Bernard Cornfeld

Bernard ( " Bernie " ) Cornfeld ( born August 17, 1927 in Istanbul, Turkey, † February 27, 1995 in London, United Kingdom) was an American businessman who was accused of selling fraudulent investments in U.S. mutual funds.

Origin and Youth

Cornfeld's father came from a Jewish family, his father was Romanian, his mother Russian origin. The family lived in Istanbul, where his father worked as an actor. In 1931 she emigrated to the United States and settled in Brooklyn. Two years later his father died. Cornfeld tried early to earn some extra money in various jobs and worked after school as a fruit vendor and delivered goods from. As the father of a school friend died, he founded together with that of U.S. $ 3,000 sum insured from the burial fund a booth for " age and weight estimation " in an amusement park at Coney Iceland. There Cornfeld's sales showed talent early, made ​​the business idea to success, although he stuttered.

Career and scandal

Cornfeld worked as a social worker, but soon moved to the Investment Company IPC Fund by Walter Benedick to use his talent for sales. In 1955 he left New York and founded in Paris with a few one hundred U.S. dollars savings a separate company to open securities investment funds. By winning first predominantly stationed in Europe, U.S. soldiers as a customer, he could deal sent American and European tax regulations. Cornfeld quickly realized that much more money was when he not only sold fund shares, but even ran his own fund management company.

So he created in the following decade their own fund company, the Investors Overseas Services (IOS ), which as of 1960 as a corporation IOS Ltd.. acted based in Panama. He hired 25,000 agents who sold his eighteen investment funds in the phone and doorstep business in Europe, especially in Germany, to retail investors. A preferred target group continued U.S. emigrants and soldiers who wanted to avoid U.S. income taxes. Cornfeld called the " People's Capitalism " ( people's capitalism ).

In the next ten years, IOS grew and managed about 2.5 billion U.S. dollars. Through an opaque web of other funds, in particular the " fund of funds " invested, disappeared a significant amount of its assets. It succeeded Cornfeld also to win celebrities for the support of his " business idea ". In Germany, while the FDP politician Erich Mende played an inglorious role. An employee of those years, which was itself very successfully later, was the founder of the shipping company MSC, Gianluigi Aponte. As a period of weak stock markets entered and customers sold their shares, the system collapsed.

A group of about three hundred IOS employees filed a 1969 in Switzerland criminal charges because the IOS command had they encouraged to acquire IOS shares, which many employees from the lower and middle enterprise level, often with borrowed money, did. When Cornfeld visited Geneva shortly thereafter, he was arrested and sat eleven months in custody before he was released on bail of $ 600,000 released. Cornfeld always maintained his innocence and accused its management. His trial took place in 1979, lasted three weeks and ended with an acquittal.

Private life

Cornfeld, who was known for his elaborate lifestyle with lavish parties and enjoyed the reputation of a playboy, had a villa in Geneva, a castle from the 12th century in Burgundy, France, a house in the exclusive London district of Belgravia, a villa in Hollywood and its own fleet of private aircraft. There are his affairs with Victoria Principal, Princess Ira von Fürstenberg, Alana Hamilton (who was first married to George Hamilton and later with Rod Stewart) and Heidi Fleiss rumored.

In Beverly Hills Cornfeld acquired Built in 1909 and formerly of Douglas Fairbanks inhabited " Gray Hall Mansion ". There he received good friends like Victor Lownes, Tony Curtis and Hugh Hefner, in which he, in turn, could be seen on the Playboy parties.

In 1976 he married the working as a fashion model Lorraine Armbruster, with whom he daughter - Jessica Cornfeld - got. The marriage broke up but soon.

In his last years, he led a development company in Arizona and a real estate company in Los Angeles. According to his daughter, who on 29 June 2003 in British Sunday newspaper the Mail on Sunday carried an article titled " My father, the playboy Who Could never get enough lovers" ( "My father, the playboy who never have enough lovers could " ) published, he was a friend until his death in well with Heidi Fleiss. He died of a brain hemorrhage.