Saturday, January 29, 2011

Poof!

One of the last things I did in August before heading to O'Hare for my flight to Jakarta was to cut a check for $5,000 to a hedge fund manager and friend of my mom's named Jim Brandolino. He'd been managing money for my mother and me for more than seven years, and his little investment pool, based on the quarterly statements he provided, was the only investment I had that was anywhere near successful. I figured I'd park some additional savings with Brandolino while I was away earning peanuts in Indonesia and tap the funds when I got back for a security deposit and rent on a new apartment. It seemed like a decent idea. I'd just seen Brandolino at my going-away party the month before and he was in fine fettle: The funds were plodding along, we were making better-than-modest money in a shit market, and Brandolino was working on a book to share his investment strategies with the wider world. He bought me a beer at the party and toasted my Southeast Asian adventure. To your success, he said.

To my success! A couple weeks ago, Brandolino walked in to the U.S. Attorney's office in Chicago and confessed that his investment empire was in fact a cheap and flimsy fraud. He mismanaged about half the money he'd been given--some of it from friends of his Italian immigrant parents in Joliet, some of it from people like my mom and me, some of it from west and southwest suburban business owners and working-class stiffs--and spent the rest of it on himself. The quarterly statements I'd been receiving for years showing regular if sometimes small gains were pure fiction. Make-believe. Criminal. By the time he walked into the federal building on LaSalle Street, Brandolino had frittered away almost everything he'd taken from investors and was left with little more than a used BMW 7-series, a gaudy Rolex, and an ownership stake in an unbuilt condominium in Greece.

You can read more about the government's allegations against Brandolino here http://tinyurl.com/488n2ob, and here http://tinyurl.com/6ytgflo.

Big spender, POS.

This of course means that Brandolino bought me that drink at Schuba's with my own money, and he used my money when he treated me and Angela and mom and my aunt to a last-minute, penthouse skybox ticket to see the Hawks play right before the playoffs last year. Looking back on the latter, I wish he'd at least sprung for the dessert cart. He used my money and my mom's money and the money of a couple dozen other dupes to underwrite his trips to southern Europe, to pay for an annual summer dinner cruise for investors that always featured an open bar, to pay the rent on his South Loop condo. He used our money to promote himself and his business as the chief sponsor of an annual Misericordia fundraiser on Madison Street in Forest Park. He spent it on a freelance writer who was supposed to help him complete his masterwork, Train to Trade: What Pros Do Differently. (The book title, as it appears on various Web sites today, has evolved. Last summer, Brandolino handed out promotional pamphlets for the still-unpublished book that had it subtitled What Pros Do Different. As folks got deeper into the open bar on the dinner cruise, they began carping about the poor grammar of the subtitle. Brandolino was polite about the criticism but clearly annoyed. This was his party, and his book, and he'd call it whatever he wanted. Or not. At some point he gave in and added the adverbial form.) He used my money and the money of his other victims to reward himself for a life he didn't earn or deserve, and I'll be recovering from his fucking greed and avarice for a long time.

I learned about Brandolino's crimes when I returned from Lombok Monday night and I've spent a lot of the last week burning up the phone and my gmail account communicating with my mother and others in Chicago. A very seriously looming question for me at this point is whether the Year of Living Volcanically is headed for an early end. I'm still trying to sort that out but thought I'd make this very difficult private loss public in case you, dear reader, have a line on a paying job I might want to consider. In all seriousness. I may or may not land a teaching position for next fall but that job market's pretty grim and I need to either make something happen soon or be ready to hit the ground running when I get back to the U.S. in May. I've got feelers out among some of my graduate school friends and among a few of my former colleagues--thanks to those of you who've already responded with leads or with other vitally necessary counsel--but I thought I'd cast a wider net. If you're reading this you probably know something of my professional background and skills. If that's the case and you know of a job opening for which I'd be suited, please don't keep it to yourself.

7 comments:

  1. Wow! I'm so sorry that happened to you! That's horrible! I hope you don't have to cut short your year in Indo though to make up for the lost funds. Have you considered teaching English in Saudia Arabia or Korea? Apparently, there are some really high paying jobs there. Plus it's possible to make a bundle in private tutoring as well.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the note, Julianne. I may eventually investigate teaching in Korea or Saudi but at this point I'm looking for work back in the Chicago area. Not sure what kind of prospects exist in that particular urban economy--teaching jobs are especially hard to come by--but hope to shake something out soon.

    ReplyDelete
  3. ...I'm so sorry to hear about this, Brett. While my contacts in Chicago are limited, I'll definitely contact the few friends I have there.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wow, what an epic a-hole... I hope you are still able to finish your time abroad. I have temporarily removed myself from the search for a teaching position, but I do still troll job postings from time to time and I will be sure to pass along any inside info I glean from my teacher friends in the burbs. -Neal.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Brett,

    I am so sorry this happened to you and your family. Over the years, I covered a number of stories like this and everyone made me sick to my stomach. Guys like this devastate people financially and then serve 48-60 mos in a federal prison. Without diminishing the magnitude of a prison sentence, that just doesn't feel like justice given the scale and nature of the problems caused by crimes like this.

    I will put the word out in my limited circle of acquaintances. It would help if you could give me a more clear career objective. Are you looking to write for a publication again? Are you looking for teaching jobs? I don't know of too many investigative jobs.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks, Neal. I am probably looking for something outside teaching at this point but any leads are good leads. Jim, I'll write you directly.

    ReplyDelete