Bernard "Bernie" Cornfeld (17 August 1927 – 27 February 1995) 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 (IOS).

Early life

Bernard Cornfeld was born in Istanbul, in Turkey. His father was a Romanian- Jewish actor; his mother was from a Russian-Jewish family. They moved to the United States when Bernard was four years old – his father dying two years later. The young Brooklyn-raised Cornfeld worked after school each day in fruit stores and as a delivery boy. He 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 Coney Island is a peninsular neighborhood and entertainment area in the southwestern section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, Manhattan Beach to its east, L ...

funfair. He graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School and

Brooklyn College Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls about 15,000 undergraduate and 2,800 graduate students on a 35-acre campus. Being New York City's first publ ...

.Henriques, Diana B. (2 March 1995)
"Bernard Cornfeld, 67, Dies; Led Flamboyant Mutual Fund"
'' The New York Times''. He initially worked as a social worker, but then switched to selling mutual funds for an investment house. In 1955, he left New York City for Paris and started his own company selling mutual funds, using his savings of a mere few hundred dollars. The company was named Investors Overseas Services (IOS). By selling the mutual funds mostly to American servicemen in Europe, Cornfeld was able to avoid both American and European tax regulations.

Investors Overseas Services

In the 1960s, Cornfeld formed his own mutual fund sales company, Investors Overseas Services (IOS), with principal offices in Geneva, Switzerland, although it was incorporated in Panama. He also established mutual funds in various jurisdictions, as noted below. Although the executive headquarters were in Geneva, the main operational offices of IOS were in Ferney-Voltaire, France, across the French border from Geneva. During this period, Diane von Furstenberg worked for Cornfeld as a receptionist. 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. The IOS system collapsed in 1970. Cornfeld was arrested in Switzerland in 1973 and sentenced to 11 months in preventive prison; however, he was ultimately acquitted in 1979. Having kept part of his earnings, he was able to maintain a luxurious (albeit less ostentatious) lifestyle until he died in 1995.

Personal life

Following his acquittal, Cornfeld settled in

Beverly Hills, California Beverly Hills is a city located in Los Angeles County, California. A notable and historic suburb of Greater Los Angeles, it is in a wealthy area immediately southwest of the Hollywood Hills, approximately northwest of downtown Los Angeles. B ...

, where he ingratiated himself to film industry circles. For a period of time until 1992, he lived in the

Grayhall Grayhall is a historic mansion in Beverly Hills, California, U.S. History The house was built as a hunting lodge for Harry D. Lombard in 1909. The second owner, Silsby Spalding, added a ballroom to the house in 1919; Silsby went on to serve as th ...

mansion, built in 1909 and at one time leased by Douglas Fairbanks.Marc Wanamaker, ''Early Beverly Hills'', Arcadia Publishing, 2005, p. 4

/ref> Cornfeld numbered among his friends

Elizabeth Taylor Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was a British-American actress. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. ...

, Michelle Phillips, Warren Beatty,

Laurence Harvey Laurence Harvey (born Zvi Mosheh Skikne; 1 October 192825 November 1973) was a Lithuanian-born British actor and film director. He was born to Lithuanian Jewish parents and emigrated to South Africa at an early age, before later settling in th ...

, Victor Lownes,

Hugh Hefner Hugh Marston Hefner (April 9, 1926 – September 27, 2017) was an American magazine publisher. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of ''Playboy'' magazine, a publication with revealing photographs and articles which provoked charges of obsc ...

, Richard Harris,

Al Capp Alfred Gerald Caplin (September 28, 1909 – November 5, 1979), better known as Al Capp, was an American cartoonist and humorist best known for the satirical comic strip ''Li'l Abner'', which he created in 1934 and continued writing and (wi ...

, Tony Curtis, Howard Sackler,

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and

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. Grayhall mansion doubled as the home of rock star John Norman Howard ( Kris Kristofferson) in the 1976 version of '' A Star Is Born'' starring Barbra Streisand. At the age of 60, Cornfeld had an affair with the then 19-year-old Heidi Fleiss.

Final years

By the 1990s, Cornfeld had developed an obsession for health foods and vitamins, renounced red meat and seldom drank alcohol. In his last years he was a chairman of a land development firm in Arizona and also owned a real estate company in Los Angeles. Bernard Cornfeld suffered a stroke and died of MRSA on 27 February 1995 in London, England.

References

Sources

*''

The Bernie Cornfeld Story ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...

'' by

Bert Cantor Bert or BERT may refer to: Persons, characters, or animals known as Bert *Bert (name), commonly an abbreviated forename and sometimes a surname *Bert, a character in the poem "Bert the Wombat" by The Wiggles; from their 1992 album Here Comes a Son ...

, (Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1970). * With title quoting Cornfeld's celebrated pitch – '' Do You Sincerely Want To Be Rich?'' by

Charles Raw Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was "f ...

with Godfrey Hodgson and

Bruce Page The English language name Bruce arrived in Scotland with the Normans, from the place name Brix, Manche in Normandy, France, meaning "the willowlands". Initially promulgated via the descendants of king Robert the Bruce (1274−1329), it has been a ...

(Originally published by André Deutsch in 1971, ; reprinted by the "

Library of Larceny A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

", 2005, )

External links

Article analyzing the workings of IOS and Cornfeld's career
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20090713040705/https://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/02/obituaries/bernard-cornfeld-67-dies-led-flamboyant-mutual-fund.html ''New York Times'' obituarybr>''Daily News'' obituary
'' Time''. (16 August 1993).
"The Predator's Fall"
''Time''. (19 June 1995).

''Time''. (29 October 1979). {{DEFAULTSORT:Cornfeld, Bernard 1927 births 1995 deaths Abraham Lincoln High School (Brooklyn) alumni American money managers American people of Romanian-Jewish descent American people of Russian-Jewish descent Brooklyn College alumni Columbia University School of Social Work alumni Turkish emigrants to the United States American confidence tricksters 20th-century American businesspeople