This is fake news.
I would never write something like this:
Dear Jeffrey,
Mazel tov on hitting the big five-oh. You’ve done more by 50 than most of us accomplish in a lifetime: built an empire, made a name, and somehow stayed out of jail—until you didn’t. But hey, who among us hasn’t had a few awkward run-ins with the law, an island, and a Rolodex full of prime ministers and pimps?
You always had a taste for high IQ and low inhibitions, a perfect storm for the kind of philanthropy they don’t teach in shul. People say you were mysterious, brilliant, reclusive—I say you were the Woody Allen of finance, minus the Oscars and with worse friends.
I remember your parties—equal parts Mensa mixer and Maxim shoot. You’d greet Nobel Prize winners and Brazilian models with the same firm handshake and the same “What’s your SAT score?” Classic Jeff.
If I had your money, I’d buy a Westside shul and fill it with porn stars in modest skirts. You went another way, more Clinton than Cohen, more Lolita Express than Lithuanian yeshiva. Who am I to judge?
You lived like a Gnostic tech bro with a Nietzschean libido—doing science, dodging sunlight, whispering to Harvard nerds about AI, DNA, and underage ballet dancers. It’s all very on-brand for a guy whose legacy reads like the Book of Job if it were rewritten by Larry Flynt and funded by Les Wexner.
So here’s to you, Jeffrey—wherever you are. May your 50s be less… incarcerated. And may your next birthday album be curated by someone with fewer lawsuits and more moral clarity. Or at least better taste.
Yours in eroticized rage and fallen dreams,
Luke Ford
A convert, a contrarian, a chronic oversharer
(But not that kind of sharer)
