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 quoted in an Associated Press
article on June 22, 2007 about his recent
trial regarding JT LeRoy, Laura Albert
and movie options.
New
York jury mulls whether `JT LeRoy' hoax
by writer Laura Albert amounted to fraud
by
David B. Caruso
NEW
YORK - For years, writer Laura Albert
went to strange lengths to hide her
identity behind an alter ego named JT
LeRoy.
Friends donned wigs and posed as the
fictitious LeRoy at book signings. They
snookered journalists with a phony back
story about a past as an underage male
prostitute. Albert even made phone calls
to a psychiatrist while posing as the
troubled teen, and grabbed the attention
of such authors as Tobias Wolff and
Dave Eggers, and filmmaker Gus Van Sant.
A literary hoax? Yes. But is it fraud?
A federal jury in New York City began
deciding Friday whether Albert defrauded
a film producer who optioned the rights
to her book "Sarah" by failing to reveal
that LeRoy didn't exist.
"We are trying to stand up for the truth,"
Gregory Curtner, an attorney for Antidote
International Films Inc., told the jury
as the civil trial wrapped up Thursday.
He called the ruse "despicable," "cynical"
and "evil" during his closing argument
and said Albert stepped over a line
by signing contracts and obtaining copyrights
under the phony name.
The film company and its president,
Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, say they spent $110,000
working on a film based on "Sarah,"
a tale of a truck stop prostitute that
had been marketed as being based on
LeRoy's life.
Albert and her lawyers say the matter
is more complicated.
The middle-aged Albert testified during
the trial that she had been assuming
male identities for decades as a coping
mechanism for psychological problems
brought on by her sexual abuse as a
child. To her, she said, LeRoy was real--something
akin to a different personality living
inside her, but one that was capable
of transferring to the people she hired
to impersonate him.
Jurors on Thursday watched a video deposition
by Dr. Terrence Owens, a psychiatrist
who treated the fictitious JT LeRoy
over the phone without realizing his
true identity, then, later, treated
Albert in person for about a year.
Owens said he believed Albert
suffered from histrionic personality
disorder, in which people have difficulty
modulating their emotions and crave
attention.
Albert's lawyer, Eric Weinstein, told
jurors Thursday that his client had
satisfied all her legal obligations
to Antidote Films.
She promised the company the rights
to her novel, he said, and that's what
it got.
"This was not a contract for the JT
LeRoy brand," Weinstein said.
No one, he added, ever claimed that
"Sarah" was anything other than fiction.
"It's magical realism," he said.
The jury was scheduled to begin its
deliberations Friday morning. Antidote
and Levy-Hinte are seeking recovery
of the $110,000 they spent on the film
project before it fell apart.
