Former CJ editor scammed

$5,000 lost to shady hedge fund

02/09/2011 2:48 PM

By Ben Meyerson
Editor

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Longtime readers of Chicago Journal may remember founding editor Brett McNeil. These days, McNeil’s a Fulbright Scholar, teaching English in Indonesia, but he’s still facing economic problems in America.

In a piece for The Beachwood Reporter, he tells the tale of $5,000 lost to a shady hedge fund manager named Jim Brandolino — a friend of his mother’s.

“I figured I’d park some additional savings with Brandolino while I was away earning peanuts in Indonesia and tap the funds when I got back for a security deposit on a new department,” McNeil wrote.

But alas, Brandolino confessed to the U.S. Attorney’s office last month that his investment empire was a fraud.

“The quarterly statements I’d been receiving for years showing regular, if sometimes small gains were pure fiction. Make-believe. Criminal,” McNeil wrote.

Makes that consistent newspaper editor’s paycheck sound a lot better to us.


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