He had passed the C.P.A. Look at these, he said to Zoeller. I am not going to lie about it.. 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. 166K followers. Karny did not see Hunt again until 8:30 the next morning, when Joe walked into Deans bedroom with his hair still wet from the shower, wearing a clean suit and carrying a briefcase that he opened to reveal a $1.5-million check drawn on a Swiss bank account in the name of Ron Levin. "I seeother men similarly situated getting commutations and figured, 'Why not me, too?'" He appeared with Dan Aykroyd in Caddyshack II. The police would undoubtedly suspect that Levin had attempted to create the impression of an abduction before skipping the country, Joe predicted. And so a lot of people became very hostile toward him, and one of the big brokerage houses had decided to squeeze him out., That was not how Tom Utrata, director of the Mercs Compliance Department, remembered it. The whole scheme unraveled when investor Ron Levin vanished in 1984 after allegedly conning the club. 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. Bond trading was a very special field of endeavor, Joe explained: There are no crop periods or seasonality. You can find every Esquire story ever published at .css-umdwtv{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:.0625rem;text-decoration-color:#FF3A30;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:inherit;-webkit-transition:background 0.4s;transition:background 0.4s;background:linear-gradient(#ffffff, #ffffff 50%, #d5dbe3 50%, #d5dbe3);-webkit-background-size:100% 200%;background-size:100% 200%;}.css-umdwtv:hover{color:#000000;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;-webkit-background-position:100% 100%;background-position:100% 100%;}Esquire Classic. The result was a hung jury, 84, in favor of Hunt's acquittal. . BBC members Hunt, Pittman, Karny (before his immunity deal), Arben Dosti, and Reza Eslaminia were charged with the murder of Hedayat Eslaminia, Reza's father. After Hunt's conviction, eight witnesses came forward stating that they had seen Ron Levin alive in various locations in 1986 and 1987, including Greece and Los Angeles. "I don't know if anything is going to come of this or not," Lt. Frank Salcido told the Los Angeles Timesof Pittman's purported confession to A Current Affair. After Karny, the only other person with whom Joe discussed the murder was the third Shading, Ben Dosti. My reaction was that we should look into the possibility, Dean recalled. It was on a street corner outside the BBC office in West Hollywood that Joe and Ben first described for Dean the fabulous wealth of a man named Hedayat Eslaminia. "They cannot charge me for the murder of Ron Levin because they dropped it," Pittman said. 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 the . Joe thought it was a shame to throw away a $12,000 watch, Dean remembered, but he wasnt going to mess around with a clue like that.. It was originally simply named "BBC", the initials of Bombay Bicycle Club, a restaurant Hunt had frequented as a young man in Chicago. When they arrived, Joe was sitting on the floor in the study, Tom recalled; Dean was in a chair beside him, with Evan standing in the library. When authorities tried to increase a fellow inmates sentence by two years, citing a sentencing error, Hunt filed a petition that saw the sentence cut by two and a half years. They just kind-of know," Pattin, who co-hosts Billionaire Boys Clubwith Timothy Olyphant,told E! [14] However, in a federal habeas proceeding in 2004, Hunt's continuing effort to have his murder conviction overturned was revived, as the Ninth Circuit reversed a dismissal of his habeas petition. He just struck everybody who got to know him as the person you wanted to be with, who could help you achieve your goals, whether they were financial or personal. Following washouts at USC and Colorado, the Mays had invested in a beach-front nightclub that would be bankrupt within a year. Now, Hunt wants a chance to be released and is trying to persuade Gov. In recent years, though, instruction in the responsibilities of Christian brotherhood had given way to an emphasis on personal success. Levin was making $10,000 a month from this arrangement, he told Holmes, but he couldnt stop there. Join Facebook to connect with Dean Karny and others you may know. At the time of his disappearance, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency was investigating an informants tip that the Iranian had imported opium in rugs from Afghanistan. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. of Deputy District Attorneys, said she is not surprised that Hunt is making a bid to commute his sentence. Some testified at the trials. [21][22][23] Judd Nelson, who played Hunt in the 1987 miniseries, played Hunt's father. For $5,600 a month, Dosti and Steve Lopez, a new BBC recruit whose main function was the entertainment of wealthy widows and divorces, moved into a two-bedroom suite on the twelfth floor, while Hunt and Karny took a huge three bedroom place on the fifteenth floor, sharing it with Joes new nineteen-year-old girlfriend, Brooke Roberts. The Browns brought in more investors. 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. Recalled lawyer Holmes: He got them deals.. 1,746 following. His younger sister and her husband are funding the FreeJoeHunt.com website and campaign. Everything wound up being used as some sort of prop for the image that he was trying to project.. Capital formation, Joe would say later, is always a problem, but he had solved it neatly with the help of one of the BBCs first female members, Allison Weiss. Ron had good reasons of his own for disappearing: under criminal indictment for illegally purchasing $300,000 worth of computer goods and photography equipment, Levin faced almost certain conviction and a state-prison sentence of up to seven years. [7] Pittman, granted release with time served in two murders, died of kidney failure in 1997, age 44. After the BBC attorneys failed to obtain a search warrant, Dean recalled, Reza and Steve Lopez broke into the Belmont condo. In Tehran, Eslaminias name had been written on walls with blood. You noticed that systematically, one by one, people would break up with their old girlfriends, tell their dad to go fly a kite, and become more and more integrated into the fabric of the BBC and more isolated from society and Normies, Dean said. Within weeks, Levin had inveigled the couple into an investment opportunity. She and Christopher had put up all of their life savings to purchase Rons Rolls-Royce. On Wednesday, Hunt questioned Dean Karny, his former prep school chum and fellow club member who has been granted immunity and is in the federal witness protection program. Prosecutor Fred Wapner has been granted a retrial. There are endless galaxies which are yours. Both ended in hung juries. As they moved their load into the U-Haul, Dean heard pounding on the lid of the trunk, then a muffled voice: Please, sir, please let me out.. He was portrayed by Taron Egerton. The increasingly founderingHunt encouraged (and needed) Levin to invest with himand Levin, who had multiple arrests for fraud and theft on his record, eventually agreed to $5 million, but to be held in his own brokerage account. And he was.. The exclusive club, however, was a giant, high-stakes investment scam. For as far back as Los Angeles could claim tradition, the Harvard School had been its bastion. The Dostis hired top criminal attorney Richard Hirsch to handle their sons defense. The two began to refer to a place they called the Ice House, an armed retreat where the BBC was to rendezvous when things got hot, Joe was building a personal library for Jim, a set of how to books with titles like Hit Man: Technical Manual for Independent Contractors and Black Bag Owners Manual II, which began, This pertains to the personalized killing that in peacetime is called murder.. Joe continued to solicit Rons respect. Steve Cooley said that Hunt killed for greed and that his case was one of the highest-profile murder cases handled by the office in the 1980s. The BBCs ranks were thinning. During his trial for the murder of Levin, Hunt's defense attorney presented two witnesses, Carmen Canchola and Jesus Lopez, who testified that they saw Levin after his alleged murder, in September 1986 at a gas station in Tucson, Arizona. I thought I was stabbed at first, he recalled. The suspect started to look at them and became visibly shaken (blank look on face, nervously going from page to page, over and over again), the detective wrote in his report. He told Dean to crawl in the back, open the trunk, and check for vital signs. His aphorisms were delivered now as public proclamations, codes of conduct for true believers. Eventually Dean Karny went to the authorities and testified against Joe Hunt in exchange for immunity. 2016)", https://freejoehunt.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/habeas_petition_denial_10-5-18.pdf, https://freejoehunt.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/LEGAL-ODYSSEY_-Commutation-Application-JAN-2018.pdf, "Ansel Elgort, Taron Egerton to Star in 'Billionaire Boys Club', "Ansel Elgort, Taron Egerton Starring in 'Billionaire Boys Club' Movie (EXCLUSIVE)", "Kevin Spacey Joining 'Baby Driver' & 'Billionaire Boys Club', "Kevin Spacey film takes in just $126 as it flops at US box office", "Kevin Spacey's new film 'Billionaire Boys Club' opens to incredibly low $126 following sexual misconduct allegations", "Judd Nelson Returns for 'Billionaire Boys Club' Remake (EXCLUSIVE)", "Timothy Olyphant Hosts a 'Billionaire Boys Club' Crime Podcast: Listen", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Billionaire_Boys_Club&oldid=1128837397, This page was last edited on 22 December 2022, at 06:36. Tall and slender and always expensively dressed, Levin had fine silver hair, an immaculate white beard, a smile that was an affront to some, irresistible to others. Basically, I supported him.. The BBC had deals in the works that would make a half-million dollars look like small change: Gene Brownings machine was generating international interest, and Joe was already involved in negotiations with Denver tax-shelter king William Kilpatrick, discussing a merger of Microgenesis with Kilpatricks United Financial Operations Inc. that could result in a lucrative multimillion-dollar payoff. As Hunt drew the others in, the BBC began to assume the shape of concentric circles, or layers of understanding, as Joe called them. Detectives never found Levin, but they did find what prosecutors called the recipe for murder, a chilling to-do list scrawled on pages from a yellow legal pad. He was bothered that Ben had stopped to wash his hands in the middle of the abduction. This was the perfect crime. In both trials, north and south, Hunt will take the stand as the chief witness for the defense. While Hunt is seeking a shot at freedom, he still maintains he didnt kill Levin. Vasquez had seen Reza just twice during the year she spent with his father, the second time early that summer, when she spotted Reza sitting in a gold Porsche outside the condo. After his own trial for Levin's murder endedin a hung jury, Hunt's former bodyguard, Jim Pittman, pleadedguilty to one count of accessory to murder after the fact. He was told later that the bank had received his message at the very moment the $127,000 was being counted out for Ben and Reza. Thats all youre qualified for.. Within weeks, Joe not only set up West Cars of North America, but provided the company with more than a quarter-million dollars in assets by persuading other BBC members to sign over their own cars as collateral. ", Andshe's excited toexpand on that "wow"because, though it's been the subject of books and an Emmy-nominated miniseries, as well as inspired plenty of TV and film plots, it has been one of thoseinsanely juicy stories that somehow slipped through the cracks of the true crime canonthat always seems to be in rotation decades after the events in question occurred. This time, Tom was included. Most memorable, according to a BBC member, was the time she painted her entire body with watercolors, spread a huge sheet of art paper on the floor, pressed herself against it in a series of postures that looked as if they had been lifted from the Kama Sutra, and wrote I LOVE YOU, JOE in one corner. Browning joined the Mays and Raymond at a meeting set up in the office of the Mays private counsel. Mr. Karny, 26, the son of a wealthy Los Angeles real estate developer, said he had believed in Mr. Hunt's abilities and had been intrigued with his desire to put together a group of. In 1993, Pittmanwent onA Current Affair in 1993 and said he shot Levin at the man's Beverly Hills homeand Hunt was there. Investigators were closing in on the BBC from both the north and the south now. Joe Vega, the Plazas security supervisor, reported for work on June 10 and was immediately asked to accompany the hotels credit manager to room 1071. Three prominent investors challenged Hunt, pounding on the table, demanding the truth. He knew.. . Karny said Hunt told the story as he strolled through the Westside Pavilion mall, describing vividly Levins explosive gasp upon death and how they disfigured Levin with a shotgun his brain jumped out of his skull and fell on his chest before dumping his body in a remote part of Soledad Canyon. Jerry Eisenberg, the young attorney who had introduced Reza to Joe and Ben, was now telling the FBI he had reason to believe that Joe Hunt was involved not only in the death of Ron Levin, but also in the kidnapping and murder of an Iranian from northern California. But he also has repeatedly rejected parole requests for high-profile killers, including members of the Manson family.. At dusk they stopped again, less than fifty miles from Los Angeles, where Joe ordered the cargo transferred to the back of the pickup. At the time, searches were still being conducted for Levin's body. With just a few thousand in savings, he had earned $35,000 already, Joe said. 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. Character actor and Golden Globe nominee for his role as Dean Karny in the TV series Billionaire Boys Club. 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. At the Harvard School, debate was the most popular and competitive sport on campus. Shalom Karny was a Holocaust survivor who had made a fortune as a real estate developer in Los Angeles, and he appreciated the spirit of enterprise that young Joe Gamsky was cultivating in his Dean. 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. One was from the Beverly Hills Police Department. Usually you weren't the kind of girl for one night stands, but Dean had something about him you couldn't withstand, the alcohol playing part in it too. After Pittman boasted that he had survived eighty-seven consecutive karate tournaments without a loss, Dean introduced him to Joe. There is basically a point in everybodys life where either you are going to continue on with the company, or just leave, Steve Taglianetti remembered Joe saying. Joe never flinched, Mary Brown remembered, not even when an elderly woman who said she had invested her life savings broke into hysterics. Joe had grown to six feet four inches and sounded like a young man who had taken some long strides since Harvard. Hunt described himself simply as administrator. Pittman was right; somebody always talks. During a hearing in San Mateo County, a police informant testified he had overheard Reza Eslaminia boast that his codefendant, Joe Hunt, was purchasing a contract on Karnys life. Shortly after the move to Manning, Joe added a new dimension to the BBCs image by recruiting the groups first minority member, a man who brought an entirely new set of skills into the fold. Not all the defendants consented to interviews with the author. This article originally appeared in the September 1986 issue of Esquire. He is known for being a TV Actor. He was one of Billionaire Boys Club (also known as BBC) founders, Joe Hunt's former best friend turned archenemy and main witness in Joe Hunt's trial. He began taking us out to lunch, Dean recalled, buying us games at the video arcade. During Deans summer vacation, Joe began spending the night at the Karny estate in the Hollywood Hills. They found just one, containing only a few hundred dollars. Within the week, however, Joe was back at the Manning, released after the district attorneys office refused to file charges until more of the young men who had witnessed Hunts alleged confession were interviewed. "We have basically an open investigation.". He had invested just $20,000the poor little fellow on the block, Gene Browning called himbut had proved valuable because his father, Lewis Raymond, a well-known metallurgist, had agreed to do the stress tests for Brownings Attrition Mill. It was the May brothers, though, who were, in many ways, the making of the BBC. [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. One wanted $40,000, one wanted $100,000, one wanted $200,000. After a recent trip to Europe, he had warned Vasquez not to open a package that came to the condo from Germany. Another mystery. Without money for new materials, work was brought to a virtual standstill at the Microgenesis plant in Gardena. Dean avoided Hunt for the next couple of days, until the afternoon of June 10, when Joe took him for a walk around the block in Westwood, Karny recalled, and proceeded, kind of against my wishes, to tell me in fairly great detail what he and Jim had done.. There were attorneys and doctors, writers from the studios, producers and directors. Financial Futures assets were frozen, pending the SEC investigation, Joe announced, but he offered his personal promise that every trading partner would receive his or her money before the end of the year. The BMW led the way, followed by the yellow pickup with the black camper shell. After his release, Joes preoccupation was the $127,000 Ben and Reza were to send from Switzerland, Dean remembered, but the money never came. It is really difficult to do that when you wont admit the crime.. One began by freeing oneself of concepts like good and bad, true and false. You are not interested in weather. Dosti and Reza Eslaminia both were released on appeal using evidence from Hunt's second trial, and Hunt was also acquitted of the Eslaminia murder charge. Seventy-five feet down the slope, searchers found most of a human rib cage with several attached vertebrae. Jim advised him not to touch the stuff, Steve recalled, warning that it was DMSO spiked with strychnine and would cause a heart attack. 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.. Joe said he had made Detective Zoeller look like a real idiot, Dean remembered, and I was sitting there sort of believing that Oh, yeah, we can just tough this out., What Joe didnt mention was the moment during his interrogation when Zoeller had laid out seven pages torn from a yellow legal pad on the table in front of him. At the Manning, Joe determined that Eslaminia had bank accounts in Germany and Switzerland. That afternoon, Karny led Zoeller and a Los Angeles County coroners team into the Angeles National Forest, to a turnout on a dirt road in Soledad Canyon. Enraged that Bruce Swartouts negotiations in Denver had stalled the BBCs deal with UFOI, Joe began talking about taking out a contract on the Orange County man, Dean recalled. Jim Pittman, whom Ron had never met, rang the buzzer at about 9:30 and introduced himself over the barrel of a silenced .25 Berretta. Theyll never find the body.. "They dismissed itso it would be like double jeopardy to try me twice.". Gamsky had entered the prep school on a scholarship, one of the few poor boys on the twenty-three-acre campus. Hunt ordered a fourteen-foot map of the world for the Third Street conference room and covered it with colored pins marking the spots where he thought the BBC should start companies: Hong Kong, Hamburg, Rio. He was thirteen years old then and his name was Joseph Gamsky. He had known for some time that the younger Eslaminia hated his father, the agent said, adding that before he flew to Europe, Reza had suggested knowledge of his fathers disappearance, claiming he knew two individuals whose principal activity involved kidnapping, torture, and subsequent killing of wealthy individuals, after the individuals had been forced to turn over their assets.. A few days later, however, at a meeting with Hunt, Pittman, and Dosti in Bens office, Dean suggested telling the others. Reality was circumstantial, Joe explained, and through a reorientation of perspective you could always see things in the way that best suited your needs. And so anyone who wasnt prepared to deal with a much greater level of responsibility could leave right then and there, Dean Karny remembered Joe saying. But Wondery'sBillionaire Boys Clubdelves beneath the known facts of the case toprobe what motivated not just Joe Hunt, but the already wealthy, privileged young men who ended up in his orbit, lured by the promise ofmore money, more stuffand, maybe, a bigger piece of the pie than their rich parents could give them. On August 16, California Department of Justice agent Oscar Breiling arrived on the scene to take over control of the case. The beauty of the BBCs corporate structure was that Joe could endow college students with titles like president, executive vice-president, and chairman of the board. One trunk was filled with their equipment, including the handcuffs Dean had picked up at the International Love Boutique. On September 22, Joe convened a meeting of Financial Futures investors in an office building on Beverly Boulevard. He began by interviewing Olga Vasquez. When police searched Levin's condo, they found what appeared to be a to-do list in Hunt's handwriting that said things like "close blinds" and "tape mouth.". [15] But this appeal, too, was ultimately unsuccessful. There was a big hoopla about it, Dean remembered, because we had just lost a great deal of money in our own commodity accounts at almost the same time. It was a virtual replay of Chicago. Before covering it, he and Jim had disfigured the body with shotgun blasts, Joe said. Hunt maintains that Levin's con artistry extends to having faked his own death, as no body was found in the case. He said that he was going to the library to look up some books on how to torture people, Dean recalled. Just before 8:00 that evening, Vega recalled, he observed a gentleman carrying two suitcases down the number 7 stairway. 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. It was Joe who suggested the sex shop, confiding that it was where he had found the cuffs used during the first murder seven weeks earlier. He lasted only six months before resigning to trade on the commodities market. The Karnys put up $150,000 to stake Joes trading account, and persuaded friends to add another $250,000. Another Billionaire Boys Club member, Dean Karny, an admitted participant in the Eslaminia murder who was granted immunity from prosecution, testified that he and Dosti taped up air holes he. The detective asked Hunt, What can you tell me about this?. He said that you could find out anything in a library.. Ron regarded the swindle as an art form and loved to boast of his accomplishments. Together they wrapped the empty blue trunk in heavy brown paper, addressed it to HEDAYAT ESLAMINIA, 400 DAVEY GLEN ROAD, #4322, BELMONT, CA, and carried it to the parking lot. I want to put $300,000 in BBC Consolidated. Ten minutes later, Joe would be back at another window, drawing out a cashiers check for $800,000. With no word from Ben or Reza, money was growing tight. No one left. When the BBC gathered now for meetings at the Manning, Jim sat off to one side, fondling automatic pistols with screw-on silencers, voice-activated microphones, heat-sensitive alarmsand his favorite toy, a single-shot pistol built into a ball-point pen. The petition also describes Hunt's in-custody record of conduct as "exceptional" and details his founding and facilitation of a men's spiritual group at the California State Prison in Sacramento where Hunt was imprisoned until 2012. Closed blinds, scan for tape recorder, tape mouth, handcuff, put gloves on, explain situation, kill dog, reads the list. They actually cheered. Three days later the board of directors unanimously gave Hunt, who had turned twenty-four two weeks earlier, complete control of a company claiming $12 million in assets, naming him both president and chairman of the board. Joe was all talkative until I pulled out the seven pages of to-do list and put in front of him, Zoeller said. There was reported speculation that the disappearance ofHedayat Eslaminia, who was a wealthy businessmanback in his native Iran, had something to do with the Ayatollah, whom he had criticized. His father maintained as many as three residences, Reza said, but seemed to spend most of his time at the Belmont condominium he shared with his girlfriend, Olga Vasquez. ", Especially now, she added, a good story "istherapeutic and it's escapist. The guest staying in that room, Mr. Levin, had run up a $2,000 bill in just three days, largely by his use of the hotels limousine service. Jim and Ben went north with Reza to perform surveillance on the condo in San Mateo County. The situation was criticaleven Joe admitted it, Dean saidbut Hunt never showed any sign that his resolve was weakening. After a series of lane changes, the detectives caught the Jeep at Santa Monica Boulevard. . Dean had started classes at the Whittier School of Law and was living rent-free in an Encino condominium owned by his father. Amid high-tech displays, $200-per-session polo lessons, shotgun shooting safaris in Soledad Canyon, and weekends at the blackjack tables in Vegas, Joe staged some serious demonstrations of power. The Mays and Jeff Raymond returned to Los Angeles in early September, after more than a month in hiding at Mammoth Lake. Joe thought that it was a symbolic gesture of guilt, Dean said. Judd Nelson portrayed Joe Hunt in the 1987 network TV adaptation of his story. Descriptions of the murder scenes are largely reconstructed from police reports and from trial testimony of Dean Karny, currently with the California Witness Protection Program. The Mays volunteered to transport the Cyclotron, and Joe accepted. Other cast members included Frederic Lehne, John Stockwell, Barry Tubb, Raphael Sbarge, Jill Schoelen, Stan Shaw, John Dye, and James Sloyan. ), "No one that I have met to this day really knows the whole story. Perhaps the most stunning came on Halloween Day, 1983, when he went to San Juan Capistrano to address the stockholders of an energy company called Cogenco Systems. Jim remembered watching Hunt hand a teller five and six deposit slips at a time: He would tell her, I want to put $400,000 in this account here, BBC Management. . I have left a lot of wreckage behind me because of the way I behaved in my early 20s, he said. Network News already had arrangements with Merrill Lynch and PaineWebber, Levin said, but needed one other brokerage house for a segment that would be focused on an outside trading adviser, a young man named Joe Hunt.
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