Bernard "Bernie" Cornfeld was a prominent businessman and international financier who sold investments in US mutual funds, and who was tried and acquitted for mismanagement of the Investors Overseas Services.
14 Facts About Bernard Cornfeld
1.
2.
Bernard Cornfeld's father was a Romanian-Jewish actor; his mother was from a Russian-Jewish family.
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The young Brooklyn-raised Bernard Cornfeld worked after school each day in fruit stores and as a delivery boy.
4.
Bernard Cornfeld had a stammer as well as a natural gift for selling and when a schoolfriend's father died, the two of them used the US$3,000 insurance money to purchase and run an age and weight guessing stand at the Coney Island funfair.
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Bernard Cornfeld graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School and Brooklyn College.
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Bernard Cornfeld initially worked as a social worker, but then switched to selling mutual funds for an investment house.
7.
Bernard Cornfeld decided that mutual funds should take their fees from the profits they made for their investors, not just a percentage of the money invested.
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Bernard Cornfeld was arrested in Switzerland in 1973 and sentenced to 11 months in preventive prison; however, he was ultimately acquitted in 1979.
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Bernard Cornfeld numbered among his friends Elizabeth Taylor, Michelle Phillips, Warren Beatty, Laurence Harvey, Victor Lownes, Hugh Hefner, Richard Harris, Al Capp, Tony Curtis, Howard Sackler, John Heyman and Simon Reuben.
10.
In 1972, Bernard Cornfeld bankrolled the Paradise Ballroom, partnering with New York showman Jerry Brandt.
11.
The club, an attempt by Brandt to re-create his New York disco, The Electric Circus in Los Angeles was a failure, and Bernard Cornfeld closed the business.
12.
At the age of 60, Bernard Cornfeld had an affair with the then 19-year-old Heidi Fleiss.
13.
Bernard Cornfeld suffered a stroke and died of MRSA on 27 February 1995 in London, England.
14.
Bernard Cornfeld was tended to by his 17 year old daughter, Jessica.