HOWE ST TOUT SURFACES WITH JFK
LETTERS
by Adrian du Plessis
John Reznikoff, the former chief operating
officer and executive vice-president of Wall
Street Ventures -- creator of one of the biggest
piles of worthless paper ever built on the
Vancouver Stock Exchange, and predecessor
to Hymex Diamond -- has surfaced as a
central figure in a growing scandal involving
documents purported to record hush-money
dealings between the late US President John F.
Kennedy and movie star Marilyn Monroe.
Related papers have been sold to US investors
for millions of dollars and almost fooled
Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Seymour
Hersh into including their contents in his just
published book on JFK, "The Dark Side of
Camelot". (Both NBC and ABC television
networks had, at different times, planned news
documentaries relying on the sensational
papers prior to handwriting and other forensic
experts exposing them as fakes.)
Grand Jury proceedings have commenced in
the Southern District of New York to
investigate the origin and sale of the series of
forged letters and notes that have been the
subject of coverage by major US media outlets
in recent months. Journalists with The New
Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post,
The New York Times, ABC TV's 20/20
program and the CBS newsmagazine 60
Minutes have been prominent among those to
report on the JFK/Marilyn papers case which
is now being ranked alongside such notorious
twentieth century hoaxes as Clifford Irving's
"autobiography" of Howard Hughes and David
Walsh's Bre-X Minerals.
Carl Person, a New York-based lawyer for
Reznikoff associate Lawrence X. (Lex)
Cusack, III maintains a web-site at
which contains his clients' version of events.
Cusack (a resident of Southport, Connecticut),
his wife, Jennifer Rush (her maiden name), an
Atlanta lawyer and sales agent for the letters,
Thomas G. Cloud, and Wall Street's John
Reznikoff, together with associated private
companies, have launched legal attacks on
those who have discredited them and the
papers. The JFK/Marilyn papers' backers claim
that they represent "one of the great historical
document finds in recent decades: more than
700 pages of documents from the secret files
of Lawrence X. Cusack, Sr, the personal
adviser and consultant to John F. Kennedy,
which show, inter alia, that Marilyn Monroe
threatened to expose JFK's personal
relationship with her and other women and to
make public the proof in her possession of
JFK's negotiations and dealings with members
of organized crime, specifically mafia chieftain
Sam Giancana, who offered and achieved
influence over the 1960 presidential elections
among other activities, and that, as a quid pro
quo for her silence, JFK negotiated with Ms
Monroe to fund a trust (the Gladys Baker
Trust) for the benefit of Ms Monroe's mother."
It is likely most adult North Americans know
that Marilyn Monroe died in 1962 and John
Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on
November 22 1963. Other facts, and many
myths, concerning the lives and deaths of these
icons, the Hollywood sex symbol and the first
Catholic president of the US, may be well
known, but, until now, there has been little
public attention focused on Monroe's mother,
Gladys Baker, who died in 1984 after more
than three decades in institutions.
The legend of how some legal paperwork
carried out for the late Gladys Baker and her
daughter's estate evolved into the current
international scandal is richly detailed in a
thirteen-page November 3 1997 New Yorker
article, "Fakes: Who forged the J.F.K.-Marilyn
Monroe papers?" authored by senior US
journalist David Samuels.
(In a move that will appear familiar to
followers of Vancouver penny stock
promotions, those involved with promoting and
selling the fakes have sued the magazine,
writer Samuels and other news agencies and
journalists. Since the wide public exposure of
the scam, investors, who each paid from tens
of thousands up to hundreds of thousands of
dollars for copies of individual JFK/Marilyn
pages, have been extended a "buy-back" offer
from the sellers. This offer is loaded with one
particularly strategic condition - investors have
been told that funds used for such repurchasing
will be drawn from any legal awards gained
from lawsuits against media outlets and
journalists.)
The New Yorker's "Fakes" essay recounts how
Lawrence Cusack Sr acted as attorney for the
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York
and had advised top Catholic leaders. As well,
in 1980 he was appointed guardian to Gladys
Baker and began handling aspects of the
Monroe estate. Following Ms Baker's death in
1984 he closed his case file. Mr Cusack Sr
himself died in 1985.
The junior Lawrence Cusack, known as Lex,
worked as a paralegal in the same office. As he
tells the story, Lex stumbled upon a treasure
trove of sensitive records while sifting through
his deceased father's papers. Typed documents
and notes handwritten by JFK about a secret
trust arrangement were sensational among
those papers that have since been sold for
millions and will, no doubt, make the living
players in the scheme famous - at least in
movie-of-the-week fashion.
Cusack told The New Yorker that when he set
out to dispose of a small collection of stamps
his father had left him, the only dealer who
would give him an appointment was the dealer
from Wall Street Ventures, John Reznikoff. Up
to this point, the only other person reported by
Lex to have seen the papers was his wife,
Jennifer Rush. Within a few months of their
first meeting, and just weeks after talking
between themselves about a relationship of
Cusack Sr to JFK, Messrs Reznikoff and
Cusack were partners actively working toward
mining JFK/Marilyn Monroe documentary
riches.
If Mr Cusack Jr did find anything of great
interest in his father's Monroe estate files in
1991, as he claims, it was not until meeting Mr
Reznikoff and teaming up with him in early
1993 that the bounty began to manifest itself in
a public, tangible, form. Lex's explanation for
his failure to capitalize on the discovery, "one
of the great historical document finds in recent
decades", for so long is that he feared for his
life. He needed, he says, to find a dealer he
could trust.
He found what he was looking for in Stamford,
Connecticut where John Reznikoff operated a
stamp dealership with an entrepreneurial bent.
Described in the "Fakes" article as "president
of University Archives, a historical-documents
business in downtown Stamford", Mr
Reznikoff also maintains a celebrity-hair
collection featuring the select follicular remains
of Geronimo, Franz Liszt, Napoleon and other
historic figures. This hair collection is
purportedly a source of DNA used in the
making of dog tags, key chains, pendants and
other desirable collector's items produced
under contract by an outfit called StarGene.
And, a few years prior to his being trusted with
Cusack's life-endangering secret, Mr Reznikoff
was COO, executive VP and one of several
promoters of VSE-listed Wall Street Ventures
Inc. Before it metamorphosed into a diamond
venture as Hymex (under new management
and backers), Wall Street had gained notoriety
as an outrageous stock promotion in a
marketplace highly competitive for that sort of
thing. When, in 1990, ABC TV's PrimeTime
Live shipped a news team to Howe Street (the
city's equivalent to New York's Wall Street),
"looking", as reporter Chris Wallace explained,
"for elements of the classic Vancouver scam"
they found much of what they were looking for
in Wall Street Ventures. In October 1990
PrimeTime Live aired its documentary, "Too
Good to Be True?" and Wallace outlined a
generic VSE penny stock promotion to millions
of Americans:
"It typically works like this. First, insiders buy
up a so-called 'shell' - let's call it PrimeTime
Mining - a dormant resource company
available for pennies a share. Then they
change the name, and announce a new
venture, something like - and these are real
examples - a collection of obscure Mideast
stamps, or a Hungarian herpes ointment. Next,
the insiders hype the business. Promoters send
out press releases and videos, hold parties, and
the owners buys and sell shares - anything to
make the company look hot. If the hype
works, the public starts to buy in and the stock
takes off, and that's when the insiders begin
getting out, unloading their shares and taking
huge profits. Then the hype ends, the
company's prospects evaporate, and the stock
plummets back to pennies a share, ready to
start the game all over again."
Once Howe Street players learned that a
hidden camera had been in their midst, panic
gripped "the street" and VSE stock deals began
to fall from their unnatural heights. In the
twenty days immediately prior to ABC airing
its documentary on the hyperbolic Vancouver
penny stock trade, the VSE's composite index
fell to 20 consecutive record lows - plunging
106 points during the period and finally
bottoming at 585.85 points on October 4,
1990, the day of the PrimeTime broadcast.
(After years of robust markets worldwide, and
record-breaking upward moves by senior
exchanges such as those in New York and
Toronto and junior markets like the similarly
speculative one in Alberta, today the
Vancouver stock index sits only marginally
higher - at 604.) The PrimeTime visit was also
one of the most memorable days in the career
of ex-VSE president Donald Hudson.
According to an eye-witness observer, after his
on-camera interview with Chris Wallace,
former department store PR man Hudson
bolted into a private office and, like a cartoon
character, pressed himself back up against the
door that he pulled shut behind him.
While ABC investigators borrowed elements
from the Wall Street Ventures stock scam to
draw their viewers an outline of the classic
penny stock modus operandi, the promotion of
Wall Street and the company's public share
price had collapsed before the news team
arrived in Canada. Details of well-deflated
Wall Street and its principals were out of the
picture as the PrimeTime broadcast featured
examples of then VSE high-fliers.
Had Wall Street's case history been publicized
in the US - either when the promotion was
being debunked in Canada in 1989 and 1990
or during a subsequent legal battle that pitted
Church of Scientology members against Time
magazine - American journalists could have
learned about the surreal world of stamp
dealing once inhabited by John Reznikoff, the
hair-collecting JFK/Marilyn Monroe papers
player.
Wall Street Ventures Inc. was incorporated in
British Columbia, Canada on February 28
1986 as 9006 Investments Ltd. The company
changed its name to Wall Street Ventures
before it began trading on the Vancouver
Exchange on February 11 1988. Originally
saying it was looking for gold, silver and other
minerals in Nevada, by early 1989 Wall Street
had announced it was going to acquire and
market bulky collections of Middle Eastern
postage stamps under the guidance of Mr
Reznikoff and a new board of directors. In
total, Wall Street claimed to have entered into
transactions giving it access to at least 713
crates of stamps - issued by governments in
Aden, the Trucial States and similar Arabian
locales - weighing about 100 pounds each.
These stamps had been authenticated by
assorted N.Y. and Connecticut-based
appraisers found by the company who valued
them at upwards of US$386 million. Wall
Street announced to investors: "These
transactions are thought to be among the
largest in the history of the philatelic world,
according to available information, and are
believed to make Wall Street the largest holder
of South and Southeastern Arabian postal issue
stamps in the world, as well as in all likelihood
the world's largest stamp company."
Overseeing this philatelic treasure was a new
management slate which included: a pair of
Beverly Hills-based PR consultants and
Scientologists, Michael Baybak and George
Duggan (both of whom have been associated
with other Vancouver penny stock
promotions); a reputed "Sultan" Ghalib
Bin'Awadh Al-Qu'aitl, said to be a
"Self-employed consultant on Arabian history,
Islamic art and business"; and Denis Potvin,
the retired New York Islanders hockey star.
Ex-NHLer Potvin was referred to in one
promotional Wall Street article as a "retired
professional hockey player and collector of
Middle East stamps." And, it was claimed that,
Wall Street officer Steven C. Rockefeller of
Norwalk, Connecticut held "an informed
appreciation of the unique and growing appeal
of the South and Southeastern Arabian stamps
represented in the company's inventory." John
Reznikoff, who was Wall Street's Chief
Operating Officer and Executive
Vice-President, was the only board member to
have a professional background as a dealer in
collectible stamps.
Mr Reznikoff also served as COO and
Executive VP of Congor Minerals Inc., a
privately incorporated BC company through
which Wall Street was to get into the stamp
business via a stock market manoeuvre known
as a "reverse take-over" or RTO. (Corporate
regulatory filings accepted by Vancouver stock
exchange officials identify stamp dealer
Reznikoff's address, fittingly, as a post office
box in Stamford, Connecticut.) Once the Wall
Street/Congor RTO had been effected, the
company's shares returned to trade on the VSE
and immediately jumped from the $0.52 level
to $5.125. On March 16 1989, only two weeks
after trading had resumed, Wall Street stock hit
an all-time high mark of $6.625. But, almost as
quickly and dramatically as "the world's largest
stamp company" had appeared on the VSE,
the company's published claims were criticized
and rejected by stamp collectors and philatelic
authorities.
Wall Street's description of its COO as
"President, University Stamp Company Inc.,
which is one of the largest suppllers (sic) of
stamps to auction houses, retail dealers and
investment and serious collectors in the United
States, 1980 to present" was soon disputed.
"We wouldn't agree with that", Dick Sine,
editorial director of Scott Publishing, publisher
of the reputable Scott's stamp catalogue, told a
reporter with The Globe and Mail newspaper.
As for the company's tons of stamps, Sine
explained, "We don't list any of them. We
question their legitimacy." While they may
look, smell and taste like stamps, "they just
don't quack".
David Allen, an executive member of the BC
philatelic society, told Vancouver journalists as
well as stock market regulators that "None of
the reputable stamp catalogues around the
world will touch these Aden Provisionals".
(The Aden stamps were the first collection to
be touted by Wall Street.) The stock promotion
was a matter to be raised at the June 1989
meeting of the Royal Canadian Philatelic
Society. Allen noted: "The International
Federation of Philately is actively campaigning
against stamps such as these which it says are
harmful." Another local stamp dealer put it
bluntly: "These stamps are nothing but junk."
Wall Street's stamps, from various sand dune
countries, had never enjoyed acceptance as
collectible stamps of value. They served as
filler in packets of starter stamp collecting kits
for children and, on occasion, they had been
given away as free prizes in specially marked
boxes of breakfast cereal.
The marketing goal of the Wall Street group to
suddenly make tons of previously undesirable
or worthless stamps tremendously valuable
was incredible even by VSE standards. Public
ridicule of the company and its claims resulted
in BC stock market regulators asking for
verifications that further stalled the penny
share promotion.
Support for the company's stratospheric
valuations came from a small circle of parties
primarily located in New York and
Connecticut. Those in Connecticut relied upon
by Wall Street in making its public
representations included Walter Ponichtera and
Bruce Corson of Stamford, Kenneth Potok of
Huntington and Armand-Marc Rousso of
Greenwich.
While there was little that could reduce the
company's already negligible level of credibility
among independent philatelists, it did not help
matters that Marc Rousso was known by
authorities to employ deceptive marketing
strategies such as using fronts to attempt
buying stamps at higher than their market value
in order to create new and artificial price
levels. In connection with the Wall Street
stamps case, a private company related to
Rousso, Coach Investments (which listed
Steven C. Rockefeller as a director and was
one of the proposed vendors of stamps to Wall
Street), placed a full-page advertisement in
"The Stamp Wholesaler" (a philatelic trade
paper) offering to buy certain Aden-Quaiti
stamps at 10 times their already dubiously
quoted price. (Earlier stamp deals involving
Rousso, who called himself "The Croc" in
homage to the thick-skinned reptile, had been
exposed in a series of articles published by the
Los Angeles Times in 1988.) Wall Street
Venture's other experts included Edward
Corbat of Throg's Neck, New York and Lee
Rosenbloom of Regal Stamp and Coin
Company, Fifth Avenue, N.Y. City
(Rosenbloom was also a director of Coach).
But the company's share price was grounded
by public exposure of the stamp's actual status
as unmarketable pieces of sticky paper and by
the end of July 1989 the stock had dropped
from over $6 to the $1 mark. Shares then
drifted to a year low of $0.35.
Following concerns raised about the legitimacy
of the stamps valuations, the company's
acquisition of the Aden Provisionals and
certain other Middle Eastern stamp collections
failed to be approved by VSE regulators. In
January 1990, Wall Street proposed
exchanging 50% - 60% of its Trucial States
collection (stamps that it had been allowed to
acquire before the public controversy arose)
for 30,000 acres of property in Oregon and
Nevada. This trade never materialized but in
December 1990 the company did swap 30% of
its stamp holdings for an interest in a Nevada
gold prospect. By this time, new players were
getting involved with Wall Street and the stamp
promotion had little life left. During 1990 the
company's shares ranged from a high of $0.90
to a low of $0.09.
By an agreement dated November 11 1991,
Wall Street officially ended its career as the
self-proclaimed ("in all likelihood") world's
largest stamp company by disposing of its
remaining stamp inventory for payment of
US$45,000 and the return of some Wall Street
shares by Martin Sellinger, a White Plains,
New York stamp dealer. Sellinger had begun
the cycle as the vendor of the Trucial States
stamps to Omar Mukharesh, identified in VSE
filings as a Saudi Arabian bank manager who
joined John Reznikoff and others on the board
of Congor Minerals. Congor, on paper at least,
acquired the Trucial States stamps from
Mukharesh before vending them to the publicly
traded Wall Street Ventures. In August 1992
the VSE accepted the Wall Street-Sellinger
arrangement and thus, not only had the stock
promotion cycle ended (collapsing from a
market capitalization of over $22 million to
under $400,000) but the underlying "asset"
itself, the stamps, had, in their comic way,
come full circle.
On March 18 1993, Wall Street's shares were
consolidated on a 1:4 (one-new for four-old)
basis and the company renamed Bionic
Enterprises Inc. The Middle Eastern stamp
promotion was now history.
By this time Wall Street's John Reznikoff was
busy helping with a marketing strategy that
would give value to a different type of
collectible. After Lex Cusack had visited him to
sell a small stamp collection, the matter of the
John Kennedy-Marilyn Monroe papers had
been raised. By March or April 1993, Mr
Reznikoff had told Thomas Cloud, an
Atlanta-based gem and metals trader, about the
JFK-Marilyn letters. Before the year was out,
he and Mr Cloud had a deal that would see
them each receive commissions of 10 -20%
per item for the sale of the papers to Mr
Cloud's clients.
In order to market the documents to investors,
Messrs Cusack and Reznikoff had earlier set
about getting the letters authenticated. Some of
the techniques used to bring legitimacy to the
letters and their sale value recall the creative
stamp marketing practices of Armand-Marc
Rousso and associates. They also would not be
out of place in a penny stock promotion.
Handwriting and other experts contacted were
not shown more than a few of the JFK-Marilyn
papers at any one time. This made it
impossible for them to compare numerous of
the documents as to their consistency. Genuine
handwriting can be expected to change from
page to page. Without, however, an
opportunity to review enough documents for
their consistency - or lack thereof - it can be
difficult to spot forgeries. In one instance, Lex
Cusack's wife mailed three handwritten note
cards to a pair of experts for sale. Next, acting
as a front for John Reznikoff, a Texas collector
arranged to buy back the Kennedy documents
affixed with the experts' imprimaturs of
authenticity. It's estimated that between US $6
and $7 million has been spent by Americans
buying up the product marketed by the
Cusacks, Cloud and Reznikoff.
Adding to the cachet of the letters was the
developing interest in them by prominent US
journalist Seymour Hersh. Mr Hersh was
researching a biography of John F. Kennedy
when, in late 1994, he first heard of the
Cusack file materials that were being sold to
collectors. (By this date, Wall Street-Bionic
had been completely reorganized, renamed
Hymex Diamond Corp., and, under a new
control group was off exploring for diamonds,
gold and associated minerals in Guinea,
Africa.) In July 1995 author Hersh signed an
agreement giving him access to the
JFK-Marilyn papers. The arrangement suited
all parties. Mr Hersh was able to finally
document aspects of the late president's life,
particularly his relationships with Marilyn
Monroe and the Mafia, that had long been
talked about but had yet to be pinned down on
paper. For the Cusacks, John Reznikoff and
Tom Cloud, the involvement of a media figure
of the stature of Seymour Hersh made pitching
investors on the merits of the letters a simpler,
and potentially much more lucrative,
enterprise.
Once Seymour Hersh started showing the
papers to his contacts and sources he began to
be told that they were fakes. In mid-1996 NBC
paid nearly US$1 million to a television
production house that was creating a
documentary based on "The Dark Side of
Camelot". After its forensic experts examined
the JFK-Marilyn papers, however, the network
backed out-only to be replaced a few months
later by ABC TV. (ABC directed almost US $2
million into its planned production.)
In the summer of 1997, after further forensic
examinations, ABC News concluded the letters
were forgeries. Review of numerous
documents at once showed up an unnatural
consistency to the letters purportedly penned
by Kennedy. "It is the complete lack of change
in the handwriting that gives the documents
away", one expert told The New Yorker.
Evidence that typed documents had been
created with lift-off type not invented at the
time, and with the aid of correctable carbon
ribbon that was not available in the early 1960s
helped sink the hoax.
The perpetrators of the fraud have yet to be
identified. The recently launched Grand Jury
investigation, various civil lawsuits (including
those instigated by Lex Cusack and others
who, a la Bre-X Minerals insiders, still insist
the find is legitimate) and continuing media
coverage will focus attention on the roles and
actions of three central suspects: Lex Cusack,
Jennifer Rush and John Reznikoff.
Looking for clues in the background of the
players, there will, no doubt, be different
parties interested in digging up and/or burying
the history of Wall Street Ventures/Congor
Minerals. Whoever is proven responsible, and
whatever Mr Reznikoff's part in the scheme is
found to be, this latest scandal surrounding two
of America's most famous modern figures
already ranks as one of the most colourful
international episodes to involve a VSE
graduate.
Curiously, John Reznikoff is not the only VSE
alumni to have figured in Seymour Hersh's
Kennedy book research. Pierre Salinger, a
White House press secretary in the 1960s,
ABC News correspondent in the 1970s and
1980s, and director of disreputable VSE penny
stocks in the 1990s, had a lighter input to the
text. Salinger, who has been a principal of
Vancouver-listed busts Global Teleworks Corp
and International Tire Recycling and
Manufacturing Corp, claimed to have once
found Robert Kennedy in bed with his wife.
Salinger's now ex-wife denied the story --
saying that JFK's younger brother had certainly
had affairs, "Unfortunately, not with me."
(c) Copyright 1997 Canjex Publishing Ltd.
canada-stockwatch.com
Mr Metals |
