If you are lucky in “The Life” and have the pleasure of swooping a fly Colombiana and she invites you to a big Colombian Family Gathering, jump like House of Pain at the opportunity.
The other night I went over to the palatial casa of the family of a fly Colombiana that I am having a Mini-Relationship with. It was dope:
We walk in, and there are 6 different women cooking in the kitchen; La Madre, Hermanas, Primas, Abuelas, Sobrinas etc. My girl tells me to sit down with her 2 Suited Down Primos and El Padre and jumps into the fray in the kitchen.
The women continue to bring me non-stop cervezas as I kick back and rap out with the other 3 men present about football, boxing and biz. I don’t have to lift a finger.
Little primas jump all over me until I tell them to chill out as I don’t want them to wrinkle up my Custom Suit or spill Postobon Manzana on my luxurious fabrics.
We then feast on mindblowing Ajiaco, Bandeja Paisa, Morcilla, Chicharrón, and mad Arepas. Mad Aguilas.
We have like 16 women catering to our every need.
This is how Life should be.
And its quite a sharp contrast from American girls that can’t cook their way out of a brown paper bag. And I don’t mean that DJ Khaled track either.
In other prostitution news:
Sen. Reid calls for ending legal prostitution
Sen. Harry Reid called for the abolishment of Nevada’s legal brothel trade Tuesday in a speech before the Legislature.
“So let’s have an adult conversation about an adult subject,” Reid said. “Nevada needs to be known as the first place for innovation and investment — not as the last place where prostitution is still legal. When the nation thinks about Nevada, it should think about the world’s newest ideas and newest careers — not about its oldest profession.”
Dennis Hof, owner of the Bunny Ranch and Love Ranch brothels in Lyon County, sat in the Assembly chamber during the speech, along with nine sex workers that work at his brothels.
“We should do everything we can to make sure the world holds Nevada in the same high regard you and I do,” Reid said. “If we want to attract business to Nevada that puts people back to work, the time has come for us to outlaw prostitution.”
George Raft (Hollywood Actor and more importantly good friend of Bugsy Siegel) and Bing “The First Hip White Person” Crosby chop it up at the Del Mar Racetrack back when Class was Champion.
Nowadays, people are putting a black eye on The Game.
Frank, Dino, Bing and Raft are rolling over in their graves.
This is why I do not go to Opening Day at The Del Mar Racetrack anymore. Too annoying. Plus my bottle of Thorazine ran out. And my nightly bloodlust is starting to run into my days.
What was once Custom Suits, Big Bankrolls, Panama Hats, Graceful, Classy Women and Pocket squares has been replaced by faux-hawks, bandannas, Glittery Ed Hardy Shirts, cheap mall dresses, and maxed out credit cards.
Progress? Not really.
At least a little slice of the old world lives on in The Turf Club.
It actually wouldn’t be a bad picture if you canceled the guys out of it and replaced the girls with some Argentinian Model Girls.
“There are a couple of big changes to the 2009 racing season, which kicks off on Wednesday, July 22. The most noticeable is the reduction of the weekly racing cards from six days to five, leaving the track falling quiet on Mondays.”
An iconic mural featuring caricatures of more than 100 people – and several fleet-footed horses – who have shaped racing history is now on display at the Del Mar Racetrack.
The renowned racing artist Pierre “Peb” Bellocq installed the mural this week after spending nearly two years on the project.
The 30-foot-long, 6-foot-tall piece depicts legendary crooner Bing Crosby, who founded the racetrack in 1937 at the fairgrounds along with Jimmy Durante and Pat O’Brien, who are also pictured.
About half the people in the mural are living, and some will attend a dedication ceremony July 25.
The Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, a private company that has a state contract to operate the annual horse races, commissioned the project to celebrate 70 years of racing. The racetrack was founded in 1937 but it closed for three years during World War II. The 70th season begins July 22.
“We went back and looked at all our history and photographs and looked through our media guides to see who made a mark at Del Mar over the years,” said Joe Harper, president and general manager of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club since 1978.
“We have photographs of all these people scattered around, and now you can see them together,” he said.
The acrylic mural, in the Clubhouse/Turf Club entryway, features many of the glamorous Hollywood stars who frequented the track in its early days, such as Ava Gardner, Betty Grable and Barbara Stanwyck. Others are the actor Robert Taylor and comedian W.C. Fields, both racing fans.
Among the living people depicted are horse trainer Bob Baffert and horse owner Jenny Craig, known for her weight-loss centers, who is pictured next to her late husband, Sid.
Harper himself is depicted wearing sunglasses in the center of the mural above his mother, horse owner Cecilia deMille Harper.
There are also notable horses, including Seabiscuit, who won a match race with Ligaroti in 1938. Dare and Go, who in 1996 beat Cigar – then considered the best horse in the country – is pictured smoking a cigar with a satisfied look on his face.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. has said rumblings about his financial troubles are nothing more than rumors, but public records obtained by The Associated Press show the boxer nicknamed “Money” owes about $6.4 million to the Internal Revenue Service and others.
The IRS hit the former pound-for-pound boxing king with a lien in October for $6.17 million in unpaid taxes from 2007, according to the Clark County Recorder in Las Vegas. A New Jersey Superior Court judgment from the same year shows he owes $193,000 in state taxes there.
Leonard Ellerbe, Mayweather’s manager, disputed the documents and said he believed they were inaccurate.
“Floyd Mayweather does not have a problem with the IRS,” Ellerbe told the AP on Thursday. “He doesn’t owe the IRS $6.1 million … I don’t (care) what a lien says.”
“When you have a problem with them, you ain’t hard to find — ask Wesley Snipes,” Ellerbe said. “You go to jail, they come take your (stuff). He doesn’t have a problem.”
Snipes, the actor, is currently appealing convictions of willfully failing to file his income taxes and his three-year prison sentence.
“(Mayweather) is free to move and do anything and everything he wants to do with no problems at all. None whatsoever,” Ellerbe said.
Besides taxes, county records in Las Vegas show the former five-division champ has unresolved debts worth $9,400 to three homeowners associations. Other liens filed with the county say the boxer did not pay nearly $3,900 to a contractor that programmed electronics at one of his homes and $320.10 to his trash collector.
Mayweather, who is returning to the ring after retiring a year ago, has said his scheduled September fight against Juan Manuel Marquez isn’t all about a big payday, but a lucrative purse couldn’t hurt in his ongoing battle to keep up on his bills.
The IRS and others use liens to secure payments by placing a claim on the property of individuals who owe them money. Liens damage a person’s credit rating and remain on credit reports longer than other negative information, such as late payments. Once unpaid taxes are satisfied, the IRS files lien releases saying so with the county recorder.
Raphael Tulino, an IRS spokesman, said Thursday that the agency does not comment specifically on individual tax situations. The IRS said in the October lien itself that it has demanded payment, but the 2007 taxes remained unpaid.
A clerk in New Jersey Superior Court said Thursday that the $193,000 judgment there had not been satisfied.
Mayweather (39-0, 25 KOs) has been socked with liens in the past and paid them off, according to recorder records in Clark County. The IRS filed liens totaling nearly $6.3 million for unpaid taxes from 2001, 2003, 2005 and 2006, and three homeowners associations also filed claims against the boxer that were later resolved, county records show.
Asked about the liens that had been resolved, Ellerbe said: “We’re talking about what’s going on right now. I’m sure you might have been two days late paying your rent two, five years ago.”
The former Olympic bronze medalist made more than $50 million inside the ring during his final 18 months of boxing before he abruptly retired last year and turned his attention to show business.
Mayweather has proved to be a bankable celebrity outside the ring.
He has appeared on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” in 2007 and is featured in a current AT&T television commercial. He has said that he made $8 million last year without fighting.
He also cashed in his “Pretty Boy” nickname for “Money.”
“America is built on two things — controversy and money,” Mayweather told HBO before he defeated Oscar De La Hoya in May 2007. “It’s not a black thing, it’s not a white thing, it’s a green thing.”
Drake – Must Hate Money ft. Rich Boy
The cable network documented both fighters leading up to their match for its “24/7″ reality series. The same episode showed Mayweather hand-counting $10,000 stacks of $100 bills and bragging about winning $34,000 after betting on an NBA basketball game.
“I ain’t gotta carry no black card, I like carrying mine in cash — get the job done better,” Mayweather said, cracking a grin.
Mayweather received a reported $20 million to wrestle on WWE’s “WrestleMania XXIV” in 2008, part of his efforts to increase his entertainment profile. At a promotional event for that appearance in Los Angeles, Mayweather incited a couple hundred fans by whipping out a money roll and repeatedly tossing $100, $50 and $20 bills into the crowd.
The boxer likes to be seen with a wad of cash, large entourages and expensive jewelry.
“You see me — 250 on the wrist, $300,000 on the pinky, $600,000 on the neck,” Mayweather said on another “24/7″ episode filmed before his fight with Ricky Hatton in December 2007.
YouTube videos show Mayweather tossing $100 bills into crowds at night clubs — known as “making it rain” for the way the bills look when they fall.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal labeled him the “reigning king of flash and cash” in 2007 for regularly showering patrons and his entourage with cash and expensive Cristal champagne. The newspaper said that Mayweather and his entourage travel in a three-car fleet made up of a Rolls Royce Phantom, a Maybach and a Mercedes McLaren SLR.
“I’ve seen him make it rain at least 20 times in the last couple years,” Branden Powers of Poetry nightclub told the newspaper. “Pound for pound, he’s the best tipper.”
Ellerbe said Mayweather’s comments about money were made just to promote fights.
“Him saying he got a bunch of money, that’s an image, that’s an image. It has nothing to do with his business,” Ellerbe said. “And he can say anything he wants to, but I’m giving you what the facts are. And the facts are Floyd Mayweather does not have a problem with the IRS, or anybody else, for that matter.”
Mayweather’s comeback fight, delayed until Sept. 19 after Mayweather damaged rib cartilage while training, had been scheduled for July 18 at the MGM Grand hotel-casino in Las Vegas.
Mayweather and Marquez (50-4-1, 37 KOs) are expected to fight at a catch-weight of about 143 pounds, eight more than Marquez has ever fought and the lightest Mayweather has been since 2005.
With the intriguing showdown between Floyd Mayweather and Juan Manuel Marquez rescheduled for Sept. 19 in Las Vegas, HBO Sports’ groundbreaking “24/7” reality franchise, which has captured seven Sports Emmy® Awards, will premiere MAYWEATHER/MARQUEZ 24/7 on Saturday, August 29 (10:15-10:45 p.m. ET/PT).
The all-new, four-episode, all-access series spotlights a host of intriguing storylines, with Floyd Mayweather, the sport’s most irrepressible superstar, returning after a year-and-a-half absence to face Juan Manuel Marquez, one of boxing’s most accomplished performers, as they prepare for their September pay-per-view showdown at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.
Ross Greenburg said: “Now that the fight has been rescheduled, we are excited to resume production. This latest edition of ‘24/7’ features all the ingredients that we look for in greenlighting the ‘24/7’ franchise: big-time boxing stars, engaging storylines and in Floyd’s case, a larger-than-life personality that is tailor-made for reality television.”
Episodes two and three of MAYWEATHER/MARQUEZ 24/7 debut on subsequent Saturdays – September 5 (10:00-10:30 p.m.) and 12 (10:00-10:30 p.m.) – while the finale debuts Friday, September 18 (9:30-10:00 p.m.), just one night before the fight. All four episodes will have multiple replay dates on HBO, and the series will also be available on HBO On Demand.
The Pamplemousse will not run in the Kentucky Derby next month, although his racing career is not over.
The Pamplemousse was scratched because of a tendon problem hours before Saturday’s $750,000 Santa Anita Derby in Arcadia, Calif. He was the 9-5 morning-line favorite. Pioneerof the Nile went on to win by a length.
A pre-race examination showed a problem in The Pamplemousse’s front left tendon.
Alex Solis II, whose father, Alex, rides The Pamplemousse, said the colt would run again.
Finalists for the James Beard Foundation were named Monday: http://www.jbfawards.com/nominees.html. Winners are announced on May 4th at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall in New York.
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The only ones I really pay attention to are the Restaurant and Chef Awards.
Here they are with my comments and picks below in Bold.
Restaurant and Chef Awards
OUTSTANDING RESTAURATEUR AWARD
Tom Douglas
Tom Douglas Restaurants
Seattle
Keith McNally
Balthazar, Lucky Strike, Morandi, Pastis, Pravda, and Schiller’s Liquor Bar
NYC
Richard Melman
Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises
Chicago
Drew Nieporent
Myriad Restaurant Group
NYC
Stephen Starr
Starr Restaurants
Philadelphia
Keith McNally in a landslide. Sure Stephen Starr’s Morimoto is dope, but Balthazar is one of the illest restaurants in the USA.
Either Paul Kahan or José Andrés. Suzanne Goin’s Lucques I thought was an airball. Blackbird is mindblowing, but if I have to choose, its going to be Ferran Adrià’s understudy, José Andrés. The Spanish just can’t be touched right now. And that goes for Chefs and International Playboys.
OUTSTANDING RESTAURANT AWARD
Babbo
NYC
Chef/Owner: Mario Batali
Owner: Joe Bastianich
Boulevard
San Francisco
Chef/Owner: Nancy Oakes
Owner: Pat Kuleto
Fore Street
Portland, ME
Chef/Owner: Sam Hayward
Owner: Victor Leon and Dana Street
Highlands Bar & Grill
Birmingham, AL
Chef/Owner: Frank Stitt
Jean Georges
NYC
Chef/Owner: Jean-Georges Vongerichten
Owner: Phil Suarez
I am down with Jean Georges, but its a toss up between Boulevard and Babbo. If I have to pick one, I give it to Boulevard by a nose (I swooped too many super fly Sophito Girls out of there, so its hard for me to go against). Never been to Portland, ME or Birmingham, AL so I can’t comment on those two.
Mighty Show Stoppers – Hippy Skippy Moon Strut
RISING STAR CHEF OF THE YEAR AWARD
Nate Appleman
A16
San Francisco
Sean Brock
McCrady’s
Charleston, SC
Johnny Monis
Komi
Washington, D.C.
Gabriel Rucker
Le Pigeon
Portland, OR
Michael Solomonov
Zahav
Philadelphia
Sue Zemanick
Gautreau’s
New Orleans
Either Sue Zemanick’s Gautreau’s or Nate Appleman’s A16. I have heard tons of good things about Nate Appleman’s cooking from my peers and I enjoyed it myself, but Sue Zemanick’s Veal Chop with an fly New Orleans Exotic Dancer put it on top for me.
The Bazaar by José Andrés at SLS Hotel at Beverly Hills
Los Angeles
Chef/Owner: José Andrés
Owners: SBE
Corton
NYC
Chef/Owner: Paul Liebrandt
Owner: Drew Nieporent
L2O
Chicago
Chef: Laurent Gras
Owner: Richard Melman
Momofuku Ko
NYC
Chef/Owner: David Chang
Scarpetta
NYC
Chef/Owner: Scott Conant
Staying away from this one. Need to do more case studies on Momofuku Ko, The Bazaar by José Andrés, L2O and Corton.
OUTSTANDING PASTRY CHEF AWARD
Gina DePalma
Babbo
NYC
Kamel Guechida
Joël Robuchon at MGM Grand Hotel & Casino
Las Vegas
Pichet Ong
P*ong
NYC
Nicole Plue
Redd
Yountville, CA
Mindy Segal
Mindy’s HotChocolate
Chicago
I can appreciate the art, but who cares about Pastries?
OUTSTANDING WINE SERVICE AWARD
Bin 36
Chicago
Wine Director: Brian Duncan
Blackberry Farm
Walland, TN
Wine Director: Andy Chabot
Le Bernardin
NYC
Wine Director: Aldo Sohm
Patina
Los Angeles
Wine Director: Eric Espuny
Picasso at Bellagio
Las Vegas
Wine Director: Robert Smith
Either Aldo Sohm from Le Bernardin (the only place in the US I will eat seafood on a Monday) or Robert Smith from Picasso at Bellagio. I still think this award should go to Mark Slater of Citronelle.
Living Funk – Silver Black Summer Day
OUTSTANDING WINE AND SPIRITS PROFESSIONAL AWARD
Dale DeGroff
Dale DeGroff Co., Inc.
NYC
Merry Edwards
Merry Edwards Wines
Sebastopol, CA
Garrett Oliver
The Brooklyn Brewery
Brooklyn, NY
John Shafer and Doug Shafer
Shafer Vineyards
Napa, CA
Julian P. Van Winkle, III
Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery
Louisville, KY
Not even sure I have been to any of these states unless I was “passing thru” during my “distribution” days. And even then, I am pretty sure I took a more southern route.
Best Chef: Great Lakes (IL, IN, MI, OH)
Koren Grieveson
Avec
Chicago
Arun Sampanthavivat
Arun’s
Chicago
Bruce Sherman
North Pond
Chicago
Michael Symon
Lola
Cleveland
Alex Young
Zingerman’s Roadhouse
Ann Arbor, MI
Koren Grieveson of Avec. Where the heck is Shawn McClain of Spring?
Best Chef: New York City (Five Boroughs)
Michael Anthony
Gramercy Tavern
Terrance Brennan
Picholine
Wylie Dufresne
WD-50
Gabrielle Hamilton
Prune
Gabriel Kreuther
The Modern
Wylie Dufresne. Because he is so trippy. Just playing.
Best Chef: Northeast (CT, MA, ME, NH, NY STATE, RI, VT)
Rob Evans
Hugo’s
Portland, ME
Clark Frasier and Mark Gaier
Arrows
Ogunquit, ME
Michael Leviton
Lumiére
West Newton, MA
Tony Maws
Craigie on Main
Cambridge, MA
Marc Orfaly
Pigalle
Boston
Never been to any of those spots or even those states in the last year. Although I am intrigued by Pigalle.
Best Chef: Northwest (AK, ID, MT, OR, WA, WY)
Maria Hines
Tilth
Seattle
Joseba Jiménez de Jiménez
The Harvest Vine
Seattle
Ethan Stowell
Union
Seattle
Cathy Whims
Nostrana
Portland, OR
Jason Wilson
Crush
Seattle
Didn’t go to the great Northwest last year.
Best Chef: Southeast (GA, KY, NC, SC, TN, WV)
Hugh Acheson
Five and Ten
Athens, GA
Linton Hopkins
Restaurant Eugene
Atlanta
Mike Lata
Fig
Charleston, SC
Bill Smith
Crook’s Corner
Chapel Hill, NC
Bob Waggoner
Charleston Grill
Charleston, SC
Lets say Linton Hopkins’ Restaurant Eugene just because I heard good things from one of my old running partners who seems to frequent The Home of The Pimps, Players and Money Makers.
Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers – If It Ain’t Funky (1979)
Best Chef: Southwest (AZ, CO, NM, NV, OK, TX, UT)
Paul Bartolotta
Bartolotta Ristorante di Mare at Wynn Las Vegas
Sharon Hage
York Street
Dallas
Ryan Hardy
Montagna at the Little Nell
Aspen, CO
Claude Le Tohic
Joël Robuchon at MGM Grand Hotel & Casino
Las Vegas
Andrew Weissman
Le Rêve
San Antonio
I have dug Paul Bartolotta’s joint since it first opened. Many great meals and nights there. Defeated a very heavy media-hyped up Professional Poker Player/ Playboy there too. Straight Peeled him for his girl right at the bar even before I finished my tuna carpaccio.
Best Chef: South (AL, AR, FL, LA, MS)
Zach Bell
Café Boulud at the Brazilian Court
Palm Beach, FL
John Currence
City Grocery
Oxford, MS
John Harris
Lilette
New Orleans
Douglas Rodriguez
Ola
Miami Beach, FL
Michael Schwartz
Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink
Miami
I have actually wanted to go to City Grocery for a long time, I just never seem to find myself in Oxford, MS. Pick either Lilette or The Savoy housed Ola. Rodriguez is The G on nouveau Latino and Cubano cuisine.
Many people have asked me many times to write something on How to Pick up Girls in a Grocery Store. Truth be told, the reason I haven’t written about How to Pick up Girls in a Grocery Store, is I don’t go “Grocery Shopping” in a traditional sense very often.
For Prosciutto Di San Daniele, I go to my little Italian market. For Fresh Uni, I go direct to local divers. For Steaks, I got juice at the local butchers. For Household Supplies, I order them online (do you really need to pick up out your own box of trashbags?). Pastrami and Rye, I get shipped in from New York. Stone Crabs shipped in from Florida. Jamón Serrano from Spain. Etc.
Here is the article (my comments in Bold and parenthesis):
There’s a reason they created fancy grocery stores like Whole Foods: to bring together good-looking people of the opposite sex in a cozy, appetite-stimulating environment. So if you’re not picking up women along with your fruits and veggies, you’re missing out on a prime opportunity to snag a girlfriend (or just a booty-call) by Christmas. Some things to keep in mind:
(I have been to Whole Foods before, and I would hardly call it a great place for model scouting. Generally speaking, most people in there seem pretty un-healthy. Kind of pulls away the curtain from the whole “organic” thing doesn’t it? Either way, I don’t mind Whole Foods for their food, but saying it’s a stronghold for beautiful people is stretching it. Maybe they should have a doorman and a list?)
Best time to try: Thursday or Friday between 7 and 9 p.m.—when taken chicks are usually out with their boyfriends.
(This might be good advice, but Thursday or Friday between 7 and 9 p.m I am usually having a Vampire Nap, getting ready to go out (in places with later nightlife ie Miami Beach) or just getting to the restaurant on the West Coast.)
Who to look for: A babe who’s still dressed up in her work clothes, and therefore feeling more confident and flirty than she would in sweats.
What to say: Ask for her help—women can’t resist a man in supermarket distress. You heard spaghetti squash was a good sub for pasta—does she know what it looks like? Which hot chocolate do kids like best? (Because, you know, you like to keep some around for your nephew.)
(Yeah, yeah, questions are always good. I think a better place to swoop girls would be the Vino Aisle. At least then you know she boozes. And you can spit some Vino Game too.)
How to get her number: Don’t. Instead, give her your card and say something adorably self-effacing, such as, “Hey, if you ever feel like doing some charity work and helping a guy learn how to cook, give me a call.”
(Not sure if I agree with this. The whole “Ill give you my card” Game is pretty flimsy at best. I think you need to transition from the Vino to share something in common, then make a plan. Escalate quickly. Its a preferable situation for her to not give you her number, than to think about if some girl from Whole Foods is going to call you all day, like some chimp. Plus, I don’t want just any girl knowing all my info on my card. Unless of course you use some “dummy” card.)
Advanced move: If you live in a relatively small city or town, chat her up the first time you see her, but wait until you bump into her again to give her your number. Of course, that means staking out the store. But, hey, that’s why they added chairs and tables near the coffee bar.
(Everybody these days seems like they are throwing out “Advanced moves”. First of all, there is nothing Advanced about living in a “relatively small city or town”. Its idiotic. (An exception could be made if you are living in a small Basque beach town during summer). Either way, I never go “staking out the store” unless its to pull a heist.)
I haven’t read Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life yet, but I am going to buy it. Its basically about Multiple Passports, Swiss Banking, and Crossing Borders among other things.
Here is an excerpt from Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life:
Lesson 22 – The Gone With the Wind Guide to Asset Protection
If you wanted to withdraw your entire life savings and move it to a bank in Switzerland, what would you do?
Now that I’d decided to hide my assets offshore, the information from the Sovereign Society conference about the government tracking withdrawals and transfers of more than $10,000 applied to me. It seemed impossible to get the money from my American bank to the Swiss bank Spencer recommended without ringing alarm bells. Even if I moved it in small increments, there would still be a paper trail detailing exactly how much money I’d transferred.
After all, it isn’t a crime to move money secretly as long as the income’s been reported to the IRS and any other necessary reporting requirements are met. And my intention wasn’t to hide my earnings from the government, customs, or creditors, but to protect it from bank collapses, inflation, seizure, and lawsuits, which required leaving few traces of where it went.
Securing money overseas is not a new idea. Even in the novel Gone With the Wind, Rhett butler keeps his earnings in offshore banks, enabling him to buy a house for Scarlett o’Hara after the Civil War—in contrast to his Southern colleagues, who lose their fortunes due to blockades, inflation, and financial collapse.
For more practical, non-fictional inspiration, I bought Jeffrey Robinson’s 1996 book The Laundrymen. I’d always wondered how empty video stores renting movies for $3 a day could stay in business, and why I’d see Russian thugs running clearly unprofitable frozen yogurt stands on deserted side streets. According to Robinson, it’s because, in order to make illegal funds appear legitimate, crooks will slowly feed the money into the cash registers of a normal business.
“It’s almost impossible to spot an extra $500 coming in daily through the tills of a storefront stocked with 15,000 videos,” he writes. “Nor would anyone’s suspicions necessarily be raised if that same owner ran a chain of twenty video rental stores and, backed up with the appropriate audits, awarded himself an annual bonus of $3.96 million.”
Buried elsewhere in Robinson’s book was the answer I was looking for. The best legal way to surreptitiously move money, it seems, is to buy something that doesn’t lose its cash value when purchased. For example, there’s a black market for people who transfer money by buying expensive jewelry, art, watches, and collectibles, then selling them in their destination country for a small loss—usually no greater than the percentage banks charge for exchanging currencies.
So once AIG private bank in Switzerland returned my phone call—assuming that, unlike Spencer’s [a billionaire who appears earlier in the book] lawyer, they were actually willing to work with me—I planned to go shopping for rare coins.
But if it was all so legitimate, why did it feel so wrong?
While I waited to hear from the Swiss bank, I drove to Burbank to meet with the asset protection lawyers Spencer had recommended, Tarasov and Associates. The receptionist led me into a room with black-and-silver wallpaper where Alex Tarasov sat at a large mahogany desk with a yellow legal pad in front of him. With this pad, he would rearrange my business life forever.
“You did a very smart thing by coming here,” Tarasov said. Twenty- five years ago, he had probably been a frat boy. Maybe even played varsity football. But a quarter century spent sitting at desks scrutinizing legal papers had removed all evidence of health from his skin and physique. “By taking everything you own out of your name, we can hide it from lawyers trying to do an asset search on you.”
“So if they sue me and win, they won’t be able to get anything?”
“We can make it very difficult for them to find the things you own and get at them. It’s not impossible, but the deeper we bury your assets, the more money it’s going to cost to find out where they are. And if we can make that time and cost greater than the worth of the assets, then you’re in good shape.”
Like Spencer had said, this was just insurance. The cost of setting this up would be like taking out a policy against lawsuits.
“So what do you own?” he asked.
I laid it all out for him. “I have a house I’m still paying for. I have some stocks and bonds my grandparents gave me when I was a kid. I have a checking and a savings account. And I have the copyrights to my books.” I paused, trying to remember if I owned anything else. I thought there was more. “I guess that’s about it. I have a secondhand Dodge Durango, I guess. And a 1972 corvette that doesn’t work.”
In truth, I didn’t own that much. But ever since my first college job, standing over a greasy grill making omelets and grilled cheese sandwiches, I had started putting money in the bank. Since then, I’d saved enough to live on for a year or two if I ever fell on hard times or just wanted to see the world. I didn’t want to lose the freedom that came from having a financial cushion and not being in debt for anything besides my house.
“Here’s what we can do,” Tarasov said. He then sketched this diagram on his legal pad:
The stick figure was me. as for the boxes, I had no idea what those were. “These are boxes,” Tarasov explained. I was clearly getting the asset-protection-for-dummies lecture. “Each box represents a different LLC”—limited liability company. “If we can wrap everything in an LLC, and then all those LLCs are owned by a holding company, and that holding company is owned by a trust that you don’t even technically own, then you’re safe.”
I liked that last word. But I didn’t understand the rest of it.
“So we’re just basically making everything really complicated?” I asked.
“That’s the idea. We’ll even put your house in a separate LLC, so that if someone trips and falls, they can’t get at anything else you own.”
When Tarasov was through explaining everything, I couldn’t tell whether I was protecting myself from being scammed or actually being scammed myself. But I trusted Spencer, because he seemed too rich, too smart, and too paranoid to get taken in. So I told Tarasov to start wrapping me up in LLCs until my net-worth was whatever spending money I had in my pocket.
“Once we have these entities set up, we can talk about transferring them to offshore corporations,” Tarasov said as I left.
This was actually Ian Fleming’s first James Bond Novel released in 1953.
In the novel, Bond goes toe to toe with Le Chiffre, in Baccarat at the casino in Royale-les-Eaux, France (a fictional town in Northern France, a place I am not unfamiliar with…Northern France that is).
Bond, sharp dressed, smoking cigarettes, and with heaps of Game, many times I thought I was reading about myself.
