(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Top Comments: the Bob Brennan edition [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-09 1980's stock fraudster A boiler-room pitchman w/saturation advertising 40 years on, after-the-jump … But first: Top Comments appears nightly, as a round-up of the best comments on Daily Kos. Surely ... you come across comments daily that are perceptive, apropos and .. well, perhaps even humorous. But they are more meaningful if they're well-known ... which is where you come in (especially in diaries/stories receiving little attention). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Send your nominations to TopComments at gmail dot com by 9:30 PM Eastern Time nightly, or by our KosMail message board. Please indicate (a) why you liked the comment, and (b) your Dkos user name (to properly credit you) as well as a link to the comment itself. A recent diary about touring with the late great Noble Fur the Cat mentioned a certain architectural landmark seen along-the-way: the Grand Coulee Dam. Alas, just hearing that structure’s name hearkens back … to TV commercials for me. Forty years ago, selected television programs (especially NFL games) had saturation advertising: not by the then-established financial firms (such as Merrill Lynch, E.F. Hutton or Dean Witter) but instead First Jersey Securities. You saw its CEO Bob Brennan in his helicopter, flying over the Grand Coulee Dam, the Erie Canal and other sites, insisting that his firm could spot companies with growth potential … that others had overlooked. A print ad … less ubiquitous than his TV ads To illustrate just how relentless this guy’s TV ads were in the early-to-mid 80’s: there were (mid-Atlantic regional) newspaper ads — showing a photo of a bank’s (quite nondescript-looking) CEO — who felt forced to assure its depositors that they were not a high-flying, racetrack-owning bank .... by using words like this: We’re First Jersey National Bank. No, we’re not the ones in the helicopter over the Grand Coulee Dam. This guy was, however …………. Sound too-good-to-be-true? Well, many investors … kinda found out. Bob Brennan was a graduate of Seton Hall University and was determined to lead the good life. He was later described as an ideal swindler: telegenic and articulate, who always portrayed himself to the public as wealthy (TV ads with his uniformed chauffeur holding open a limo door for him), opening a golf/horse club in a wealthy suburb not far from the Jersey shore. He also cultivated the friendship of other well-off people, gave to charitable causes (his alma mater named a rec center after him) … all of which kept him going longer than others might. His company sold penny stocks — which trade for less than a dollar — and are sold on the lightly regulated over-the-counter market (with less financial information available, and not followed by Wall Street analysts). They can be stocks that do have a promising future … yet account for a disproportionate share of frauds. Behind the “Come grow with us!” cheery words on TV: he ran a company (having 1,200 employees at its peak) with a boiler-room operation: cold-calling people to buy stocks they touted. First Jersey also owned two other brokerages, who bought stocks to inflate their value … then, when new investors bought from First Jersey, the other brokerages sold their shares … leaving investors with shares worth less. And while authorities were investigating this firm for awhile … Bob Brennan kept putting-them-off, promising that he would scale-back his business. In 1987, First Jersey went bankrupt …. finally, Bob Brennan was convicted in 1994 of securities fraud. He was ordered to pay $75 million in claims (only a portion of investor losses) and banned from the securities business …. causing him to declare personal bankruptcy the following year. That might have been the end of it. Except ….. it turned out ol’ Bob had hidden certain assets from the bankruptcy court. Through various means, it was learned that he had liquid assets of: → $4 million worth of NYC municipal and NY State unregistered bearer bonds → $500k worth of chips from the Mirage casino in Las Vegas → Thousands of dollars of foreign Regulation S stocks (not for US ownership) → Which is why he could afford to charter a 1999 private-jet world tour When he was indicted in 2000 and had trouble raising the $500k down payment for his bail … the wealthy friends he cultivated helped raise it … one of whom was former NFL coach Bill Parcells (who staked $150k). He was convicted in 2001 of money laundering and bankruptcy fraud and sentenced to ten years in prison (released in 2011) and Seton Hall removed his name from its rec center. In 2013, a member of the golf club Brennan once owned and lost (in bankruptcy proceedings) filed suit after learning the new owners ... had hired Brennan as general manager — (no idea if he still is) — despite state law forbidding any premises selling alcohol of hiring certain types of felons. He would be around age seventy-eight now, and many of his former clients hope they never have to hear about him again. Bob Brennan (last decade) Now, on to Top Comments : Highlighted by lemay 50: In the front-page story about GOP hecklers annoying independent voters — this comment made by BigIrish310. And from Ed Tracey, your faithful correspondent this evening ........ In the front-page story about the Proud Boys now on trial for seditious conspiracy — first, G2geek suggests using a statistical analysis of their Tweets to provide a benchmark for the burden-of-proof ….. while ohdog posits that the “Stand back and stand by” quote during a presidential debate in 2020 — a component of this trial — was the result of yet another rope-a-dope utterance that will work to their disadvantage. Next - enjoy jotter's wonderful (and now eternal) *PictureQuilt™* below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment featuring that photo. TOP PHOTOS February 8th, 2023 (NOTE: Any missing images in the Quilt were removed because (a) they were from an unapproved source that somehow snuck through in the comments, or (b) an image from the DailyKos Image Library which didn't have permissions set to allow others to use it.) And lastly: yesterday's Top Mojo - mega-mojo to the intrepid mik ...... who rescued this feature from oblivion: [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/9/2151480/-Top-Comments-the-Bob-Brennan-edition Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/