Word: blooms
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...teasing out its apex, until, as if the flame has magical properties, a small, delicately structured leaf emerges. More colored glass is added to the gas jet, layer upon layer of opaque, translucent and transparent browns, yellows, oranges and reds, and one by one petals, stamens and stems bloom into being. Paul Stankard leans back from the workbench at his home in Mantua, N.J., and his broad, open face creases into a smile. "You know what I do for a living?" he asks. "I take $25 worth of material, make love to it for a few hours and then sell...
What no one realized was that, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the financial statements, the fat profits and the entire enterprise were part of an elaborate fiction. Instead of buying stocks for his customers, the SEC charged last week, Bloom used the $10 million to support a lavish life-style. He bought about $5 million worth of paintings, an $830,000 Manhattan condominium and a $2 million vacation house in posh East Hampton, Long Island. Bloom, who also owned a Mercedes-Benz and an Aston Martin convertible, went skiing in St. Moritz, paid...
...those possessions are gone. Without admitting guilt, Bloom agreed to an SEC settlement in which he surrendered $8 million worth of paintings, real estate and other assets. Proceeds from their sale will be split among the investors who gave him money. Two days after the settlement, federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged him with mail fraud. If convicted, he could face up to five years in prison...
...Bloom's lawyer, Peter Morrison, did not deny the charges, but offered a novel defense. Had Bloom actually put his customers' money into stocks, suggested Morrison, they might be getting less of it back because of the Oct. 19 market crash. So putting investors' money into art and real estate may have been a wise strategy...
...Bloom was in fact a shrewd art investor. He bought paintings by Edward Hopper, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt and Willem de Kooning. Among the most expensive: Thomas Wilmer Dewing's Lady in White (worth $750,000) and John White Alexander's Alethea ($660,000). Says Loraine Pack-Liebmann, a Manhattan art dealer: "The kid did well. Many of the works he has bought have appreciated substantially in value." Example: Severin Roesen's Vase of Flowers in Footed Glass Bowl with Bird's Nest, purchased for $175,000, may now be worth $250,000, a potential profit...