Breaking our promise already, sorta. We don’t want to cover this, but we can’t ignore it. Welcome to the party, NYT; headline says it all.

The Resume Mocked ‘Round the World [The New York Times]

UPDATE 3:19 p.m. Oct. 21: Oh look, Michael J. de la Merced’s story made it into the Times print edition. But with the guts cut out — what little there were in the first place, anyway. This part makes us want to ram an airplane into an apartment building:

The Internet scrutiny also raised questions about some of Mr. Vayner’s claims in his résumé, including assertions that he ran his own charity and investment firm.

There have also been questions over whether he copied sections of a self-published book, “Women’s Silent Tears: A Unique Gendered Perspective on the Holocaust,” from Web sites.

Mr. Vayner, 23, contends that both the charity and investment firm are legitimate. And the accusations about his book, he said, were based on an earlier draft that has since been changed.

Oh! Well then! Mr. Vayner contends, does he? Then everything must be A-okay. You keep doing that tough reporting, Michael J. de la Merced.

It’s time to declare a moratorium on all things Aleksey Vayner. This horse is not only beaten to death — it’s been shipped off to the glue factory, buried out in the yard, and decomposed into its component minerals.

Yet here we are.

When the behemoth Today Show limps into the story, getting pretty much every fact wrong (“Someone at one of the Wall Street firms is believed to have sent the video to YouTube” — no, you hacks, we did!), and not even mentioning the fraud angle, we feel obligated to do one. last. post. And to make it a doozy.

We’ve obtained (best word in journalism, right there) the first 11 pages of Women’s Silent Tears, Vayner’s self-published book about women in the Holocaust. The book’s host, Lulu.com, took it down after reading our initial report that segments of the work were plagiarized. Well, now that Vayner’s work is freely available for download (cease and desist this, Alex), you can Google it for yourself, or follow our handy guide below.

But first, we just have to share this bit from his wholly original “Acknowledgements” section:

[A]nonymous gratitude goes to the generals and intelligence officers who provided the hands-on skills and knowledge that expanded my horizons and changed my perspective on the world forever.

Now for the more Kaavyaesque bits. From the preface:

Women’s voices have given rise to many powerful accounts of the Holocaust, and yet few researchers have analyzed these perspectives to learn what the horrifying events meant for women in particular. [Stolen from: Experience and Expression: Women, Nazis, and the Holocaust]

From the “Broad Overview of the Holocaust” section:

In ancient times, when there was a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, the priests of the Temple would offer animal sacrifices to God. Some sacrifices would provide the priests with meat for their own consumption, while others would be wholly consumed and only ashes would be left. The latter type of sacrifices was called, in Greek, holokauston, which means, “wholly burned.” In Hebrew, the word for this type of sacrifice was ‘olah.’ However, when the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as the state religion and translated the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament into Latin, they borrowed the term holokauston from Greek and rendered ‘olah’ as holocaustum. The English term derives from the Latin word. [Stolen from: The Holocaust History Project]

Then there’s this bit from his section on euthanasia, which appears to be lifted in full.

The term euthanasia (literally, “good death”) usually refers to the inducement of a painless death for a chronically or terminally ill individual. In Nazi usage, however, “euthanasia” was a euphemistic term for a clandestine program which targeted for systematic killing institutionalized mentally and physically disabled patients, without the knowledge or consent of themselves or their families. [Stolen from: Holocaust Encyclopedia]

There. We’re done. Forever. We’ll update if the guy gets expelled or charged, but that’s it. We’re not even going to tell you about how we got in contact with the guys who made the ski video he bought.

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Aleksey Vayner is dead! Long live Aleksey Vayner!

There is officially nothing new to report on Aleksey but we bring you this anyway, because it delights us. Some Italian newspaper called Corriere Della Sera is on the case, and thanks to Google Translate, we can say with authority that no better summary of the situation has ever been written. Guilt of the crisis, indeed.

Graduated to Yale it tries job with a videoclip
Aleksey Vayner has realized a video on own intelligence and preroom. It has not found job but in compensation it has become famous
   
NEW YORK – Aleksey Vayner, neolaureato ambitious of the prestigious university of Yale, is meeting series difficulty to find job to Wall street. And this although turns out to you drained to us absolutely extraordinary. Its candidacy has been rejected from the main merchant banks – Ubs, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse Group and Jp Morgan Chase – one after the other. Guilt of the crisis? More probably the guilt is of the stramapalato chosen way from the young person in order to introduce to the possible futures employers. Vayner has realized in fact amatoriale filmato of approximately six minuteren (? Guarda the video), and it sendes it to the companies like autopromozionale message, with to the curriculum. The news is brought back from the New daily paper York Post.

REFUSED DERISO AND – In the filmato one Veyner is looked at that wake with impeccable style, dances with a provoking girl, plays to tennis and raises in arena beyond 220 chili of weights. In foundation the voice of the aspirant banker who tells the own qualities, says to have consideration for the mediocre ones and does not explain as “its impeccable physicist reflects its mental acumen”. A video judged too much audacious and adulterated from the employers that have not saved to the boy little lusinghieri comments and derisioni, beyond to sbattergli the door in face. For all answer, the full of rocks Vayner has threatened to make cause for violation of the privacy the field revives human of Ubs, to which it had sent just the curriculum. The megaphone of the company, Kris Kagel, has made to know that Ubs is adhered rigidly to the laws for the treatment of the data of the numerous candidates. “If some violation were found, they would be taken however the just provisions” have concluded Kagel. But while the video of Vayner is ended in Net. With good peace of the privacy.

On Oct. 9, North Korea detonated a nuclear device. The same day, Aleksey Vayner blew up. Coincidence? Impossible is nothing.

Just for the record, we think this story has crested. Don’t get us wrong, our New Haven bureau will remain on 24-hour alert in case Alex gets kicked out of school — as the president of Charity Navigator is demanding — and we will forevermore bask in the glow of having helped to create a staggering cultural force. For example:

In other Vaynergate news:

• Aleksey goes international, landing on the pages of a London tabloid and our amusingly ad hominem comments section…
• … and American TV gets. even. stupider. MSNBC’s Donny Deutsch lauds Aleksey in a four-minute segment, calling him a “brilliant creative executer” and declaring “I’d hire him sight unseen.” To Donny, and whatever moron interviewed him: We have so much disdain for you. Can we make that font any more italic?
• Chuck Norris-inspired fan sites are sprouting everywhere, notably here (“When Sir Edmund Hillary got to the top of Everest, it said ‘Aleksey was here’ in yellow snow”) …
• … and people continue to make fake web pages in Aleksey’s name. Um, you counterfeiters get the irony here, don’t you?

From: DMCA Complaints <copyright_counternotice@youtube.com>
To: ivygate <ivygate@gmail.com>
Date: Oct 10, 2006 9:06 PM
Subject: Video Rejected: Copyright Infringement

Dear Member:

This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Aleksey Vayner claiming that this material is infringing:

IvyGate: Worst Resume Ever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjRZgmc3RyQ

[...]

Sincerely,
YouTube, Inc.

Oh, it’s on.

Anticipating a move like this, we had a conference call today with counsel from the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va., a truly wonderful organization that dispenses pro bono legal advice to college journalists (and, uh, us). We’re confident that we have a valid fair use claim to Aleksey’s video — but formally contesting YouTube’s action would just take too long. So here’s what we’re going to do.

We’ve posted the clip to Veoh, and just in case they remove it too, you can access it directly here, on our own servers.

We saw Aleksey’s first cease and “disist,” and we’re not scared. Mr. Vayner? Mr. ron706@aol.com, Esq.? Bring it, sirs.

UPDATE: Turns out that serving up the enormous video file blew the roof off our server. We’ll let Veoh host for now, and re-host it if they take it down.

Can someone please get this man a sitcom?

Clearly, Aleksey Vayner deserves it. In the four days since we (cough exclusively! cough) posted the video the Yale senior commissioned of himself and attached to some i-banking applications, dozens of people have shared their Aleksey stories with us. And more often than not, they’re stories he told them — which is why we don’t feel bad about all the attention we’re heaping on this fabulist. (Fake business, fake charity, fake book — sympathy kinda evaporates, don’t it?)

All day long, the tips kept getting better. We can only share a few here — but we suspect this spring will never run dry.

• The writing sample Aleksey attached to his i-bank applications appears to be at least partially plagiarized from this source (which, weirdly, he quotes earlier in the piece). Search on “hidden beta exposure” in both articles.
• A member of the Yale tennis team wrote in to dispute Aleksey’s claim that he competed on the Satellite tour: “I played for Yale tennis, and he tried to walk on the team. He got cut the second day. I had one conversation with him, and he claimed to have KILLED 24 people in the caves of Tibet.”

  (Other great comments: “I too played for Yale tennis, and Vayner/Garber claimed that he has trouble flying on planes because he has to register his hands as lethal weapons each time he goes to an airport.”  And: “The giveaway on the investment firm was that he said his firm specialized in “risk-aDverse” strategies. The other giveaway was that he’s fucking crazy.”)

• We decided to not be too scared of the cease and desist letter Aleksey emailed us, given that he copied and pasted it from the first Google hit for “cease and desist letter,” right down to the “very truly yours” signoff. Attorney Ron706@aol.com, Esq., really earned his fee there.
• At Yale, Aleksey has offered to treat sports injuries using various “Eastern” therapy methods, including massage and acupuncture. Before “treating” a “patient,” he sent them this letter. You simply have to read it in full. Somewhere in there he claims that his brother is “head of pediatrics at Columbian Presbyterian hospital in NYC.” A search on the Columbia Presbyterian Physician Network turns up no one with the last name “Garber” or “Vayner.” But our favorite part is this line: “I am not certified in any Western sense of the word, neither in Chinese medicine, Tui-Na, Shaolin trauma medicine, nor in acupuncture, all of which I practice extensively never-the-less.”
• And, um, not quite so humorously, the SEC and dean of Yale College have been notified of Aleksey’s transgressions.

God, what theater. You cannot make this shit up. Unless, y’know, you’re Aleksey.

Bonus: The Yale Daily News joins the fracas. Money line: “Among the claims [a dance teammate] said she has heard is one that Vayner is one of four people in the state of Connecticut qualified to handle nuclear waste.“

The Aleksey Vayner saga continues this week, and we’re happy to report: It just keeps getting better. A quick preview of this entry for the Adderall set:

1. Vayner’s fraudulent investment firm
2. Vayner’s fraudulent charity
3. Vayner’s fraudulent book about the Holocaust

Let’s start with his investment firm, Vayner Capital Management LLC. The site is pretty basic — unassuming layout, innocuous graphics, stock photos. But take a look at the text. On the “About Us” page (Google Cache, we love you!), Vayner Capital promises to marshal “expertise,” “agility” and “passion” to all its business dealings. Here’s a sample:

Our people bring a passionate intensity to the way we invest and service our clients. This is especially true in the realm of investment research, where our competitive edge lies in our drive to identify opportunities before they become widely known, to unearth information that others overlook, and to understand the companies in which we invest to the greatest degree possible.

Why does this matter? That paragraph is nearly identical to a section from the web site of Denver Investment Advisors, who also promise “experience,” “focus,” “passion,” and “agility.” Compare here. It’s not clear if Denver knows about the homage, but we’re sure their lawyers would be flattered.

Now let’s turn to Vayner’s charity, Youth Empowerment Strategies — not to be confused, of course with this Youth Empowerment Strategies. Why are there two? Well, we’re gonna break it down real simple: one is real, and the other isn’t.

Vayner’s site has a “Charity Navigator Four Star Charity” logo from Charity Navigator, an organization that ranks good charities and weeds out frauds. We called them this morning. “Oh, we’ve heard of them,” Leonie Giles, a program analyst there, said immediately. They asked Aleksey’s site (which lists a non-existant Manhattan address on its “Donate Another Way” page, btw) to take down the fake “Four Star” logo two months ago, and are considering legal action against them. Giles recommended we contact the freaking Connecticut attorney general.

Vayner lists on his resume his self-published book, Women’s Silent Tears, which he calls a “gendered look at the Holocaust.” You can’t read the whole book online, but you can preview the first few pages. We examined a section on euthanasia, and guess what. The entire passage is lifted from the online Holocaust Encyclopedia. Scan Vayner’s book for yourself here. See the identical passage here.

(UPDATE: Vayner has removed his book from Lulu.com. Real classy.)

So let’s get this straight: Vayner created a fake charity. He named himself CEO of a non-existent investment firm. And he plagiarized a book on the Holocaust.

Forget Rahmatullah Hashemi. Why is Aleksey Vayner at Yale University?!

From: Aleksey Vayner <aleksey.vayner@gmail.com>
To: ivygate@gmail.com, ron706@aol.com
Date: Oct 9, 2006 12:04 AM
Subject: Cease and Disist Notification

Dear editor, writer, owner of IvyGateBlog,

It has been brought to my attention that you have made an unauthorized use of my video, my photographs, have made public disclosure of private facts, and have slandered me in your articles on IvyGateBlog.com. I have reserved all rights to the video you have uploaded onto YouTube.com, and have made available on your site. I have also reserved all rights to the photos you have used in your articles about me. Furthermore, you have made an illegal public disclosure of private facts by posting my cover letter, resume, and my article on hedge fund selling beta as alpha, online on ivygateblog.com. Finally you have extensively slandered me in your articles.

As you neither asked for nor received permission to use copyrighted video and photographs for your articles, you have willfully infringed my rights. You have also illegally made my private information public.

I demand that you immediately cease and desist. You must remove the illegal copy of my video from your youtube.com account and any other site, cease any use and the distribution of my property and information, remove my private information that are my cover letter, resume, and the research paper on “hedge funds selling alpha as beta,” the use and distribution of all infringing works derived from the materials mentioned above. I ask that you destroy such copies immediately, and that you desist from this or any other infringement of my rights in the future. Kindly provide proof within 10 days that you have complied with my request dated October 8th 2006.

Very truly yours,

Aleksey Vayner

p.s. Due effort has been made to obtain your company’s physical contact information. If you kindly provide me with a physical address, a copy of this notification will be sent to you by registered mail. 

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!