Down and dirty doings at Maxim fraud trial
THE rat at the center of the Maxim fraud trial, Calvin R. Darden, took the stand for the government on Tuesday and attempted to help the feds bury his former attorney Harvey Newkirk as a coconspirator.
Both Darden and Newkirk were arrested by the FBI last year for an alleged scheme to dupe investors out of $8 million that involved Darden impersonating his father, also named Calvin Darden, a successful businessman.
In one bizarre twist, the younger Darden revealed that World Wrestling Entertainment emerged as a potential backer for his bid in late 2013. Darden testified in Manhattan federal court that he had talks with Shane McMahon, the son of WWE founder Vince McMahon, who was executive vice president for the company and a sometime prowrestler.
In another unusual move, defense attorney Priya Chaudhry told Judge Jed Rakoff that Newkirk might take the stand in his own defense next week. The defense claims he was “duped” and a “victim” of the younger Darden, whom they label a “con man.”
Darden — who has already pleaded guilty over his role in the failed bid to buy the magazine — painted a picture of Newkirk as a willing accomplice.
He said Newkirk helped him create fake documents purporting to show real estate as well as stock holdings being pledged by the elder Darden as collateral to help secure the loans for the magazine bid.
At one point, as one of the forgeries was uncovered by a potential investor, the younger Darden said he and Newkirk met in Darden’s car outside of the New York law offices of Bryan Cave to discuss what to do next.
The government presented more than a halfdozen investors and advisers, all of whom said they thought the elder Darden was leading the bid. The elder Darden claims he was involved in a “strictly advisory” capacity — a point on which the younger Darden concurred in testimony on Tuesday.
The investors were averse to working with the younger Darden because of his role in a stock swindle that sent him to federal prison for 3 ¹/₂ years in 2005 and defrauded NBA star Latrell Sprewell and singer Nelly among others.
The younger Darden admitted to impersonating his father on several investor phone calls and in a string of fake emails with financial statements in the Maxim deal, and he claims he did so with the full knowledge and support of Newkirk.
The younger Darden said he did not think the investors would notice his higher voice — even though he met them in person earlier and admits he and Newkirk “laughed about it.”
At one point, in desperation to get an extension, the younger Darden cooked up a fake email address for his father, sent it to Newkirk and ordered that $5.1 million in funds be deposited in an escrow account and released to the sellers of Maxim.
Despite signed documents to the contrary, there is no one named “Calvin Darden Sr.” nor is there a “Calvin Darden Jr.”
The younger Darden said his middle initial is “R” for Ramarro and his father has no middle name. He said he cooked up the “junior” and “senior” designations with Newkirk to dupe investors.
“We figured it [the erroneous name] would provide cover and create ambiguity in case anything happened,” Darden said.
B’berg recruit
Onetime top New York Times editor John Geddes joinedd Bloomberg on Tuesday as US politics editor, in what most see as a bid to shore up the political coverage after a round of layoffs that targeted the DC bureau two months ago.
Bloomberg’s Washington bureau has been suffering from low morale amid a turf war with the New York bureau’s beefedup political coverage. Founder Mike Bloomberg has been making cuts as he refocuses the company on its core financial news and data terminals.
Of the 55 people laid off on Sept. 1, about a dozen in the Washington bureau were whacked, including writer Dawn Kopecki, who had blasted the bureau’s treatment in a leaked email that pointed to “low morale” and a “leadership void.”
Jonathan Allen, the Washington bureau chief, quit to join Vox Media in the spring. Megan Murphy, from the Financial Times, was named to DC bureau chief in August.
Geddes will technically be based in New York but will split his time between New York and DC. He will report to Murphy. Geddes most recently was a Shorrenstein Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He was among those who took a buyout and exited the Times in 2013. Meanwhile, Bloomberg said goodbye to 14 more journalists on Nov. 18, including three senior writers and two senior editors who had been working on Bloomberg Markets.
The company previously announced that EditorinChief Ronald Henkoff was exiting. Remaining editors Joel Weber, Stryker McGuire and Jon Asmundsson are working on a prototype for an overhaul of the magazine that will be unveiled next March.