Are You Smarter Than A Lehman Brothers Loan Underwriter?

Take a Haircut? 50 West Third Street, Mount Carmel, PA. Lehman Brothers' Yaniv Blumenfeld made a $500,000 loan on this property, which then sold for less than one-third that figure four years later.

To overvalue something is a form of lying. –Baltasar Gracián (1601-1658)

Ever wonder how somebody made all those bad loans that put Lehman Brothers in bankruptcy in 2008 and cratered the global financial system? Here’s your chance to see how a banker puts lipstick on a pig.

In 2004, Lehman Brothers commercial loan underwriter Yaniv Blumenfeld OKd a $500,000 loan secured by a 36 percent vacant office building at 50 West Third Street, Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania.

Mount Carmel, you ask? Why, it’s only 20 miles northwest of Pottsville, Pennsylvania. Got your bearings now?

If you live in Mount Carmel, you vacation in Scranton. And like it.

The location demographics sucked. The 2004 Census Bureau estimated population of Mount Carmel Borough was 6,050 persons, a 20 percent population decline since 1990.

The building sucked. The three-story frame structure totally had no elevator, a major flaw in a town where the only remaining residents are those too feeble to leave. There was visible mold and water damage, deteriorating floors and a sagging roof beam. Asbestos was suspected, but the recommended testing was never performed even though the appraised value was predicated on the building being asbestos-free.

Inevitably the loan went into default. Less than four years later, Gramercy Capital Corp. bought the same property for $150,000, as reported in its publicly filed Form 10-K. That’s only 27 percent of Yaniv Blumenfeld’s bloated $550,000 underwriting valuation!

How many mistakes can you find in Blumenfeld’s loan underwriting package? Download it and see. Check out the inflated appraisal and the shocking inspection photos.

Here are a few clues: Did it help that the loan was made to Glenn Blumenfeld at American Financial Realty Trust? Was the conflict-of-interest ever properly disclosed?

Can you spot the math errors in the appraisal? (Hint: page 9, but you’ll have to find the rest on your own!)

We shouldn’t be too surprised that Yaniv Blumenfeld thinks crummy properties in bad locations should be leveraged to the hilt. After, didn’t Lehman’s losers also try to tell us that people with no money and bad credit could buy houses?

What crap investments is Yaniv Blumenfeld putting other peoples’ money now? Would anyone like to buy a glacier? Or a fatwa-stigmatized condo? Yaniv Blumenfeld has one to sell you.

Would you lease this vacant office space? Apparently no one else did either. Yaniv Blumenfeld signed off on the loan despite major property deficiencies. These photos are from a pre-closing inspection report which you can download and read.

Blast from the Past: Yaniv Blumenfeld Mugshot

Yaniv Blumenfeld's Mugshot

Despondent Glacier Global Partners Investor Leaps To A Welcome Death

NEW YORK — Distraught over an ill-advised investment in Glacier Global Partners, a man died a welcome death after throwing himself from the 22nd floor of the Playgirl Building on Second Avenue and 43rd Street. The victim, whose identity is being withheld until notification of next of kin, chose to end his own life rather than continue to endure the living hell of his entanglement with the discredited real estate investment firm which has an office in the building.

“The man’s decision to seek the peace of eternal sleep seems completely reasonable under the circumstances,” said New York City Detective and forensic accountant Heywood Jablome, who made a cursory review of Glacier Global’s financial statements. “I’m calling it an assisted suicide, with the assistance coming from Glacier Global.”

Although the pancaked man’s investment in the skanky partnership was relatively small, Jablome observed that phantom taxable income arising from foreclosure- and bankruptcy-related debt forgiveness would have put him in hock to the IRS for the rest of his life. Particularly disastrous is Glacier Global’s effort to construct the fatwa-stigmatized Five Franklin Place condo project in TriBeCa. With a black cloud of the the fatwa hanging over Five Franklin, as well as protracted litigation and perhaps even further personal interaction with Glacier Global co-founder Yaniv Blumenfeld in his future, the victim’s desire to die seems oddly rational.

“He’s in a better place now,” Jablome said.

Former Vice President Al Gore received a shock when the body, after bouncing off a school bus on Second Avenue, splatted onto the hood of the car he was driving. Gore shared a Nobel Prize for raising public awareness of deteriorating global glaciers, rising seas and the threat posed to man’s continued existence by global warming. But sadly the dead man never got the memo. Ironically, it was a deteriorating Glacier Global that put the despondent victim financially under water and ended his existence.

“I hope that’s going to buff out,” Gore commented, eyeing the prominent smear on the hood of his new, gas-guzzling BMW 7 Series sedan.

A horrified tourist captured this photo of a briefcase-toting man leaping to his death from the 22nd floor of the Playgirl Building on Second Avenue. Police identified the man as a distraught investor in the rapidly unwinding Glacier Global Partners scam.

Little Fudgedrawers Yaniv Blumenfeld Is Comeuppance Foundation’s 2012 Poster Boy

Click photo for a special message from Yaniv Blumenfeld

NEW YORK, NEW YORK — Disgraced real estate investor Yaniv Blumenfeld has been named the Comeuppance Foundation’s 2012 Poster Boy, the philanthropic organization announced.

Created in 1979 through the merger of the “Make A Wish Foundation-Special Victims Unit” and Darwin, Australia-based “Save the Saltwater Crocodiles”, the Comeuppance Foundation is one of the world’s most respected charities.

“What comes around, goes around,” as the saying goes. But while a person’s good or bad actions normally have irregularly occurring consequences for that person, the Comeuppance Foundation is dedicated to “reducing inefficiency, uncertainty and delay in the righteous and mighty administration of Bad Karma”.

Only nine percent of every tax-deductible dollar donated is spend on administration and marketing, making the Comeuppance Foundation one of the nation’s most efficient charities. The remaining 91 percent goes to direct program services: opening a can of whup-ass and introducing a world of pain to thousands of Bad Karma-laden assholes, buttheads and motherfuckers worldwide.

The Comeuppance Foundation’s Annual Poster Boy award creates public awareness that no matter how bad a person is, their lives can still serve a valuable purpose. They can serve as a horrible example for others.

“We are committed to the Golden Rule–do unto others as we would have done unto ourselves,” said foundation Executive Director Victor “Crown Vic” Underballs. “If we were motherfucking dirtbag assholes, how would we ourselves wish to be treated?”

“We would want to be punished,” Underballs said. “Severely punished.”

Some Comeuppance Foundation charitable activities are well known, almost a staple of popular culture.

To visit justice on rude drivers who maliciously honk their horns and flash their high beams, the Comeuppance Foundation's fleet of White Ford Crown Victorias are armed with 7,000-lumen A380 aircraft landing lights and horns meeting Amtrak train specifications.

The iconic ‘White Crown Vic’ program targets rude and obnoxious drivers, such as the unreasoning pinheads who honk their car horns way too much or who blind other drivers with aggressive and malicious use of their high beam headlights. Based on surveillance camera recordings and tips received from the public, the Foundation’s fleet of White Ford Crown Victoria sedans use special tracking electronics to hunt down the assholes in their vehicles. A large compressed air tank installed in the Crown Vic’s trunk provides power to deafening front- and rear-mounted Amtrak train horns. The terrified asshole usually loses bowel control along with the ability to discern musical pitch and sounds quieter than 70 dB HL after the horns are mercilessly blasted directly in his or her face

Both the front and back of the Crown Vic are augmented with a pair of 7,000-lumen high-intensity headlamps, originally manufactured for use as Airbus A380 jumbo jet plane landing lights. When the Crown Vic flashes its high beams on an asshole, the blinded motherfucker typically wipes out on a guardrail or rolls his car into a ditch.

Office bullies, who viciously snipe at subordinates and engage in non-constructive criticism and scapegoating, are major contributors to Bad Karma in the universe today. The Foundation responds by hiring as consultants highly-placed executives within the bully’s organization, but who are senior to the asshole in the organization’s management hierarchy.

The Comeuppance Foundation is dedicated to reducing inefficiency, uncertainty and delay in the righteous and mighty administration of Bad Karma

The senior executive/consultant attends the shithead’s business meetings to abuse the asshole in front of his subordinates with custom-scripted remarks such as, “Is this some kind of a joke?”, “This is beginning to look like another [insert target’s name here] clusterfuck.”, “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard!”, and “By the way, I screwed your wife.”

In 1987, the Foundation began marketing bogus investment securities to asshole Wall Street investment bankers. The Foundation’s sham money management company, Fidelity Investments, has sold over $2.1 billion in worthless investments to Wall Street motherfuckers, including $460 million to partners of Goldman Sachs alone. The jerks will never recover any of these funds because they were invested in instruments originated for sale to the public by the very same investment bankers, as well as in Glacier Global Partners, lottery tickets, Nigerian advance fee schemes and other sucker plays as permitted by the typically vague Wall Street language contained in the prospectuses.

A leader in Karmic innovation, the Comeuppance Foundation introduced the now-universal practice of compounding Bad Karma at usurious rates. An asshole’s accumulated Bad Karma can now triple in less than three years through the passage of time alone, even with no additions to principal.

For the most egregious assholes, those pricks even worse than 2012 Poster Boy Yaniv Blumenfeld, the Foundation conducts discreet interventions. The Foundation’s regulatory filings allude to these activities in a footnote referring to contractual relationships with Triple Canopy, Blackstone, Halliburton and local forensic cleaning companies.

“Thank you for all the kindness, support and compassion,” Blumenfeld said. “I am humbled by the love. Thank you.”

Don’t Mess With Jesus…

Mess with Yaniv Blumenfeld.

Grand Theft Wall Street: Now Better Than Ever

The latest update makes Grand Theft Wall Street even more realistic.

In this update of Grand Theft Wall Street, you’ll engage in a single-player campaign to spread as much human misery and destroy as much value as possible, all while trying to shift the blame to the most unlikely scapegoats. In the series cheered (and criticized) for glorifying incompetent financial risk management, you’ll make horrendous blunders, lose massive sums of other peoples’ money, bitch slap your female interns, associate with other Wall Street lowlifes and do many, many other bad deeds. GTWS gives us characters with a level of superficiality so realistic, you’ll think you’re right on the trading floor of a Wall Street casino.

You play as Yaniv Blumenfeld, a mercurial, belligerent, stateless, undocumented Middle Eastern third-tier banker with a dark past. Socially and financially inept, you nevertheless recruit a team of unpaid interns who soon discover you may have fibbed a bit in your tales of success. You parlay your talents and a $1.0 million stake from demented elderly relatives into a $35 million pyramid of debt you’ve named Glacier Global Partners. Along the way you pick up some very bad habits and associates. The longer we stay with Yaniv, the more we see that there is a broken human being inside, one who would give anything to escape the person he once was.

Bugfixes in this update of the Grand Theft Wall Street action-adventure video game:

• fixed an intermittent bug where a virtual subordinate did a good job but the Yaniv Blumenfeld character malfunctioned and failed to feel threatened and make it his mission to destroy the character, thereby undermining the game’s realism
• fixed a bug which allowed disabling of the Yaniv character’s ‘narcissistic sociopath’ and ‘prima donna’ behaviors, resulting in unrealistic gameplay scenarios
• fixed a bug where the Yaniv character tipped generously at a strip club
• fixed a bug where the Yaniv character fucked up a financial projection spreadsheet causing a deal blew to up in his face (so far, so good; Where’s the bug?). BUT then not only did the Yaniv character intermittently fail to detonate a hissy fit, he failed to go into scapegoat mode (i.e., trying to blame a broker, colleague, subordinate or Hamas for his own blunder); shitstorm mode also failed to engage
• fixed an intermittent bug where the blundering Yaniv character failed to enter ‘enhanced’ scapegoat mode (i.e., the Yaniv character spreading malicious false rumors about his intended scapegoats, sniping at the scapegoats in meetings, displaying the scapegoats’ severed heads on pikes, using their blood for his cave paintings, and leaving their bodies unburied to be devoured by dogs, etc. ‘Acts of God’ added to the list of targets the Yaniv character can blame for catastrophes resulting from his own negligence or stupidity.
• fixed a graphic error which caused the stocky, diminutive Blumenfeld to appear taller than Joe Pesci and R2-D2
• fixed an intermittent bug where the Yaniv character uncharacteristically put in a full day’s work while allowing a subordinate to leave early for a gynecological appointment


Yaniv Blumenfeld partying in 'Grand Theft' style.

• fixed a bug that generated a scenario in which the Yaniv character competently and courageously landed a stricken U.S. Airways jet airliner in the Hudson River and acted selflessly to save the lives of all the passengers (yeah, in what alternate universe?)
• fixed an intermittent bug where a Glacier Global Partners LLP real estate deal inexplicably made economic sense, investors were pleased and nobody got ripped off
• fixed a bug where the Yaniv character paid a sincere compliment to a female colleague instead of spreading vile rumors about her to his cronies
• fixed a bug where a toady didn’t let the Yaniv character win at Halo during a Glacier Global partner meeting
• fixed a bug where the Yaniv character went off his anti-psychotic medication and nothing unusual happened
• fixed a bug where the Yaniv character started paying his bills in full on time for no particular reason
• fixed an intermittent bug where the Yaniv character’s face failed to turn red and become grotesquely distorted during a clusterfuck sequence
• fixed the bug where instead of pretending that you never told him important information that you for certain had told him and being angry at you, the Yaniv character pretends you told him good news that you never did and is pleased with you
• fixed the bug where instead of it being all about the Yaniv character all the time, it was a little bit about someone or something else occasionally
• fixed a bug in the graphic algorithm which, during brown-nosing mode, caused the Yaniv character’s head to appear less than fully embedded
• corrected a bug in the rate of speed that disconsolate investors fall after leaping to their welcome deaths from the Playgirl Building. Corrected bounce height and trajectory of investors hitting the pavement and motor vehicles on Second Avenue. Corrected audio to replace fart sound with splat.
• for added pomposity added reverb effect to “I have spoken!”, the phrase the Yaniv character tacks on the end of his every statement.
• fixed a timing bug in which the Yaniv character would say, “Who did that?” before farting himself

The Lighter Side of Pernicious

Keep them coming! -hp