Another email arrives an hour later from Fred Furrow, also with the subject "cease and desist."
"We are no longer a player," Furrow writes. "Your call to Myung Ho Lee has caused us to totally drop out with Josh. ... Any mention of our names in any future article will force us to take legal action."
PHOTO BY TED SOQUI
Joshua Macciello says the Chinese New Year delayed his money transfer.
PHOTO BY TED SOQUI
Joshua Macciello
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On Thursday afternoon, attorney Todd Bonder calls the Weekly back.
"It looks like I'm probably gonna owe you the $5," he says.
Days after Fred Furrow's "cease and desist" email, he has calmed down enough to give his explanation for why the deal went south.
"Myung Ho and I got caught up in the fantasy of thinking we were gonna be part owners of the Dodgers," Furrow says. "We didn't think it through at all."
After Lee heard from a reporter, Furrow says, "He called me and blew up.
"That money in Hong Kong was not allocated for the Dodgers," Furrow continues. "If our investors found out we were using that money for the Dodger deal, we could lose $100 billion in international revenue."
He says he has informed Macciello that the deal is off.
"Josh is devastated," he says.
In a final interview, Macciello is despondent and combative. He is dropping out of the deal, and he blames L.A. Weekly.
"I have nothing. My whole financing got pulled. I have no means, nothing," he says. "I'm the Roy Hobbs of this deal. I came out of nowhere. Then an L.A. Weekly reporter ruined that. ... We're starting to put a case together. You cost me $2.2 billion."
Asked about his film career, he concedes that he never produced a movie. But he insists he has gold claims, although he again declines to offer proof. Informed that the appraiser has called him a liar, he says, "If the gold guy said that, God bless him."
So why, if Macciello never had the money to buy the Dodgers, did he make such a push to get publicity? There are at least three possibilities.
The first is that Macciello genuinely believed that somehow he would be able to find the money. This is Macciello's explanation.
"I thought I was gonna own the Dodgers," he says. "I thought I was using that to introduce myself."
The second is that it was a publicity stunt. Macciello has batted that allegation away, saying he wouldn't have sunk money into the bid if he were just looking for attention. "That's stupid," he told the L.A. Daily News, in a favorable story that ran in early February. "I'm not looking to be a Kardashian."
The third explanation is that Macciello's profession is raising money from gullible investors. Any extra bit of credibility — such as all the favorable press clippings now posted on his company website — makes it easier to close the next deal, whatever it turns out to be.
Macciello flatly rejects that explanation.
"I honestly didn't even think of that," he protests. "I don't have anything that I'm promoting to where your angle makes sense."
Macciello says he doesn't much care which explanation the Weekly goes with.
"Nothing you can write can make people not like me," he says. "I'm a likable guy."
But a few minutes after hanging up, he calls back.
"So what do you think of me?" he asks. "Are you leaning toward you don't believe me?" Given an affirmative answer, he says, "Someday I'm going to make you think differently."
Why is it such a problem that one person might hold a negative view?
"My father left when I was a kid," he says. "Maybe it's need issues."
Well, it's a heck of a story.
"I'll let you write it when we make the movie," he says.
