I did say that to a group of guys at BBC, Hunt said. On November 26, Les Zoeller visited the Karny home on Outpost Drive. EvenHollywood and Crime hostTracy Pattinwhose latest podcast takes onthe twisted '80s-era tale of money, lies, manipulation and cold-blooded murdersummed it all up at first with a simple "wow. "We have basically an open investigation.". 166k Followers, 1,746 Following, 2,448 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Dean Kearney (@deankarnage) deankarnage. Through the endless passages of the cosmos. This would provide good cover for the mans disappearance, Joe suggested, and he told them to be ready on short notice. He was gaunt, often in a distracted state, borrowing money in amounts he would have scoffed at three months earlier$10,000 from Tom May, $5,000 from Evan Dicker. Others are highly skeptical Hunt is a candidate for this reappraisal. Brian McNamara was born on the 21st of November, 1960. Hunt and Alex Gaon were at their Quotron in Cantor, Fitzgeralds trading room every morning at 6:00, but Joe would never put more than half the money he collected into the commodities market. One week later, the Shadings held a second meeting on the subject of disclosure. Ten BBC members gathered on the afternoon of June 24 in Joes condo at the Manning. They would split the profits 50-50. At the crosswalk in Westwood, Joe described Levins last breath leaving his body: It was a kind of gurgling gaspJoe made the sound for me, Dean remembered. 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. Joes mother had disappeared when he was in high school. Less than five minutes after the twins pulled into their driveway in Brentwood, Tom May recalled, Joe Hunt was at their front door. 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.. Olga, a doll-faced, soft-bodied woman with long legs and a breathy voice, gave interviews to local TV stations, and the San Francisco papers picked up the story, leading with the suspicion that Eslaminias disappearance had been the work of a Khomeini hit squad. Vasquez did not mention to the media a second possibility, one already under consideration among law-enforcement officialsthat Eslaminia had been abducted during a drug deal. 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. From the Davey Glen Apartments, they drove directly to a U-Haul dealership, where the blue trunk was transferred from the camper to the back of a twelve-foot truck. It was originally simply named "BBC", the initials of Bombay Bicycle Club, a restaurant Hunt had frequented as a young man in Chicago. Look at these, he said to Zoeller. A week later, Steve Taglianetti caught a ride to Gardena with Pittman and noticed a vial of liquid on the dashboard. His back began to burn a few moments later, and fearing he had been attacked with acid, Swartout undressed in his office and rinsed himself with water. 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. . The exclusive club, however, was a giant, high-stakes investment scam. 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. I am convinced that he cannot distinguish truth from fiction. Three thousand miles away, however, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, new complications were developing. Why is Frank McCourt really pushing this? But Hunt was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole,a jury choosing not to give himthe death penalty. For as far back as Los Angeles could claim tradition, the Harvard School had been its bastion. .. Those charges were dropped after jurors deadlocked on the allegation that he and others killed Hedayat Eslaminia, a wealthy Iranian-born businessman, in July 1984. After a series of lane changes, the detectives caught the Jeep at Santa Monica Boulevard. 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. Joe didnt really know any of our friends. Joe had come back from Chicago with his hair too long, wearing suits that were too small for him, Dean said, but Ben and I knew all about style and social graces, and groomed their leader for his new role. Ironically, officially Hunt called his company the BBC, afterthe Bombay Bicycle Club restaurant he liked in Chicago, but he did insist to his buddies, including fellow Harvard School alum Dean Karny, they would all beactual billionaires one dayand the acronym was at the ready. Before he left Chicago, he changed his last name. Character actor and Golden Globe nominee for his role as Dean Karny in the TV series Billionaire Boys Club. We decided to double-lock the door, so that the guest would not be able to get in without checking with the front office, Vega explained. We were all making stuff up to look bigger than we were.. school graduate who used to be known as Dean Karny said Tuesday. 2023 E! By the mid-1970s Harvard was posting numbers for National Merit Scholars and college-board scores that surpassed any other West Coast high school and rivaled those of the best eastern boarding schools. Seventy-five feet down the slope, searchers found most of a human rib cage with several attached vertebrae. 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. He managed to get a job at a prestigious accounting firm, relying on his CPA exam score and skipping over the part about not having a college degree. Joseph Hunt made my ministry and work in prison worthwhile, Chaplain Dennis Merino wrote. 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. Dean Karny is Hunt's best friend and a professional tennis player. They found just one, containing only a few hundred dollars. 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. 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. That same day, in Beverly Hills, Detective Les Zoeller became the first police officer to enter the duplex on Peck Drive since Ron Levins disappearance more than two months earlier. Joe grew incensed when the company, which was testing the BMWs and Porsches that West Cars had converted to meet federal emission standards, not only refused to pass most of the autos, but also refused his demand for a discount. Before O.J. He was charming and handsome - and even if you wanted to, you couldn't resist. On the floor, behind the typewriter, the older man discovered seven pages torn from a yellow legal pad, covered with notes that had not been written by his son. Hunt "almost seemed like everybody's savior," a former investor in the BBC, Brad Buckley, said ina 2002 episode of TruTV'sDominick Dunne's Power, Privilege and Justice. It was time, perhaps, to cease counting the zeros in Hedayat Eslaminias $30-million fortune and to consider the prospect of a day when outsiders might look into their little band. Join Facebook to connect with Dean Karny and others you may know. [2] The "get rich quick" investments the group offered to clients added up to what was essentially one big Ponzi scheme.[3]. of Deputy District Attorneys, said she is not surprised that Hunt is making a bid to commute his sentence. Formed along with Joe Hunt a group of rich boys like them, including . For Joe Hunt, it was the opportunity to prove his trading theories on the sort of scale he had always dreamed of. Dean Karny | Pure Evil Wiki | Fandom For the first time since his arrest, Zoeller noted, the suspect was at a loss for words.. 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. Meet the players from "Billionaire Boys Club" - Cinema Online After meeting him, it gave a whole new idea to the idea of a pathological liar. When the doors closed it was dark inside, and there were only the thumps and whimpers of the man in the trunk to keep him company. The trials for the murder of Hedayat Eslaminia were held in Northern California. And in Costa Mesa, uniformed officers twice evacuated Gene Browning and his family from their home after warnings that Hunt had purchased a contract on the inventors life. Reza and his associates were seen in Belmont often during the following week. At graduation, each member of the senior class was given one full page in the Harvard School yearbook. Just before 8:00 that evening, Vega recalled, he observed a gentleman carrying two suitcases down the number 7 stairway. Other students remembered him as an A student who read the Congressional Record at lunch. He was in an Emmy-winning episode of Family Ties in 1987 as Alex Keaton . Joe hadnt gotten Ron to invest any money, and he was kind of wondering whether Ron took him seriously as a businessman, Dean remembered. When Weiss received a profit disbursement of $4,000 one month later, he added $30,000 to his portfolio, and passed the good news to friends. [9] At the time of his disappearance, Levin was free on bail and awaiting trial, and Hunt's defense team argued that Levin left the country to escape a pending FBI investigation into his financial misdeeds. From the airport there, he took a taxi out to the peninsula, arriving at the Villa Hotel in San Mateo just before 2:00. These include Levin's "habit of writing large, worthless checks," his conversations with witnesses about plans to leave for New York or for Granada, Spain, and a conversation with another witness requesting advice on how to dye his hair. Hunt maintains that Levin's con artistry extends to having faked his own death, as no body was found in the case. When authorities began to investigate the murders, Dean Karny, the club's second-in-command and Hunt's best friend, turned state's evidence on both murders in return for immunity from prosecution on three different felony charges in exchange for testimony. They were the sons of some of the most powerful families in California, never at a loss for money or kicks. Dean paid the real estate agent $9,000 cash for six weeks of privacy and caught a noon flight to San Francisco. The proceedings ended with the jury hung ten to two for conviction. The website started on his behalf lists all the ways in which he's been a model prisoner for the past three-plus decades. He was soon circulating the pages around town, only not at the networks, but at RCA and Panasonic, from which he obtained a loan of some $280,000 in camera equipment after telling the companies the pilot was going into production that month and promising promotional consideration. He had his own production company by thenjust a P.O. On September 22, Joe convened a meeting of Financial Futures investors in an office building on Beverly Boulevard. And I said, Youve been watching too many movies. And he said, Now that I have Pittman, I can have anybody killed in the world that I want. The True Story of the Billionaire Boys Club, Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. The boys drove classy cars, drew a large monthly allowance, and kept an apartment in Brentwood where they entertained a harem of girls every summer. Zoeller, however, said he isnt surprised that Hunt hasnt lost any of his powers of persuasion after decades in prison. Dean Karny is the main antagonist of Billionaire Boys Club. There was also a purchase made using Levin's American Express card on the day after the murder was thought to have taken place, of underwear from the Brooks Brothers store in Los Angeles, where Levin was known to shop. . Subscribe to Billionaire Boys Clubwherever you get your podcasts. Pittman was right; somebody always talks. 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. 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. It contains outdated and potentially offensive descriptions of race, gender, and class. After Karny, the only other person with whom Joe discussed the murder was the third Shading, Ben Dosti. Reality was circumstantial, Joe explained, and through a reorientation of perspective you could always see things in the way that best suited your needs. The young executives were ensconced in a suite of offices in West Hollywood, taking an entire floor of an office building on Third Street. Billonaire Boys Club True Story Who Is Joe Hunt? - Esquire One wanted $40,000, one wanted $100,000, one wanted $200,000. His aphorisms were delivered now as public proclamations, codes of conduct for true believers. Charges In Famed Death Dropped / Victim's son accused in - SFGATE Ben Dosti, aka Lansing Lee Potter, was apprehended by the FBI the same day in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Reza had told Hunt and Dosti that his father was a former high official in the shah of Irans government, top officer of the Savak. Cantor, Fitzgerald even subpoenaed Levin. 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.. Bruce Swartout was working to void the merger of Microgenesis with Cogenco, and had gone to Denver himself in an effort to make a back-door deal with Kilpatrick. Within hours, Jim Pittman was in a holding cell at Manhattans Midtown North precinct, where he was printed, photographed, and booked under the name Ronald Levin. A credit check revealed that he had registered with an American Express card showing thousands of dollars in past-due charges. 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. The two of themDean and Joe Hunthad given their Beverly Hills real estate agent the same story they told at Lake Arrowhead and in Palm Springs: Joe was a writer on politics and economics facing a very tight deadline and in need of a quiet place to work for the next six weeks. The money became a river now. Billionaire Boys Club - Wikipedia On the morning of April 13, 1984, Swartout arrived at his office in Irvine and parked in his regular space, where he saw a muscular black man in khaki work clothes leaning against the wall, holding a Carls Jr. cup. And when we had to make excuses to our own comrades . Like, didnt we go to a movie that night?, During the next two weeks, Dean moved out of the Manning and refused to answer Hunts calls. All of us were just amazed that this was happening, Vega recalled, but we just closed a circle on him, and then he put his hands up.. When prosecutors realized they likely could convict neither Hunt nor Pittman, they dismissed all charges against Hunt and Pittman in the murder of Eslaminia. The state attorney generals office has asked for a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole. The Mays and Raymond approached Gene Browning, who decided at once he believed the story was true. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. He told the firm not to execute Hunts orders but said Hunt needed to believe his buys and sells were real decisions. The BBC was going to take some bold steps and achieve greatness, and for those people who wanted to go along with the BBC to achieve these levels of greatness, they must know things and do things, Evan Dicker remembered Joe saying. 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. 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. Via walkie-talkie, Vega ordered an intercept in the hotel lobby. Joe Hunt had shown them shortcuts to the power and wealth that many considered their birthright, but Joe had never told them what else they might pick up along the way. They just kind-of know," Pattin, who co-hosts Billionaire Boys Clubwith Timothy Olyphant,told E! He was thirteen years old then and his name was Joseph Gamsky. He appeared with Dan Aykroyd in Caddyshack II. "Was I a catastrophic, world-class jackass in 1984? 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. She found two of Rons young friends sitting outside on the porch with their luggage. Hunt, 59 at the time, told the Associated Press. After looking at remote mountain cabins and desert hideaways, Dean said, they settled for the house in Bel Air, which had a large basement where they could set up a combined office/torture chamber. [7] Pittman, granted release with time served in two murders, died of kidney failure in 1997, age 44. Closed blinds, scan for tape recorder, tape mouth, handcuff, put gloves on, explain situation, kill dog, reads the list. Gamsky had entered the prep school on a scholarship, one of the few poor boys on the twenty-three-acre campus. Dean rode alone with the trunk for forty minutes, listening to the pleading and pounding of the man inside. Things had happened fast after that. Editors Note: The drama and intrigue did not stop there. "Absolutely 100 Percent Not Guilty": 25 Bizarre Things You Forgot About the O.J. But the man died on the drive down, Karny said, so they dumped his body in Soledad Canyon,which is in a remote area of L.A. County. Vegas units escorted the gentleman through a crowd of gawking guests, but when they reached the center of the lobby, the gentleman broke loose and bolted toward the Fifty-ninth Street exit. Levin's body was never found, and Hunt maintains that Levin, who was under criminal investigation and out on bail at the time of his disappearance, instead fled the country to escape prosecution. 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. Later that night he threw Rons gold Bulgari watch down a storm drain in Westwood. She told me that things were getting worse for Joe, because more and more people were coming out against him, Karny recalled. I cant believe the calm. Hunt was in total control of that room, his secretary Lorie Leis remembered. 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. Joe mentioned in a casual voice that some documents were missing from the office and asked if they knew anything about it. The mans eyes were closed and there was drool on his chin. Among the coils of rope and spools of tape was a brown bottle containing chloroform and a steel bucket filled with cat litter to serve as a portable toilet. 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. Dean Karny, whose father was a . You are not interested in weather. Joe was now driving the Jeep exclusively and Dean had gone back to his old Fiat convertible. Within the week, Reza was arrested in San Francisco as he attempted to pick up a passport issued to Christopher Potter. In 2018with the support of a Free Joe Hunt campaign started by friends and family onlinehe petitioned then-California Gov. A group of wealthy boys in Los Angeles during the early 1980s establish a 'get-rich-quick' scam that turns deadly. The question is whether this is the sincere act of a changed man or just another con job by a master manipulator, which is what prosecutors and law enforcement officials believe. They shared a disdain for drugs, though Joe carried his brand of puritanism several steps further, refusing alcohol, sugar, and caffeine as well, insisting he would never touch anything that might diminish his intellectual abilities. Simpson Murder Trial, Binge These True Crime Shows and Documentaries, The Details of Chris Watts' Triple Murder Case Are Even Crazier Than You Realized, What Happened to Jennifer Dulos: A Missing Mom, Murder Charges and a Search That Captivated the Nation, only person in San Mateo County legal history. Dean had just been dumped by a girl he wanted to marry and was experiencing some self-esteem problems. While the others in their party were off skiing that weekend, Joe stayed behind with Dean at the lodge. My reaction was that we should look into the possibility, Dean recalled. Hunt's direct appeal was denied on July 12, 1996. As the group began to fray at the edges, Hunt and Pittman grew tighter, the others noticed. 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. Brian McNamara's age is 62. 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. Pittman was unable to make $500,000 bail ($1.3 million today), so he was kept incarcerated through two Southern California trials for his active role in the murder of Levin. [citation needed]. On October 16, Breiling cabled the Trade Development Bank in Geneva to request a freeze on the Eslaminia account. 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. 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. BBC investors started to ask for their money back, money Hunt didn't have. Brooke Roberts, Joes last loyal follower, traced Dean to his parents home in the hills. It was a big white stucco-and-red-tile hacienda with a tennis court out back, barricaded in front by a ten-foot hedge and screened from the street by a forest of flowering trees. 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.". Tom May came by the condo one afternoon while they were practicing Levins signature, and Joe got him to give it a try: when Joe told Tom that Ron had been murdered, Tom received the news with dignity and responsibility, Dean recalled. On July 17, 2002, TruTV aired an episode of Dominick Dunne's Power, Privilege and Justice titled "Billionaire Boys Club", presented by author Dominick Dunne, which summarized the events surrounding the "club" and the kidnapping, murders, and trials. "He had this quality about him. 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. Blanche, a retired schoolteacher, had been introduced to Ron at a private party where her husband was working as a bartender. What would they see but the children of position and privilege, a frightening cult of Beverly Hills brats who wore Italian suits and drove German automobiles? Two days later, Dean was in San Francisco talking to Oscar Breiling. 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. . Following washouts at USC and Colorado, the Mays had invested in a beach-front nightclub that would be bankrupt within a year. 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. How Palm Springs ran out Black and Latino families to build a fantasy for rich, white people, 17 SoCal hiking trails that are blooming with wildflowers (but probably not for long! There would be no countries, only corporate empires. On August 16, California Department of Justice agent Oscar Breiling arrived on the scene to take over control of the case.