. But by last fall, even he was scrambling. Whenever the stylish, hyperaggressive 58-year-old white-collar litigator turned around, clients and colleagues at Dreier LLP, the marquee Park Avenue firm he”d built from almost nothing to 250 lawyers in just five years, were asking questions””about back rent, unpaid loans, depleted client escrow funds, documents of uncertain provenance. What Dreier needed to make these questions go away, he knew, was money. About $40 million, for starters. Continue reading “Marc Drier, “The Houdini of Impersonation””
Mirina Pepper has just been panhandled by a homeless man near London”s Liverpool Street Station. She reaches into her handbag and grabs a bundle of £20 notes. “Here, you can give them out,” she says. The homeless man looks perplexed at the notes, not knowing whether he should take this as a good or bad thing.
San Francisco (AP) — The fast-moving Conficker computer worm, a scourge of the Internet that has infected at least 3 million PCs, is set to spring to life in a new way on Wednesday – April Fools’ Day.
Back in olden times, mankind found it useful to live by mottoes. A motto reduces the helpful lessons of life to three or four words, maybe two, as in the Boy Scout motto: Be Prepared. Or, apropos now: Look before you leap.