Back in April, Bloomberg’s Stewart Bailey reported on a possible takeover in
the gold mining industry: "Gold
Fields May Receive Bid From Pastorini-Led Group". The story was met
by guffaws
in London, and now the other shoe has dropped: "Edward Pastorini"
has been unmasked.
His real name, it turns out, is Theodore Roxford, and he makes
something of a career out of bogus takeover bids:
U.S. securities regulators on Friday sued a partnership and one of its founders,
alleging they made bogus offers to buy such well-known entities as Sony Corp.
and Playboy Enterprises Inc. in an effort to manipulate their stock prices…
Roxford also made offers for Zapata Corp., Edgetech Services Inc. and PeopleSupport
Inc., according to the complaint.
Even Theodore Roxford is a made-up name, it turns out: "Pastorini"
was born Lawrence David Niren, and has sometimes answered as
well to Theodore Vakil.
I’m glad that Roxford is being brought to justice. Memo to the SEC, in case
you care: I have eight emails from "Edward Pastorini," sent between
April 17 and April 22, during which he sent me details of his Gold Fields offer
and offered to set up an interview between me, him, and his mining-company "partners".
Interestingly, Bloomberg hasn’t published anything about Pastorini since its
editor in chief, Matthew Winkler, told the New York Times back
in April that he would continue
to investigate the story. What more are they waiting for?