A man calling himself Aleksey Vayner gained instant celebrity today after his I-banking application video rocketed through the grapevine to every young professional in the universe.

But that’s only the tip of a huge and hilarious iceberg. Turns out Aleksey is somewhat infamous among Yalies as the “Crazy Prefrosh” profiled in 2002 by Yale’s Rumpus tabloid. If you thought Vayner’s credibility was shaky after seeing the video, wait til you read the profile. It is devastating. For starters, his name back then was Aleksey Garber. He claimed to have spent much of his childhood in a Tibetan monestary in post-Soviet Uzbekistan before moving to the United States, where he was employed by both the Mafia and the CIA. He was also a tennis instructor whose students include Harrison Ford and Sarah Michelle Gellar. And oh yeah: he met the Dalai Lama along the way and is the second greatest martial arts fighter in the world.

Other tidbits we’ve culled from Yalies: He failed out second term of freshman year (which explains why he’s now class of ’07). He claims to have recently represented himself in a court case in the Supreme Court of Westchester County. He also says the author of the Rumpus piece was suspended for writing it — which we know to be categorically false. Then there’s this, from a female character witness:

This guy always creeped me out … gross gross gross. He claimed he knew how to practice all kinds of medicine, and he would work on my friend’s shoulder and I would get really upset because he’s NOT A DOCTOR. One time he gave her a “deep tissue massage” and she ended up with WELTS all over her back. He’s a pathological liar. Real creep.

Oh, and that picture above? Click it to see Aleksey’s old profile (since “banned”) at ModelMayhem.com, some kind of cultish social networking site for porn stars and fans of human growth hormone. 

We have so much more to post but we still have questions! Where does this guy come from? Did he change his name because of the Rumpus profile, or something else? How did he pay for the not-terrible-quality video? What’s the story with his self-published book?

We get an Andrew Cunanan-style shiver straight down our spine every time we watch the video. But the scariest part for real? You know some asshole at Goldman is gonna make him an offer just for causing such a stir.

UPDATE: Read more of IvyGate’s wall-to-wall coverage of Aleksey Vayner!