Alright, for everyone who enjoys a good nutjob conspiracy theory, here's where it starts to get weird.
David Geffen’s far-reaching influence, as a Hollywood agent, manager, record industry mogul, Hollywood and Broadway producer, and supposed philanthropist, has helped shape American popular culture for the past four decades.
He also seems to have a professional, if not close, relationship with Steven Cohen. Take David Geffen's Dec. 27, 2011 endorsement of Connecticut hedge-fund operator Steven Cohen's bid to buy the beleaguered Los Angeles Dodgers from Frank McCourt for a non-art related example.
Additionally, at a time when many art institutions are struggling to meet ambitious fundraising goals, New York’s Museum of Modern Art has done what others have deemed impossible. New York’s Museum of Modern Art raised more than $400 Million for its expansion. Four people, Leon Black, David Geffen, Kenneth Griffin, and Steven Cohen gave more than 50 percent of the target sum.
David Geffen sold Jasper Johns’ “False Start” for $80 million and Willem de Kooning’s “Police Gazette” for $63.5 mil. The new owners are Kennith Griffin (who reportedly fell in love with the painting during a visit to David Geffen’s estate), and Steven Cohen, respectively. Both hedge fund managers adding these pieces to their ever growing art collections.
So who is David Geffen, and why do we care about him?
David Geffen has been a powerhouse in Hollywood since founding Asylum Records in 1970. He went on to also found Geffen Records and DGC Records. These labels are associated with some of the most prominent acts in music, including The Eagles, Bob Dylan, Elton John, Nirvana, and dozens of others.
He’s also a co-founder of DreamWorks SKG alongside Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg.
Ready for some more juicy Hollywood-style controversy?
David Geffen has been involved in wage theft, stealing from those working beneath him. Dreamworks animation was one of several animation companies forced to pay their artists higher wages in 2017 after being found guilty in a wage-fixing scandal to cut corporate costs. Collectively, artists from several companies were compensated 100 million dollars, which is less than one third the price of David Geffen’s megayacht by the way.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, David Geffen sent a virtual postcard to his 84,000 Instagram followers to let them know he too was feeling the hardships of enforced solitude. “Sunset last night…” Geffen wrote, to accompany al photograph of his vessel resting at anchor in the picturesque Caribbean sea. David Geffen also likes to share photos of many of his famous guests on Instagram. It seems that once you become one of the world’s super-rich and super-powerful, you get an invitation to hang out on David Geffen’s $590 million megayacht in some glorious, sunny locale.
David Geffen goes back a long way with disgraced former CBS Chief Les Moonves. In 1994, he and his DreamWorks co-founders, Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, had asked Les Moonves to be the fourth partner in founding the studio.
Les Moonves engaged in multiple acts of serious non consensual sexual misconduct in and outside the workplace, both before and after he came to CBS. Les Moonves tried to hide evidence about multiple claims of sexual misconduct, and in 2019 even left the country to stay on David Geffen's megayacht off of the island country St. Barts during these allegations.
David Geffen’s guests have included President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, as well as Oprah Winfrey, Gayle King and Maria Shriver. Other guests have included Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Leonardo DiCaprio, J.J. Abrams and Paul McCartney.
In the summer of 2016, after Trump clinched the Republication nomination, David Geffen, a strong supporter of the Democratic party, hosted Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner on his megayacht when it sailed to the coast of Croatia.
David Geffen has also hosted Ivanka Trump’s friend Dasha Zhukova. She’s the wife of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, a longtime supporter of President Vladimir Putin. Incidentally, Roman Abramovich, had his yacht anchored off St. Barts, and hosted Paul McCartney on his $1.5 billion boat, the same days David Geffen and Les Moonves were also there.
In 2019, Jeff Bezos had a hectic summer fighting alleged tabloid blackmailers, escalating the private space race with Elon Musk, and attempting to keep Amazon out of Elizabeth Warren’s crosshairs. So, in need of a little R&R, the Amazon CEO and his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, did what all billionaires do when they want to cut loose: party on David Geffen’s megayacht off the coast of Spain.
Jeff Bezos, the richest man on the planet, was pictured lounging on a beanbag chair alongside Sanchez, model Karlie Kloss, her husband Josh Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner, former Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein, and David Geffen. The group also posed for a photo aboard the 453 foot boat.
The boat, known as the Rising Sun, is the world’s eighth largest yacht and comes with 82 rooms on five decks, a gym with spa and sauna, a private cinema and a basketball court on the back. David Geffen bought the megayacht from Oracle founder Larry Ellison in 2010.
David Geffen would also spend days on the Rising Sun megayacht with his ex-boyfriend Jeremy Lingvall. When they first started dating, Jeremy Lingvall was met with a hostile reception among some gay commentators and blogs with claims that he was using David Geffen as a ‘sugar daddy’. The decision to part ways brought down the curtain on one of the most publicly controversial relationships in recent times; two openly homosexual men with a 41-year age difference and vast differences of financial wealth.
Okay, okay. Enough about the Rising Sun. He's got a megayacht that he invites opposing high profile politicians, celebrities, and his boy friends on, but so do other rich people from time to time. Who cares if a Russian oligarch just happened to be docked in the same harbor that David Geffen and former major news network chief Les Moonves were at. It's all probably just coincidental. Nothing too nefarious, right?
But what about David Geffen's second yacht?
Geffen also owns the 377-foot ‘Pelorus’. The Pelorus, or ‘vast’ in English, boasts two helicopter pads, a swimming pool, an owner’s suite with 180-degree panoramic views and a staff of around 40 on duty to cater to its owner’s whims. Remember how Ivanka Trump is good friends with Dasha Zhukova, the art-collector wife of oligarch Roman Abramovich, one of the richest men in Russia? David Geffen bought the Pelorus from Russian oligarch billionaire Roman Abramovitch for a reported $300 million. As in the Roman Abramovich who isn’t just the owner of the Chelsea soccer club, but also a member of Putin’s inner circle.
But what about when David Geffen isn't on his yacht?
During the 2016 U.S Open Tennis Finals, Ivanka and Jared were photographed together with Dasha Zhukova in VIP seats. Also in the box was Wendi Deng, as well as billionaire entertainment mogul David Geffen and Princess Beatrice of York.
Also, in 2016, Hollywood mogul David Geffen was one of the first Americans named in the Panama Papers leak as someone holding money in foreign countries. Americans in this leak didn't have their money overseas to hide from taxes, but to hide money they got in other ways that are not legal. It's not the average rich guy, it’s the rich guy who’s really doing something wrong who is in the Panama Papers data.
This is a good time to step back and remember that David Geffen has publicly stated that he is a strong supporter of the Democratic party. Though, in 2016, David Geffen's sharp criticisms of Hillary Clinton and her husband in a New York Times column ignited a war of words between the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, bringing to a head long-simmering rivalries for donors between the two superstar presidential contenders. In 2019, among Republican ran "Lincoln Project" PAC's top 10 donors in 2020 are David Geffen, as well as fellow Dreamworks co-founder and Quibi CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg. Also listed as donors are AMC Theaters CEO Adam Aron, and MGM chairman Michael De Luca. The Lincoln Project released a series of anti-Trump videos in the hopes of them going viral. Later controversy over sexual harassment allegations of leading members of the Lincoln Project cause the PAC to fall apart.
Again, I don't support any political parties personally, and I hate that I even had to bring them up. I swear this all ties back to Steven Cohen and Kenneth Griffin though, just keep reading to find out.
If you're not familiar with the tale of Teofil Brank, let's play a little game of catch-up. In 2015, the Romanian-born Teofil Brank, better known by his porn name Jarec Wentworth, blackmailed Florida business tycoon Donald Burns out of $500 thousand and an Audi R8 sports car by threatening to expose the lurid details of their relationship. Jarec Wentworth tried a second time to blackmail Donald Burns, but was instead arrested in a sting operation by the FBI when he went to collect.
The case, which went to a federal district court, is full of salacious details about private planes, luxurious parties ending in group sex, and envelopes full of cash handed out to participants the next morning.
But it’s the testimony of Justin Griggs, a porn actor and prostitute, that really stands out.
According to the testimony, Justin Griggs recently had dental work paid for by a “friend," but not his friend Donald Burns.
"You mentioned you didn’t want to give details about an individual because he was very powerful and you feared for your safety if you disclose information. Who were you talking about there?” Brank's attorney Ashfaq Chowdhury says.
"Should I give you the name of the person?" Justin Griggs asked.
"Yes," Ashfaq Chowdhury replied.
"David Geffen," Griggs answers.
It only gets worse from here as we further dive into David Geffen's other legal scandals.
According to Jamie Kuntz’s lawyer David Wohl in 2014, his client and David Geffen enjoyed a physical relationship, but when Jamie Kuntz caught feelings and it wasn’t reciprocated, David Geffen filed for a restraining order. David Wohl insists Jamie Kuntz is not a stalker. He’s just misunderstood.
20-year-old Jamie Kuntz had been accused of stalking the 71-year-old for the past several months. Jamie Kuntz and David Geffen first hooked up when Jamie Kuntz was 18. In 2012, the teenager was kicked off his college football team after being spotted making out with the then 69-year-old billionaire in a press box. He told teammates David Geffen was his grandfather. The school maintains that he wasn’t removed from the team for being gay, but because he lied about the kiss.
If the 41 year gap between David Geffen and Jeremy Lingvall didn't seem strange, the 51 year gap between Jamie Kuntz and David Geffen at least should.
Continuing on.
Digital pioneer Marc Collins-Rector lost millions before he vanished, but perhaps the strangest twist in this strange story is why Marc Collins-Rector fled the country in the first place. He believed that David Geffen, his investor and one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, wanted to destroy him.
By 2000, he had raised millions for a precursor to YouTube, called Digital Entertainment Network, or DEN, with the pioneering idea to distribute video entertainment not through theaters or television but on the internet. The company produced its own content, as Netflix does now, and Marc Collins-Rector even patented a video advertising method that Google has used for its own advertising efforts.
Running his business out of a Los Angeles mansion, he and his two business partners, his boyfriend at the time, Chad Shackley, and former child star Brock Pierce, (who later became the chairmen of the board of the Bitcoin Foundation), hosted lavish parties attended by Hollywood’s gay A-list. Their guests included relative newcomer Bryan Singer, the director of the X-Men movies, and legendary media mogul David Geffen, both of whom were investors in DEN.
In September 1999, DEN filed papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission to sell $75 million worth of stock in an initial public offering, or IPO. But hanging over the company’s future was a civil lawsuit in which a New Jersey boy alleged that Marc Collins-Rector had lured him to Michigan and California to sexually abuse him. According to a court document, Marc Collins-Rector settled the suit for $1 million. He did so, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, in order to shield the company from bad publicity.
Then, on May 7, 2000, the Times ran an article headlined “How a Visionary Venture on the Web Unravelled,” unleashing a media firestorm that branded Marc Collins-Rector as a child abuser and chastised DEN for spending investors’ money on parties allegedly teeming with drugs and teenagers.
It was at those parties that Marc Collins-Rector, and others, allegedly sexually assaulted half a dozen teenage boys, according to two sets of civil lawsuits, the first filed in 1999–2002, and the second later in 2014.
In his 2003 deposition, Brock Pierce said that Chad Shackley started tracking 18-year-old Alexander Burton’s computer activity and found that Alexander Burton, who played Pyro in Singer's first X-Men movie, had been sending emails to David Geffen. Alexander Burton, Brock Pierce alleged in his deposition, was paid by David Geffen “to spy and collect information, and to steal faxes out of the fax machine, and send this information to him.” Moreover, Brock Pierce stated, David Geffen was a friend of the Los Angeles Times reporter who broke the story.
In his deposition, Brock Pierce described how Collins-Rector had repeatedly refused David Geffen’s offers to buy the firm. David Geffen, Brock Pierce said, responded: “I’m going to take your business whether you like it or not.”
Brock Pierce swore under oath in 2003, the former DEN executives furiously confronted Alexander Burton. According to Brock Pierce’s deposition, Alexander Burton left the house yelling that he would be at David Geffen’s, and they were “going to regret the day” they met him.
The three entrepreneurs fled to Spain, and a month later Alexander Burton filed a sexual-assault lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court alleging that Marc Collins-Rector, Chad Shackley, and Brock Pierce had systematically raped and drugged him, even threatening him with a gun. Mark Ryan and Michael Egan, two young men who had worked for DEN, were listed as co-plaintiffs in the complaint. At least four other lawsuits followed in the ensuing months, all alleging sexual abuse by Marc Collins-Rector against adolescent boys. Some of the plaintiffs were awarded default judgments because the defendants failed to respond to the allegations.
Alexander Burton eventually dropped all charges against Brock Pierce. Mark Ryan settled, apparently without damages. Egan also later settled with Brock Pierce, for $21,600. Chad Shackley does not appear to have paid any of the outstanding default judgments against him.
In Spain, Marc Collins-Rector, Chad Shackley, and Brock Pierce got involved with a new internet venture: Internet Gaming Entertainment, or IGE, a company that pioneered commerce within the world of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, or MMORPGs.
Such video games, the most famous of which is World of Warcraft, are sprawling, immersive affairs where players can spend endless hours manipulating avatars through fantastical landscapes, where they scheme and battle with other characters. Players also earn digital currency, which they can use to purchase virtual goods: a new battle axe, say, or enhanced magical powers. IGE was one of the first outfits to trade in such digital wares. By skillfully playing the games themselves and hiring others to do so, the company’s founders accumulated currency within the virtual realms, then sold it to other players for real-world money. IGE, in short, made imaginary gold real.
On May 17, 2002, Spanish police raided the house in Marbella. Court records show that Collins-Rector was turned in to the European authorities by an unnamed person who had done computer work for Collins-Rector and downloaded documents that were later used as evidence against him. At the Marbella house, according to a report that Business Insider's John Gorenfeld obtained from Spanish authorities, police found at least 8,000 images of child pornography.
"I certainly never saw any evidence of child porn in that house," Brock Pierce told BuzzFeed. If his housemates had any, he said, “they certainly hid it from me. And I'm not sure I believe the police report at the end of the day.”
When Collins-Rector returned to America to stand trial in October 2003, his time in the Spanish prison system had apparently taken a toll on his mental health. His first hearing was postponed after he appeared dazed and unwell in court, claiming that he had not been given his medication. He then spent months in a federal psychiatric facility.
In the course of his long unraveling, Marc Collins-Rector pleaded guilty in a U.S. District Court to transporting minors across state lines for the purpose of sex, was allegedly tortured in a Spanish prison, and self-published the first chapter of a science fiction novel that follows the adventures of a teenage boy charged with leading humanity to its next evolutionary stage.
David Geffen was not accused of any misconduct in the suits nor named as a defendant. His attorney said that David Geffen on occasion was a guest at parties given by DEN investors but recalls no one at them who appeared to be under age.
The reason for their sudden departure, Brock Pierce would swear in deposition, was that Marc Collins-Rector believed there was someone who wanted to take his business and possibly even kill him: David Geffen, the billionaire Hollywood power broker.
Almost everyone involved now says that Marc Collins-Rector was mistaken and that David Geffen did not pay Alexander Burton to spy for him and was not behind the leaks. All those denials, however, came later. More than a decade after making those sworn statements, and after repeated inquiries from reporters, Brock Pierce radically changed much of what he had said under oath.
Brock Pierce and Chad Shackley were not ever charged criminally. Chad Shackley has seemingly since disappeared from online searches, or at least ones I could find. Brock Pierce later became the chairman of the board for the Bitcoin Foundation in 2015, and in March of 2021, SRAX, inc, a financial technology company that unlocks data and insights for publicly traded companies, announced that Brock Pierce had joined the SRAX board of directors.
Since 2017, Citadel Investment Group, owned by Kenneth Griffin, has purchased at least 22,000 shares of SRAX stock. I unfortunately ran into a paywall when trying to dig further into this.
Brock Pierce was also invited by Jeffery Epstein to various events, first meeting him in 2011, 18 months after Jeffery Epstein had completed his slap-on-the-wrist solicitation sentence in Florida and registered as a sex offender.
But this isn't about Jeffery Epstein, it's about Kenneth Griffin and Steven Cohen, so I'm going to glaze over the Epstein ties and push forward. But first I must continue to go backwards in time, for one last story involving David Geffen.
Michael Ovitz, the former agent and manager who was once the most powerful and feared man in Hollywood, is now all but exiled from the industry. Michael Ovitz, whose Artists Management Group collapsed in 2001 and was sold for a bargain-basement $12 million to little-known music agent Jeff Kwatinetz, blames his business troubles on an enemies list that he says includes DreamWorks co founder David Geffen, Disney Chairman (and former Ovitz boss) Michael Eisner, rival talent manager Bernie Brillstein, Bryan Lourd, Kevin Huvane and Richard Lovett, partners at Creative Artists Agency (the talent agency that Ovitz used to run), Universal Studio president Ron Meyer (Ovitz’s former partner at CAA), Vivendi Universal Entertainment CEO Barry Diller, and New York Times Hollywood correspondent Bernard Weinraub. ”It was the goal of these people to eliminate me,” Ovitz once said in an interview. ”This business would have worked except for these five or six guys. They wanted to kill Michael Ovitz. If they could have taken my wife and kids, they would have.” Michael Ovitz routinely refers to these five or six guys as "the gay mafia."
In the late ’80s and early ’90s, when Michael Ovitz ran CAA, his specialty was the package deal, where he would force studios to put together movie deals where the stars, director, and writer of a film were all CAA clients. In those days, he regularly topped Hollywood power lists. But Ovitz, who had long wanted to run his own studio, took a job as Eisner’s No. 2 at Disney and was fired after a disastrous 14 months in 1996.
He invested in several other failed entertainment ventures, one of which was his company Artists Management Group, which produced several failed TV series (”Madigan Men,” ”The $treet”). Last minute capital infusions from Diller and AT&T failed to materialize, and Ovitz sold the business, costing him 200 million dollars.
”If I were to establish the foundation of the negativity, it all comes down to David Geffen and Bernie Weinraub,” Michael Ovitz says, blaming the Times reporter for giving the DreamWorks principal a media platform for his antipathy toward Michael Ovitz. ”David Geffen has always hated me. He got Ronnie Meyer to turn on me, and then Bryan Lourd and everyone else.” He says David Geffen persuaded Diller to back out of the 11th-hour deal to save AMG.
An alternate explanation for Michael Ovitz’s woes, one offered by Bernie Brillstein, is that Michael Ovitz shouldn’t have invested his own money in his high-overhead business. ”To finance a television business yourself is insane,” Bernie Brillstein said. ”We always had someone else pay."
Always had someone else pay. Now if that isn't the billionaire's motto, I don't know what is.
Now, here's the part where it all ties together. Michael Ovitz has stated that David Geffen is the head of "the gay mafia". This mafia supposedly has power and influence over, well, almost everything, especially when it comes to Hollywood. How does this tie into hedge funds shorting GameStop?
The U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of same-sex marriage was welcomed by a perhaps surprising group: a conservative hedge fund manager.
Steven Cohen of Point72 Asset Management is among the top prominent hedge fund managers who have worked and donated funds in recent years in support of gay marriage, even as he openly disapproved of President Barack Obama and continues to support Republicans, not Democrats.
Before I drop the final bomb that finally convinced me I was on to something, I'd like to take a second and state that, just like my apathy towards political parties, I also hold no personal judgement on sexual orientations. I hope after reading this, you will agree that whatever arbitrary differences that have been used to pit the non-billionaire classes against each other must no longer divide us. We're all being played by one big club, and we're not in it.
Remember how Steven Cohen had some Hollywood style controversies? Well now, Steven Cohen’s name is being thrust into the Hollywood limelight.
During September if 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic devastated the bank accounts of millions of people, Steven Cohen’s Connecticut-based venture fund, Point72 Ventures, quietly announced that it is helping to bankroll a new Los Angeles-based management and production firm, Range Media Partners. The company will be run by a cadre of agents from the big three agencies, CAA, WME and UTA, and aims to upend the representation business in Hollywood.
Steven Cohen, described as leading investor, will be joined by former New York Knicks Coach David Fizdale, former Microsoft CMO Mich Mathews-Spradlin, and Grubhub founder and CEO Matt Maloney, according to a statement from Range.
“The company is committed to providing equity to all founding staff, at every level, and recruiting and representing a diverse group of perspectives and background,” the statement said. “As a company deeply invested in the well-being of its employees, Range Media Partners will establish a broad-based ownership of the success of the company from day one.”
In a 20-page pitch deck to investors reviewed by The Times, the fledgling agency, initially dubbed Moxie Media, heralded itself as “the next revolution in media.”
Proclaiming further that the equity value in the major agencies is in “free fall,” the pitch went on to declare that “there has never been a better time to recruit high end representatives away from their current incumbent. We have never seen more high-end representatives ready to leave these institutions.”
Range Media, led by former CAA agent Peter Micelli, who most recently headed up strategy at production company Entertainment One, has already brought a dozen top names including CAA’s Dave Bugliari, Michael Cooper, WME’s Rich Cook and UTA’s Susie Fox, Chelsea McKinnies on board.
As unveiled in its prospectus, Range’s business model is to create companies around celebrities in the mold of Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine, whereby Range Media would own one-third, the celebrity another third, and a third-party investor raising $5 million to $7 million per star would take the remaining third.
The company also plans to generate revenue by offering in-house production services. As described in the pitch, “Unlocking the power of content creation to turn celebrities into curators. This will in turn create massive opportunities to drive direct to consumer businesses in a post Covid-19 world.”
Until now, Point72 has maintained four areas of focus: artificial intelligence, financial services, enterprise technology, and healthcare.
And now they are branching into entertainment. If you think the hedge fund controlled media is bad now, wait until every movie you watch, every song that you hear, and every video game that you play, is all pushing the same propaganda agenda for the billionaire class.
“Range is clearly trying to position itself as a one-stop shopping center where celebrities can have both management representation and financing for these expanded entities,” said Lindsay Conner, partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. “It reflects how big these agencies and management enterprises have become and also reflects the perception of private equity that there is value to be had beyond the classic commissions that agents and managers have been receiving for over a century.”
“Michael Ovitz was the best agent ever and even he failed,” another partner noted. If Michael Ovitz truly failed because of what he called the "gay mafia" running Hollywood, than it would make sense why Steven Cohen and Kenneth Griffin would be funneling cash to David Geffen for access to the Hollywood markets. It's also very possible that, in an Jeffery Epstein-esque like fashion, David Geffen has blackmail of Steven Cohen and Kenneth Griffin, and large art purchases are a possible way to pay the extortion that comes with that.
If you actually made it this far to the end, please for the love of my sanity poke as many holes in this conspiracy theory as possible.
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