Bernard Cornfeld

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

Origin and youth

Cornfeld's father came from a Jewish family , his father was born in Romania and his mother in Russia . The family lived in Istanbul, where the father worked as an actor . In 1931 she emigrated to the United States and settled in Brooklyn . The father died two years later. Cornfeld tried early on to earn extra income with various activities and after school worked as a fruit seller and delivered goods. When the father of a school friend died, he and the latter founded a booth for "age and weight estimation" in an amusement park on Coney Island with an insurance sum of 3,000 US dollars from the death fund . It was there that Cornfeld's talent for sales showed up early on and, although he stuttered , made the business idea a success.

Cornfeld served in the US Navy during World War II. After the end of the war, he attended Brooklyn College , which he left with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology, before completing a Master of Arts in social work at Columbia University .

Career and scandal

Cornfeld initially worked as a social worker , but soon switched to Walter Benedick's investment company IPC-Fonds to use his talent for sales. In 1955 he left New York and founded his own company for open-ended securities investment funds in Paris with a few hundred dollars in savings. By winning US soldiers stationed primarily in Europe as a customer, he was able to skilfully bypass American and European tax regulations. Cornfeld quickly noticed that there was a lot more money to be made if he not only sold fund units but also ran his own fund management company.

In the following decade, for example, he created his own fund company, Investors Overseas Services (IOS), which was renamed IOS Ltd. from 1960 onwards. based in Panama . He hired 25,000 agents who sold his eighteen mutual funds through telephone sales and door-to-door sales in Europe, particularly Germany, to retail investors . US emigrants and soldiers who wanted to avoid US income taxes continued to be a preferred target group. Cornfeld called his Ponzi scheme "Peoples Capitalism" ( people's capitalism ).

Over the next decade, the IOS grew and managed approximately $ 2.5 billion. Due to an opaque network of other funds , in which the “ Fund of Funds ” in particular invested, a considerable part of the fixed assets disappeared. Cornfeld also managed to win over celebrities to support his “business idea”. In Germany , the FDP politician Erich Mende played an inglorious role. An employee of those years who later became very successful himself was the founder of the MSC shipping company , Gianluigi Aponte . When a period of stock market weakness came and customers sold their shares, the system collapsed.

A group of about three hundred IOS employees filed a criminal complaint in Switzerland in 1969 because the IOS leadership had encouraged them to purchase IOS shares, which many lower and middle company employees did, often with borrowed money. As Cornfeld shortly after Geneva attended, he was arrested and sat eleven months in custody before facing a bail of 600,000 US dollars has been set free. Cornfeld always protested his innocence and blamed his management. The trial against him took place in 1979, lasted three weeks, and resulted in an acquittal .

Private life

Cornfeld, who was known for his expensive lifestyle with lavish parties and a reputation as a playboy enjoyed, had a villa in Geneva , a castle from the 12th century in French Burgundy , a house in London's posh district of Belgravia , a mansion in Hollywood and its own Fleet of private aircraft. He is said to have had affairs with Victoria Principal , Princess Ira von Fürstenberg , Alana Hamilton (who was initially married to George Hamilton and later to Rod Stewart ) and Heidi Fleiss .

In Beverly Hills , Cornfeld acquired the "Grayhall Mansion", which was built in 1909 and was once inhabited by Douglas Fairbanks . There he received good friends such as Victor Lownes , Tony Curtis and Hugh Hefner , with whom he was again seen at the Playboy parties .

In 1976 he married the photo model Lorraine Armbruster, with whom he had a daughter - Jessica Cornfeld. However, the marriage soon broke up.

In his final years he ran a development company in Arizona and a real estate company in Los Angeles. According to his daughter, who wrote an article in the British Sunday newspaper Mail on Sunday on June 29, 2003 under the title “My father, the playboy who could never get enough lovers” (“My father, the playboy, who could never have enough lovers “), He was good friends with Heidi Fleiss until his death. He died of a brain hemorrhage .

literature

  • Bert Cantor: The Bernie Cornfeld Story. Lyle Stuart, 1970
  • Giorgio Pellizzi with Mali & Werner: Bernie, the billion dollar pinball machine . A tragic comic from high finance. Rotbuch-Verlag, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-88022-128-6
  • Charles Raw, Bruce Page & Godfrey Hodgson: Do You Sincerely Want to Be Rich? The Full Story of Bernard Cornfeld and IOS. Viking Press, 1971; Broadway Books, 2005, ISBN 0-7679-2006-6

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ↑ red: Luxury and Enjoyment: Wealth de Luxe in Bilanz , November 29, 2005
personal data
SURNAME Cornfeld, Bernard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cornfeld, Bernie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Romanian-American entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH 17th August 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Istanbul , Turkey
DATE OF DEATH February 27, 1995
Place of death London