Hedge Fund Managers’ Pimple Popping Emergencies And More Catered To At The Core Club

Time was, you joined an exclusive Mahattan club solely for the purpose of saying you were a member. The food was passable at best, the dress code stifling, as were the rules about keeping cell phones and Blackberries turned off and should you dare ask a member of the waitstaff to pluck some stray hairs from your nether regions? Forget it. If you thought your dues were going toward having your every whim catered to, you thought wrong. Then one day, a few years back, someone said “Stop. You know what the ‘ultra-rich’ need? An exclusive club where they can not only keep their phones on but where they can call in back waxing emergencies at 3AM, too.” And thus, the Core Club was born.

Established in 2005 and today counting upwards of 1,500 members (including Steve Cohen and Anthony Scaramucci) who pay a $50,000 initiation fee and $15,000 in annual dues, the Core Club is a place you can wear jeans and a zip-up fleece, feast on Kobe sliders and call in trades from the dining room without anyone giving you shit for it. Best of all? Your code blue facial needs are taken seriously.

Where many traditional New York clubs maintain strict dress codes and prohibit business meetings, cellphone conversations and the use of iPads or PDAs, the Core club at many times of the day resembles a trading floor. “I’ve got a billion dollars to be deployed,” a member remarked to his lunch companion over a recent midday meal of $22 Kobe beef sliders and $36 plate of lobster salad with pea leaves and carrot coulis. “It’s there and we need to get it moved.”

And if a blemish should happen to emerge on a member’s expensively maintained surface, said Talya Taylor, a spa therapist, the Dangene crew is at the ready with skin-care triage: “In an emergency, if someone calls us and says, ‘I’m going to pop this pimple myself if you don’t see me,’ we get them right in.”

And that’s just an example. Anything you dream up to call in like a hostage situation they’re there to take care of, no questions asked. Overgrown cockbushes, beastly cuticles, skin that hasn’t been exfoliated for daa-yys. Got any needs/desires you’d never dare voice but would be blown away to find out Core can and does accommodate? Do share and prepare to be impressed. In related news, let’s all hope against hope the lines “I’ve got a billion dollars to be deployed, it’s there and it needs to be moved” and “‘I’m going to pop this pimple myself if you don’t see me” can both be attributed to the same member.

Core Club, A Portal To Power [NYT]

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Hedge Fund Manager Didn’t Know You’re Not Supposed To Gamble And Lose Investor Money To Tobey Maguire, Paris Hilton’s Sex Tape Partner, Et Al

You’re a hedge fund manager running a Ponzi scheme in Los Angeles. You’re pretty into poker and attend bi-weekly games with various actors who, as it unfortunately turns out, aren’t half bad at cards. The buy-in’s $100,000 but you don’t have the cash. What do you do? If you’re Brad Ruderman you use some client funds to cover it, as well as the money you lose to Spiderman and Co.

An FBI investigation into Brad Ruderman, the CEO of Ruderman Capital Partners, uncovered how he lost $25 million of investor money in clandestine poker games held on a twice weekly basis in suites at the luxury Beverly Hills hotel, Four Seasons, and the Viper Room on Sunset Boulevard. Tinsel town A-listers Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon also played in the no-limit Texas Hold ‘em games which had a buy-in of $100,000, multiple members of the ring told Star. DiCaprio, Affleck and Damon are not being sued. Others who were part of the secret society and are facing hefty lawsuits include billionaire businessman Alex Gores, The Notebook director Nick Cassavetes, Welcome Back, Kotter star Gabe Kaplan, Paris Hilton’s infamous sex tape partner, Rick Salomon, record label owner Cody Leibel and Las Vegas nightlife entrepreneur and real-estate developer Andrew Sasson, among others.

The games were “exclusive events, by invitation only, and that there was a regular roster of players consisting of wealthy celebrities, entrepreneurs, attorneys and businessmen,” according to the lawsuit filed against Maguire in the United States Bankruptcy Court, in Los Angeles. Ruderman lost $311,300 to Maguire, including one losing hand of $110,000, on July 30, 2007, it’s claimed. The Ponzi mastermind used clients’ money to “pay for gambling losses at clandestine, high stakes poker games that were operated without any licenses or permits,” the suit said.

In their attempt to win back Ruderman’s losses, the trustee has claimed Maguire is “not entitled to receive the transfers from the Debtor, which transfers were compromised of improperly-diverted investor funds.” In a deposition of the alleged ringleader of the operation, which took in tens of millions of dollars beginning in 2006 through 2009, Maguire is described as a “very, very frequent player,” in the games, which ended in 2009. Maguire won as much as $1 million a month over a period of three years, one source told Star… “That means he could have made up to $30 to $40 million from these games,” the whistle-blowing card shark predicted.

Tobey Maguire Sued Over Multi-Million Dollar Illegal Poker Game; DiCaprio, Affleck & Damon Involved [Radar via FINalternatives]

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