Aleksey Vayner Storyline Almost as Immortal as Aleksey Vayner (UPDATE)

by | October 15, 2006 at 7:45 pm

Aleksey Vayner Storyline Almost as Immortal as Aleksey Vayner (UPDATE)Listen, we tried to put this dog to sleep on Friday, we really did, but it just keeps waking up. If you’re still following Alekseyfest 2006, you might get a kick out of these “developments.” (If you’re new to all this, you’ll have to start at the beginning.) We don’t blame anyone who wants to tap out at this point. Anyway, here’s the latest on our meal ticket:

Even Aleksey Vayner’s lawyers are denying any connection to Aleksey Vayner. The Wall Street Journal phoned Vayner’s legal team and found this:

“After initially saying in an interview that he was exploring privacy lawsuits, Mr. Vayner asked that further requests go through his Fort Lee, N.J., attorney. The lawyer said, via her assistant, that she doesn’t represent Mr. Vayner.”

We took the Journal‘s cue and called up Ron Bar-Nadav, the guy Vayner cc’ed on his “cease and disist” letter. We asked him if he represented Vayner: “No, sorry.” Click.

Aleksey’s partner from the ballroom dance segment of the video wrote us to “clear my name.” “I’m just a bystander in this whole mess,” Nansi says, noting that Aleksey is not her regular dancing partner, that she had no other role in creating the video, and that she’s been getting a lot of pervy attention from Internet weirdos. “And my outfit for the video is what I actually wear at dance competitions,” she adds, “so please do not make a big deal out of that since it is nothing out of the extraordinary in the ballroom world.” Noted! (As for Aleksey’s Under Armour, there’s really no excuse.) Nansi’s full e-mail is after the jump.

Aleksey may — may — have bought the ski footage in his video off Craigslist. A tipster wrote us last night with what could be an amazing document — if it’s real. He claims to have a copy of a Craigslist post from August; the file looks real, but then again, Craigslist pages might be the most easily faked on the Internet, and there’s a rash of fake Aleksey stuff floating around. Plus, who saves Craigslist pages? Judge for yourself:

Ski Racing Video Needed
Reply to: aleksey.vayner@gmail.com
Date: 2006-08-01, 4:48PM EDT

I want to purchase high resolution, quality racing/freestyle skiing to add to a school project on skiing. Length not important since i dont need more than 10-15 seconds max. Just needs to be sharp, fast, and impressive. Email asap if you got something

no — it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Compensation: negotiable

188956917

Any nerds out there who could bunk or debunk this? Get in touch.

UPDATE: Oh, and he made The New Yorker, too.

Nansi’s email: 

From: [redacted]
To: IvyGate@gmail.com
Date: Oct 15, 2006 2:47 AM
Subject: Aleksey Vayner’s Dance Partner on Video

Hello,

This is a friendly message from the girl dancing with Aleksey Vayner in his video “Impossible is Nothing.”  Lately, I’ve been receiving a lot of emails from inquisitive strangers who have seen me on his video and have asked me more details on Aleksey, the video, and myself.  I can’t answer any questions on Aleksey or the accusations, since I don’t think it is my position to do so, and for all of you who wanted to know more through me, I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you.  However, I do wish to set the record straight on my role in the video.
 
Aleksey and I danced together for his video, but we are not regular dancing partners.  I had no role on the conception, production, filming, or editing of the reel, and I was only present during the dance sequence.  It was of my understanding that the dance piece was to be used for a personal documentary on himself, his achievements, and his interests, so I accepted to help him as his partner.  I don’t know whether those serves were 140 mph or how he got to break the bricks that way, so my guess is just as good as yours.  However, he did tell me he won a bench pressing competition lifting 495 pounds (with shirt) this summer, and participated in martial arts competitions.

 
Of course, Aleksey and I had chatted during the practice sessions and the filming of the dance sequence, but he did not confide his plans to me, so I have no relevant information on his charity, business, book, or resume.  I do not know the truth behind his claims, and everything that I’ve learned about this controversy, I’ve read it through blogs following the story.  Hence, as a bystander, I wish to be disassociated from the accusations against him, whether justified or unjustified.
Again, I appreciate the nice comments people have sent me (in spite of the bizarre circumstances, I guess), but I’d rather stay clear from this mess.

 
Thank you,
 

Nansi

P.S. – And my outfit for the video is what I actually wear at dance competitions, so please do not make a big deal out of that since it is nothing out of the extraordinary in the ballroom world.

 
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  • Anonymous

    Check out this article. Looks like his sister that was pictured before, same region, etc. Was CNN lied to as well?

  • Anonymous

    Check out this article. Looks like his sister that was pictured before, same region, etc. Was CNN lied to as well?

  • Anonymous
  • Anonymous
  • KatK

    The phrasing of Nansi’s letter is off kilter to me. Surely I am not the only one who noticed her speech habits are similar to Vayner’s? This: “so I accepted to help him as his partner” is not the way a native speaker of Americanized English would phrase that concept. They’d say: “so I agreed to help him as his partner.” My Italian pen pal made similar syntax phrasings. What is confirmed knowledge of Nansi? Is she an American, born into a household of native speakers? You say she wrote in to you? Are you certain it was truly her, or are you taking the letter at face value? If it really did come from her, than I offer my apologies, however it’s just a bit “too” odd. Especially the whole tone of the letter.

    Also, am I the only one who thinks the interviewer’s voice is Vayner, attempting to disguise his voice and sound high class? To anyone who hires this fellow, after knowing how he lies and fabricates: You will earn every moment of misery his outrageous cannards will bring you! I know I won’t be purchasing any product that I know he helped make advertisements for. I’d expect that instead of chocolate I’d get a torn, used, dog feces encrusted sneaker a size too big for me instead of the product advertised.

  • KatK

    The phrasing of Nansi’s letter is off kilter to me. Surely I am not the only one who noticed her speech habits are similar to Vayner’s? This: “so I accepted to help him as his partner” is not the way a native speaker of Americanized English would phrase that concept. They’d say: “so I agreed to help him as his partner.” My Italian pen pal made similar syntax phrasings. What is confirmed knowledge of Nansi? Is she an American, born into a household of native speakers? You say she wrote in to you? Are you certain it was truly her, or are you taking the letter at face value? If it really did come from her, than I offer my apologies, however it’s just a bit “too” odd. Especially the whole tone of the letter.

    Also, am I the only one who thinks the interviewer’s voice is Vayner, attempting to disguise his voice and sound high class? To anyone who hires this fellow, after knowing how he lies and fabricates: You will earn every moment of misery his outrageous cannards will bring you! I know I won’t be purchasing any product that I know he helped make advertisements for. I’d expect that instead of chocolate I’d get a torn, used, dog feces encrusted sneaker a size too big for me instead of the product advertised.

  • Chocolate Santa

    The Talented Mr. Ripley +

    Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan = Aleksey Vayner

  • Chocolate Santa

    The Talented Mr. Ripley +

    Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan = Aleksey Vayner

  • Gawker

    Another douchebag nominee:
    Harvard student Aaron Greenspan. He’s got the vanity of Vayner but without the CIA & mafia connections. The personal website says it all: http://www.aarongreenspan.com/

    - Open letter to Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame in order to promote his new website http://www.aarongreenspan.com/letter/index.html

    - “Authoritas” book that he wrote about his own admission to Harvard http://www.aarongreenspan.com/authoritas.html

    - A new project he’s promoting with a laughable timeline of events http://www.commonroom.com/index.html?timeline=1

    - A ridiculous video for his exploits http://www.commonroom.com/trailer2.html

    - A charity that claims to be a 501(c)3 but isn’t registered with the IRS, http://www.thinkcomputer.org/

    - A corporate website that lists a residential apartment (“suite” subsituted for apartment) as their corporate headquarters http://www.thinkcomputer.com/corporate/history/index.html

  • Anon

    Surely I am not the only one who noticed her speech habits are similar to Vayner’s? This: “so I accepted to help him as his partner” is not the way a native speaker of Americanized English would phrase that concept. They’d say: “so I agreed to help him as his partner.” My Italian pen pal made similar syntax phrasings.

    So you’re saying that your Italian pen pal is Aleksey Vayner?

  • Anon

    Surely I am not the only one who noticed her speech habits are similar to Vayner’s? This: “so I accepted to help him as his partner” is not the way a native speaker of Americanized English would phrase that concept. They’d say: “so I agreed to help him as his partner.” My Italian pen pal made similar syntax phrasings.

    So you’re saying that your Italian pen pal is Aleksey Vayner?

  • KatK

    No, I am saying that such a speech habit is not common for people whose first language was English. Other languages have a different sentence structure, and it takes a while to learn to put sentences together “correctly” in English if your first language was not English. For example, in Spanish they put the noun before the adjective: “gato blanco” (cat white) instead of “blanco gato”. I am saying that the phrasing is a giveaway that the person who composed the letter probably isn’t fully used to English sentence structures yet. It is possible, that they meant to say “so I accepted the propostion to help him as his partner”, but I doubt it.

  • KatK

    No, I am saying that such a speech habit is not common for people whose first language was English. Other languages have a different sentence structure, and it takes a while to learn to put sentences together “correctly” in English if your first language was not English. For example, in Spanish they put the noun before the adjective: “gato blanco” (cat white) instead of “blanco gato”. I am saying that the phrasing is a giveaway that the person who composed the letter probably isn’t fully used to English sentence structures yet. It is possible, that they meant to say “so I accepted the propostion to help him as his partner”, but I doubt it.

  • rada

    i gotta hand it to aleksey, he got people to talk about him. my friend just forwarded the new york times article to me. i did not read everything as this guy strikes me as a fraud. but whether it’s the truth or hoax, only he knows it.

  • rada

    i gotta hand it to aleksey, he got people to talk about him. my friend just forwarded the new york times article to me. i did not read everything as this guy strikes me as a fraud. but whether it’s the truth or hoax, only he knows it.

  • nyugirl

    In response to KatK “shrewed grammatical observation”, I am a friend of Nansi’s and English is not her first language (although she does speak it fluently). I don’t want to devulge anymore about her personal life but wanted to vouch for her that everything she said in the letter is true (and is really from her). She is really just a bystander and people need to stop being ridiculously suspicious and question her when we all know who the real psycho is.

  • nyugirl

    In response to KatK “shrewed grammatical observation”, I am a friend of Nansi’s and English is not her first language (although she does speak it fluently). I don’t want to devulge anymore about her personal life but wanted to vouch for her that everything she said in the letter is true (and is really from her). She is really just a bystander and people need to stop being ridiculously suspicious and question her when we all know who the real psycho is.

  • Rationalist

    I feel that only Sam above made the correct analysis. It is foolish to believe ALL Aleksey’s claims are wrong- such people have never seen any acheivers. They will unable to recognise even if they happened to see some genius.

    The following is my theory on Aleksey’s mind.

    He is highly focussed on what he pursue so he can not, obviously, be expert in other human endeveours such as intellect. For him all fecilities such as internet, law etc are just a mean to strive further in what he dreams. Or he wanted to use everything else for his own goal. And for one has to stay focussed one has to think that they are great and they are indeed when they compare with available standards. In this particular case Aleksey might won all tennis matches he played so he naturally believe that he could beat any one. He might come across that Samprass was considered as great and since he is not aware of him, nor his former friends, he might boasted/believe that he had/can beaten/beat Sampras. He has gradually became overconfidant (and as a matter of fact, confidence comes from their surroundings, he might has always been ahead of his surrounding so far- remember he is too young to see/learn many things) and in his point of view others are not appreciating his ability so he thought to venture out with a bang. It was collapsed because of poeple like those who are in IvyGate simply because his intellect is necesserly lower than these bloggers whose acheivents in sports in turn are much inferior. As a matter of fact all of us ventured out like this at our growing stage and got miserably failed and then we realised that what the true world- the only difference is that we were faced a similar fate at much early age and in much smaller magnitude.
    A digression here. Please note that the company where our hero applied for a job are seriously inquiring about the leakage of his biodata. For me (and for all wise/elder men) I expect that many companies receive similar resumes of exaggerated acheivements (in an absolute scale) and since they are wise and morally superior (unlike many young bloggers, who blog about what they preceive instead of what is correct. They can immedeatly understand the loop hole in their belief if they remember that many of their beliefs while they were 10 years younger, are turned out to be wrong. Similarly after 10 years on the line they get more wisdom and they understand that the truth was in between) they just ignore it since it is apparent that the applicant does not have much worldly experience although he has the potential to be great and some good people even make them great by giving proper training. Every elders/wise know the falliblity of youngesters that is why they never listen younger peoples….

    Believe it or not people like our present hero has only a chance to became truely great ( in the accepted understanding of that word). Some fails some succeds. For ex. a man called jesus thought that he was a Son of God…….

  • Rationalist

    I feel that only Sam above made the correct analysis. It is foolish to believe ALL Aleksey’s claims are wrong- such people have never seen any acheivers. They will unable to recognise even if they happened to see some genius.

    The following is my theory on Aleksey’s mind.

    He is highly focussed on what he pursue so he can not, obviously, be expert in other human endeveours such as intellect. For him all fecilities such as internet, law etc are just a mean to strive further in what he dreams. Or he wanted to use everything else for his own goal. And for one has to stay focussed one has to think that they are great and they are indeed when they compare with available standards. In this particular case Aleksey might won all tennis matches he played so he naturally believe that he could beat any one. He might come across that Samprass was considered as great and since he is not aware of him, nor his former friends, he might boasted/believe that he had/can beaten/beat Sampras. He has gradually became overconfidant (and as a matter of fact, confidence comes from their surroundings, he might has always been ahead of his surrounding so far- remember he is too young to see/learn many things) and in his point of view others are not appreciating his ability so he thought to venture out with a bang. It was collapsed because of poeple like those who are in IvyGate simply because his intellect is necesserly lower than these bloggers whose acheivents in sports in turn are much inferior. As a matter of fact all of us ventured out like this at our growing stage and got miserably failed and then we realised that what the true world- the only difference is that we were faced a similar fate at much early age and in much smaller magnitude.
    A digression here. Please note that the company where our hero applied for a job are seriously inquiring about the leakage of his biodata. For me (and for all wise/elder men) I expect that many companies receive similar resumes of exaggerated acheivements (in an absolute scale) and since they are wise and morally superior (unlike many young bloggers, who blog about what they preceive instead of what is correct. They can immedeatly understand the loop hole in their belief if they remember that many of their beliefs while they were 10 years younger, are turned out to be wrong. Similarly after 10 years on the line they get more wisdom and they understand that the truth was in between) they just ignore it since it is apparent that the applicant does not have much worldly experience although he has the potential to be great and some good people even make them great by giving proper training. Every elders/wise know the falliblity of youngesters that is why they never listen younger peoples….

    Believe it or not people like our present hero has only a chance to became truely great ( in the accepted understanding of that word). Some fails some succeds. For ex. a man called jesus thought that he was a Son of God…….

  • Francesco

    I wonder what happened to Ms. Sahibdeen at UBS. Forwarding private information, albeit humorous information, is not ethical if you are a recruiter and the information was sent to you for recruiting purposes.

  • Francesco

    I wonder what happened to Ms. Sahibdeen at UBS. Forwarding private information, albeit humorous information, is not ethical if you are a recruiter and the information was sent to you for recruiting purposes.

  • Truth

    The man named Jesus IS the son of God. You don’t have to believe it now, everyone will know it one day.

  • Truth

    The man named Jesus IS the son of God. You don’t have to believe it now, everyone will know it one day.

  • Interesting

    Isn’t it interesting how every one of these threads has an anonymous person posting comments about how the recruiter ought to be sued for slander/invasion of privacy/unprofessional conduct? Methinks Alex baby might be hanging around these boards. Anyone as self-absorbed as he is would be unable to avoid reading all the posts. Narcissistic Personality Disorder perhaps?

  • Interesting

    Isn’t it interesting how every one of these threads has an anonymous person posting comments about how the recruiter ought to be sued for slander/invasion of privacy/unprofessional conduct? Methinks Alex baby might be hanging around these boards. Anyone as self-absorbed as he is would be unable to avoid reading all the posts. Narcissistic Personality Disorder perhaps?

  • Interesting

    Isn’t it interesting how every one of these threads has an anonymous person posting comments about how the recruiter ought to be sued for slander/invasion of privacy/unprofessional conduct? Methinks Alex baby might be hanging around these boards. Anyone as self-absorbed as he is would be unable to avoid reading all the posts. Narcissistic Personality Disorder perhaps?

  • Interesting

    Isn’t it interesting how every one of these threads has an anonymous person posting comments about how the recruiter ought to be sued for slander/invasion of privacy/unprofessional conduct? Methinks Alex baby might be hanging around these boards. Anyone as self-absorbed as he is would be unable to avoid reading all the posts. Narcissistic Personality Disorder perhaps?

  • anonymous

    just curious. if i know someone who lied on his resume and application to the yale school of management, what is the right thing to do? he graduated, and went on to another graduate program. He did the work at Yale’s SOM, and was successful, but played up “management’ aspects of working in his parents family owned restaurant (busboy, night manager, etc), as his ‘owning and running’ a string of such restaurants vs. just helping his parents out at ONE local restaurant.

  • anonymous

    just curious. if i know someone who lied on his resume and application to the yale school of management, what is the right thing to do? he graduated, and went on to another graduate program. He did the work at Yale’s SOM, and was successful, but played up “management’ aspects of working in his parents family owned restaurant (busboy, night manager, etc), as his ‘owning and running’ a string of such restaurants vs. just helping his parents out at ONE local restaurant.

  • pup

    It is endemic to all MBA programs. I recall a story where one Harvard B-School grad asked his classmate about his experiences as a Plant Manager at such a tender young age. The classmate responded that he merely watered the office plants.

    There is a certain amount of exaggeration one should expect reading admissions statements. Normally MBA programs attempt to corroborate the BS by reading previous employer recommendation letters. In the case of a family business, it would be a cake walk to fake accomplishment. I’m sure he probably even used a family member with a different last name, just to make it appear more legit.

    The problem with Vayner is that he exceeds the usual level of crap. Consider your SOM classmate “gamed” the system by concealing his real role behind a family member. If Vayner was clever and possessed a modicum of common sense, he would have used his sister’s real-estate firm as a springboard. Unfortunately (for him), he’s too crazy to play down his level of exaggeration, which drove him to state that he was a C-level officer of both a charity and investment management firm… and hey, that was just his day job!

  • pup

    It is endemic to all MBA programs. I recall a story where one Harvard B-School grad asked his classmate about his experiences as a Plant Manager at such a tender young age. The classmate responded that he merely watered the office plants.

    There is a certain amount of exaggeration one should expect reading admissions statements. Normally MBA programs attempt to corroborate the BS by reading previous employer recommendation letters. In the case of a family business, it would be a cake walk to fake accomplishment. I’m sure he probably even used a family member with a different last name, just to make it appear more legit.

    The problem with Vayner is that he exceeds the usual level of crap. Consider your SOM classmate “gamed” the system by concealing his real role behind a family member. If Vayner was clever and possessed a modicum of common sense, he would have used his sister’s real-estate firm as a springboard. Unfortunately (for him), he’s too crazy to play down his level of exaggeration, which drove him to state that he was a C-level officer of both a charity and investment management firm… and hey, that was just his day job!

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