And it's not just Rakowitz. The story was remarkably easy to pitch.
"There are a lot of reporters who wanted to believe he was going forward with this," she says. "The L.A. press wants the Dodgers issue to be resolved. From a PR/marketing standpoint, Josh filled that void."
S. BUKLEY/NEWSCOM
Frank McCourt filed for bankruptcy in June.
PHOTO BY TED SOQUI
Joshua Macciello
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L.A. Weekly's interaction with Macciello begins with an email from Rakowitz's firm, offering an interview with "the potential new owner of the L.A. Dodgers." The pitch describes Macciello as "the coolest 36-year-old billionaire you will EVER meet!!!"
An interview is arranged at Macciello's home in Studio City. The five-bedroom house has a brick facade, inset with two-story white columns. It has been appraised at $1.5 million.
A doughy young man in glasses and a Dodgers windbreaker answers the door and introduces himself as Eric. He says he is Macciello's assistant.
Nothing about the interior of the house, however, says "billionaire." The furnishings are modest and awkwardly arranged. Asked for a restroom, Eric points to a shabby half-bath next to the entryway. On the counter by the sink are two books: What Is My Pee Telling Me? and What Is Your Poo Telling You?
Macciello comes downstairs, wearing ripped white jeans and a black T-shirt. He has a long, scraggly beard and a receding hairline. On his right bicep is an elaborate tattoo of a Joshua tree alongside a New York Yankees cap. He says he's planning to get a Dodgers cap added on there somewhere.
He's planning to do a lot of things. He has restless energy and an eagerness to win people over, to get them to buy into his dreams.
One thing Macciello plans to do, he says, is buy a new house in Bel-Air. (This one's a rental.) Once he buys the Dodgers — he has recently disclosed he is offering $2.2 billion — he intends to keep general manager Ned Colletti and manager Don Mattingly around for a year, to give them another chance. By this time, Prince Fielder has signed a nine-year deal with the Tigers for $214 million. Macciello says he would have passed.
"I would have given him three years, $60 million," he says.
The financing for Macciello's bid appears to be a work in progress. Sitting at a long, dark wood dining room table, he explains that he is no longer using the gold mines, which he has touted in previous interviews. Instead, he has partnered with two gentlemen — Myung Ho Lee and Fred Furrow — who will put up the equity for the deal. They will take a 49 percent stake in the team, and Macciello will keep 51 percent.
But Macciello makes it clear he is not using the gold to secure his 51 percent stake in the bid. So what is backing it?
"There is no backing of the 51 percent," he says. "I can't get into the deal too much. The profit sharing will be in their favor."
Asked why these two guys would agree to buy Macciello a baseball team, he has a ready answer: "They saw my business plan. All these up-front costs I'm paying for."
Macciello tells Eric to retrieve some other documentation. Eric produces a packet that includes a single-page "proof of funds," which purports to show that $10 billion is sitting in an account at HSBC in Hong Kong, under the name of Myung Ho Lee.
Macciello says he's been having some trouble getting the Blackstone Group, the investment firm handling the Dodger sale, to accept that. So they are in the process of transferring the money to an American bank. There's been a delay, however, because of Chinese New Year.
"Everything shuts down for Year of the Dragon," Macciello says.
The packet also includes the trio's $2.2 billion bid and a curriculum vitae for Myung Ho Lee, including his phone number. But when the Weekly begins to copy down that number, Macciello grabs the notebook and vigorously crosses it out.
"We're not using that right now," he says, a little edge in his voice. "I don't want you disturbing Myung Ho."
Instead, he suggests emailing his other backer, Fred Furrow, who runs a company called Full Circle Energy. Macciello says he is doing big things with water and renewable power.
Fred Furrow wants to save the world by zapping sewage with a plasma beam. The 63-year-old entrepreneur has been working for the last dozen years on several energy technologies, each of which he believes is revolutionary. But the one he is most excited about involves generating clean, renewable electricity from garbage and human waste.
It's still in the conceptual stage. But Furrow is convinced that the idea will revolutionize the energy industry and make him "an instant multibillionaire."
"The technologies we have are kind of overwhelming," he says over the phone from his home in Clovis, just outside Fresno. "It's Einstein and Edison times 1,000. Full Circle Energy could be the first trillion-dollar company."
Furrow grew up in Santa Maria. After college he started a white-water rafting business on the Kings River. He had five sons, and wound up working a more stable job in commercial real estate in Fresno. But he never lost his entrepreneurial drive.
