Word: trippet
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...three-and 2,000 other investors from show business, sports, politics, the law, business and banking-succumbed to the inspired salesmanship of an Oklahoma lawyer named Robert S. Trippet. By last summer, when he resigned one step ahead of a barrage of civil suits and a criminal investigation, Trippet sold $130 million worth of subscriptions in oil-drilling funds. Trippet denies charges that he handled the money illegally, but when asked how much oil he has found, he replies cryptically: "That's relative." In any case, his Tulsa-based Home-Stake Production Co. (no relation to Homestake Mining...
Some Action. One secret of Trippet's success was his skill as a name dropper. Lawrence Kartiganer, a partner in a Beverly Hills law firm that invested in Home-Stake and suggested it to Benny, Williams, Director Mike Nichols and Singer Bobbie Gentry, says that Trippet, a man of some aplomb, would let slip "oh, casually" the names of celebrities he had already signed up. Says Kartiganer: "When investors of the caliber of the top executives at the First National City Bank have a piece of the action, there is a tremendous psychological effect." (Wriston says that First National...
...little to lose. In order to encourage oil exploration, the Government allows part of the money invested in drilling funds to be written off on income tax returns, so many of Home-Stake's victims were putting in money that they would otherwise pay out in taxes. Trippet for a while surprised them by paying handsome dividends, so many upped the ante, investing more than they would have for tax purposes. Apparently, Trippet did it by running a Ponzi scheme, a type of swindle named for Charles Ponzi, a conman who used it to shake more than $10 million...