David Feldman's book, Reverse Mergers: Taking a Company
Public Without an IPO, now in its third printing, was published in 2006
by Bloomberg Press (available on http://www.amazon.com).
View David Feldman's reverse merger blog at www.reversemergerblog.com.
Joseph Smith and David Feldman are coauthors of PIPES:
Revised and Updated Edition - A Guide to Private Investments in Public Equity
(Bloomberg Press, 2005) available on http://www.amazon.com.
In the News
Eric
Weinstein mentioned in New York Times
article on June 16, 2007 chronicling
his recent case about the author Laura
Albert, her pseudonym JT LeRoy and movie
rights.
In
Writer's Trial, Testimony of Life as
Strange as Fiction
by
ALAN FEUER
The
life of a writer bears about the same
relation to the work as everyday reality
does to a dream. In both cases, a glancing
transformation takes place.
The life of the writer Laura Albert
has seemed somewhat mysterious -- at
least to the public -- ever since the
day last year she was revealed to be
the true creative force behind the author
JT Leroy, the supposed son of a truck-stop
prostitute who wrote the novel "Sarah."
Ever since that revelation, there have
been questions, first among them perhaps:
How could Ms. Albert, 42, raised in
Brooklyn Heights, have written with
such emotional exactitude about a West
Virginia misfit so in love with his
mother that he joins her in giving truckers
paid sex?
The first tentative answer was revealed
yesterday when Ms. Albert's own mother,
Carolyn Albert, took the witness stand
at her daughters civil fraud trial
in Manhattan. A film production company
is suing Laura Albert, trying to recoup
the money she received for a contract
to make a feature film of "Sarah." The
company, Antidote International Films
Inc., says the contract should be voided,
mainly because its signatory, JT Leroy,
does not exist.
Carolyn Albert is a former New York
City schoolteacher. She wears glasses,
shuffles when she walks and has the
sort of shrugging "Who, me?" manner
that one associates with Brooklyn women
of a certain age.
Under questioning from Eric Weinstein,
Laura Albert's lawyer, she told the
court her daughter had a deeply troubled
childhood marred by absenteeism from
school and suicide threats. There was
divorce and what she called "impossible
behavior." Laura was, in fact, so shy,
she could not sit in the same room with
a teacher who tutored her at home. Instead,
they spoke by phone: the teacher in
the living room, Laura in her bedroom,
Carolyn Albert said.
There were two brief stints in psychiatric
wards, the first when Laura was 14.
The day her mother dropped her at the
ward was her birthday. As Carolyn Albert
said this to the court, her eyes clouded
up, and she began to weep.
"I brought her there on her 14th birthday.
I remember thinking, I'm leaving my
daughter in a psychiatric hospital.
I'm sorry," she said. Then her voice
trailed off into a wail.
The jury sat uncomfortably watching
the mother cry. They also watched the
daughter cry.
Laura Albert put her head down at the
table, and her shoulders shook. The
judge looked sympathetic but unhappy.
He called the lawyers to a sidebar.
He allowed Ms. Albert to leave the room
-- "to ease the psychological situation,"
as he said.
When the jury returned, Mr. Weinstein
asked the mother if Laura had ever socialized
as girl, ever left the house?
"No, not for three years," she said.
"She didnt leave her bedroom."
