Another email from the fantasy Gold Fields bidder, Edward Pastorini (see FT Alphaville passim):
To: tony.tassell@ft.com, alec.russell@ft.com
Subject: official documents that prove who I am
Ft Alphaville & FT: I forgot to mention to you that Charlotte Mathews from Business Day in South Africa
- who was the only reporter to consistently write truthfully about me, - has very recent official documents from one of my brokerage accounts that prove that I am Edward Pastorini, and she also has a very recent official document from one of Theodore Roxford’s banks that prove that we are 2 separate people.
But she has consistently written truthfully about me and has not been hypocritical - unlike the FT and
the FTAlphaville who knows nothing about me, but who writes plenty of untrue and wildly exaggerated
nonsense about me nonethesless. You should read Business Day’s most recent article of today’s date of
April 14. FTAlphaville owes me a public apology!
Edward Pastorini
Hmm. This is now breaking into our lunch hour.
Pastorini points us to a story by Charlotte Matthews, from Business Day in South Africa. In this, she relays a theory that Mr Pastorini is in fact Theodore Roxford, described by Ms Matthews as “a corporate financier who acquired some notoriety in the US in 2002-03.”
She reports that Pastorini and Roxford may be cousins, and says she was offered “personal details” to show they are not the same person. She adds, “they use different e-mail addresses and their writing style is very different, though it could be argued those things are easy to change. Roxford said on Friday that several of his family members were corporate financiers.”
The suspicion arose because Roxford has changed his name before, explains Ms Matthews. He was previously called Lawrence David Niren.
“As Niren, he claimed to have defrauded oil, gas and mining companies in the 1990s of about $2m by collecting consulting fees for services never rendered — after they had cheated him, he said. He confirmed the claims were a publicity stunt for a book,” she writes.
After changing his name to Roxford in 1994, he later started a partnership, Hollingsworth, Rothwell & Roxford, - which, said the New York Times in 2003, “hints at old money, though it seems to consist largely of himself, e-mail address and Web site started through Yahoo,” - which in 2002 and 2003 made public three bids, including one for Zapata Corporation.
Ms Matthews adds: “BusinessWeek reported in a March 15 2003 article that Hollingsworth, Rockwell & Roxford approached Zapata management with an offer to take it private and, after getting no reaction, made a public offer at $45 a share, later increased to $51. Shortly afterwards the offer was withdrawn, but the effect of the bids was to increase Zapata’s share price threefold over six weeks. Roxford told BusinessWeek he never owned any Zapata shares and made no money out of the bid. It was designed to impress a potential client.”
Of course, Pastorini might also go off Business Day when he reads their latest offering. Rob Rose writes in his Monday column: “If it seems Pastorini is a charlatan whose name is the punchline to a papal lunchmeat joke; the truth is he is linked to an apparent stock-ramping scheme that has been around for years.
“The three-page document that forms the basis of his Gold Fields offer scales new heights of amateurishness, and Pastorini concedes it is a “very simple report” — no understatement given its grammatical errors.”
The piece goes on to question Pastorini’s identity - and his links with Roxford - and notes that in the Gold Fields document mentioned, “past original deals” include Zapata. He concludes: “While Pastorini might make more noise, it is sobering that his “cousin” has never once put cash on the table to complete a deal. Gold Fields may very well be on the radar of other legitimate bidders, but it would seem that investors need not believe much will materialise from Pastorini.”
Right, we’re calling a halt to this tale. Quite enough nonsense for one day.
