Will the Real Aleksey Vayner Please Stand Up?
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!
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October 7th, 2006 at 11:32 am
That’s a juicer if I’ve ever seen one.
October 7th, 2006 at 10:11 pm
http://www.vaynercapital.com/portfolio.html
check out his website, vaynercapital.com
It now auto-forwards you to ebay.com, but you can pull up cached versions of the site….
HILARIOUS. He has been involved in investment banking for 10 years? Um, okay, so he started when he was 12?!
October 7th, 2006 at 10:15 pm
look at cached versions of http://www.vaynercapital.com
”
Aleksey Vayner, Founder & Chief Investment Officer. Aleksey Vayner
Mr. Vayner has 10 years of experience in financial markets. He began his career as a market analyst, then moved into developing trading systems. He tested technical analysis systems and worked as a market maker for several NASDAQ securities through Barkley Trading Corp. (Etrade is its parent company). He then moved into private investment consulting, advising clients on pioneering portfolio structures with an emphasis on sound risk management systems. After working with a CIO of at a $4 billion dollar investment fund in Manhattan, Aleksey Vayner restructured his investment firm, currently Vayner Capital Management LLC.
Mr. Vayner is an author of Womens Silent Tears (available from the published at http://www.lulu.com/alekseyvayner), a unique gender-focused perspective on the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.
Mr. Vayner was educated at Yale University. While at Yale he immersed himself in the curriculum of the Yale School of Management. In addition he competed professionally in several sports, and studied the psychology of personal development, and intelligence.
Mr. Vayner is the Founder and CEO of Youth Empowerment Strategies (www.EmpowerAChild.org), a non-profit dedicated to providing disadvantaged children with motivation, direction, and core skills for the path to success. He is also an advisory member on several boards, as well as a member of numerous associations. He is an active member of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals.”
October 8th, 2006 at 6:51 pm
If you look at that book, you will see that every section is plagarized from different websites. Also vayner capital is plagarized from Denver Investments, a legitimate site.
October 9th, 2006 at 10:17 am
Aleksey fever hits the newspaper:
http://wallstfolly.typepad.com/wallstfolly/2006/10/aleksey_vayner__1.html
October 9th, 2006 at 1:23 pm
If you look closely at the video where he allegedly breaks the 6 bricks, you will see the bricks are already pre-scored. This is a common studio effect – he could have done it with 8 or 10 bricks, too. My five year old could have done it. The bricks were broken, and then delicately held together with a weak glue. This guy needs a psychologist to deal with some issues.
October 9th, 2006 at 1:41 pm
Bizarre.
Maybe it’s just my imagination, but if you look at the bricks closely enough, the pre-scoring gets fuzzy and blurry, almost as if someone later tried to edit the lines out.
I’m almost starting to feel sorry for the guy.
October 9th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
Today In Aleksey Vayner: He’s Very Popular!
The Aleksey Vayner story continued to erupt today, splattering its hot flow all over the internets and even onto a real, inky fingers newspaper. Here’s a quick rundown of all the latest news on Aleksey Vayner. • Under the name…
October 9th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
I immediately made a facebook scan. His profile is limited, but his photo is priceless, ahem – French Cut Bikini briefs.
October 9th, 2006 at 4:14 pm
His spotters do a good job lifting that weight for him (the one on the right is a little too quick). There doesn’t seem to be enough bar flex either. What a joke.
October 9th, 2006 at 4:39 pm
Are we sure those modeling photos are really of _him_?
October 10th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
The model shots look kind of fake. The head looks like it was stitched onto the body. Can anyone confirm if he really has that muscle tone? For example, in the video he appears very slim in the “dance” routine. But with that kind of muscle, he should be much bigger. At least the bulges should be visible, but no dice.
October 10th, 2006 at 6:21 pm
He is a huge guy in person. pretty damn muscular. but I’ve also seen him undergo a lot of changes, like sometimes he’s WAY more muscular, other times he’s real lean. he told a friend of mine that he eats 400g of protein a day when training.
October 11th, 2006 at 3:43 am
I knew someone like this in my undergrad days, a pathological liar who ended up with no friends and a failed life. It was initially both annoying and sad to watch him, and looking back, I almost felt sorry for the guy. But ultimately, if it’s not due to some mental illness, I would have no sympathy for anyone who conducts their life in this manner. Nearly everyone else is honestly struggling with life, with success and failure, and learning the real lessons the hard way. Perhaps the events around his public electronic humiliation will provide him with a good dose of reality. The other sad part is he’s probably a fairly intelligent person, so it’s painful to see him head down a path of self-destruction that will likely waste most of his young adult life. If he has any real friends left, maybe they can give him a clue. My hope is that he’ll figure this out by himself and turn his life around.
October 11th, 2006 at 8:30 am
A lot of students can be cocky when writing their CV but this is really shameful. Some of the stuff are categorical lies! I don’t feel pity for him; I feel disgust. How the hell did he get into Yale? As said above, he has some serious issues to resolve, including some mixed superiority/inferiority complex. Delusional. He can’t be all there.
October 15th, 2006 at 7:03 pm
aleksey Vayner
175 park street #3A
New Haven, Connecticut 06511
+1.203.434.7513
aleksey.vayner@gmail.com
info provided from public domain who is
October 15th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
After watching this video it has now dawned on me that some people do deserve to be on Jerry Springer. I compete in weight lifting professionally & I would officially like to call out/challenge Mr. Vayner to a bench press competition.
October 17th, 2006 at 3:11 pm
If he actually consumed 400 g of protein a day he would be in acute renal failure. Perhaps a metabolic imbalance explains his delusions? Ha. More likely this guy needs a psychiatrist, not a dietician.
January 30th, 2009 at 9:28 am
Consuming 400gms protein daily, Unbelievable. its not good for health.
it leads to negative effects.
Glenn
January 31st, 2009 at 9:21 am
Whatever. This guy just exemplifies the kind of people you find at Yale.
Kelly