Word: adela
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...curtain dropped on her career, Adela Holzer. 43, played out her self-scripted role with aplomb. She even managed to maintain her poise after she was indicted last week in New York State Supreme Court on 137 counts of larceny and falsifying records. "I don't wear dark glasses when I went to be booked," she told TIME Correspondent Mary Cronin in her heavily accented English. "Everything will be done openly as 1 have led my life." With first-nighter enthusiasm, she gushed over the mug shots taken as she was booked, pronouncing them "the best. I have short...
...profit within a year. She then got some friends to put up $15,000 for a land deal in Spain; seven months later, they were paid back $26,325-a 75.5% profit. Says she: "It was a lark-it was like Monopoly money." As word of Adela's business acumen spread, people clamored to invest in her ventures, which until recently she ran from her home with the aid of two staffers, a middle-aged English secretary and a young college graduate. At first, most investors continued to do well, and some have volunteered to testify on her behalf...
When backers complained about delays in payments. Adela gave excuses about how banks had lost her deposits, how Indonesia had frozen her assets, or how the C.P.A. in Djakarta had died, fouling up her accounting system. But then some began checking her stories. Her Panamanian company bore a confusing relationship to her similarly named Indonesian firm. A Swedish firm with which she said she was working real estate deals in Spain was not listed in any Swedish corporate directory...
...talk she did. In her galloping, heavily accented English, she liked to say: "Banks tell me I am a top business person. They say to me, you have such a mind. The bankers can't even follow." Adela spun sugarplum stories of wonderful "deals" through which she could help people multiply their money by buying land in Spain and selling it for huge markups, or by shipping Japanese cars to Indonesia, or by getting into the import-export trade. And a lot of folks, credulous and captivated, begged to get in on the action...
Some of the investors did nicely indeed; New York Book Publisher Norman Monash, who plans to bring out Adela's heavily edited autobiography, says she helped him turn $50,000 into $190,000 in 13 months, though there is now a little problem about retrieving funds (from a recent real estate deal) that are blocked in Spain. But others have done much less well, and quite a few are afraid that they will never see their money again...