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 Is Dee Guess taking a page out of the play book of one of our favorite fraudsters, Theodore Roxford, aka David Niren, aka Theodore Vakil, aka Edward Pastorini? It sure sounds like it.
The 23-year-old Guess, who bills himself as the managing director of private equity firm MGL Asset Management LLC, has reportedly made an unsolicited offer to buy Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. for more than $500 million by faxing the company an offer. Roxford, under the guise of Edward Pastorini, made a bid valued at $12.5 billion last year for South African gold miner Gold Fields Ltd. in the same manner and duped Bloomberg News into reporting it. But local reporters at the Winston-Salem Journal were immediately suspicious, and when they started looking into Guess and his bid, they immediately found a mass of confusion, especially around just who Guess is. According to the paper, his full name is Jerry Demario Guess. But they also noted that in at least two lawsuits filed against him, he also goes by Mario Guess, J.D. Guess and Jerry D. Guess. Sound familiar? Guess and another of his companies, Ligna Acquisition Group LLC, are defendants in at least two lawsuits in the Western District of U.S. District Court, which is based in Charlotte, N.C. He is identified as Mario Guess in the lawsuits. Ligna and MGL also share the same place of business in Charlotte. Roxford has also been accused of making bogus bids for Sony Corp. and Zapata Corp. Guess declined to conduct a phone interview with the Charlotte-based paper, but he did respond to The Deal's questions by e-mail through a gmail.com account. Roxford also enjoyed e-mail exchanges about his escapades with a number of us in the media. Guess would not tell The Wall Street Journal whether he had gone by other names but said his offer was legitimate. But as of press time, Wall Street has still not taken the offer seriously. Krispy Kreme shares closed Tuesday at $5.21, up just 22 cents, and as of Wednesday nothing has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding the unsolicited bid. Maybe Guess doesn't want to add an SEC investigation to the other alleged actions. Roxford was ordered last year to pay the SEC $900,000 for his fake bids but has since fled to Argentina and has previously said in an e-mailed statement to Bloomberg that he lost interest in the suit and let it "default." - Donna Block See earlier story about Guess from Dealscape Categories Deal Video
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