Brad Bleidt
- Category : Business-Entrepreneur
- Type : ME
- Profile : 5/1 - Heretical / Investigator
- Definition : Split - Small (21)
- Incarnation Cross : LAX Informing 1
Biography
American embezzler. Bleidt was by all accounts a successful and wealthy businessman, founder and president of an asset management firm and the cofounder and CEO of a financial planning service. He and his wife, a fellow financial planner had a successful radio show on Boston’s WMEX. In January 2004, he bought a small radio station, WBIX, for $13.2 million and on June 8, 2004, agreed to sell it. But in the first week of November, before the deal could be finalized, Bleidt tried to commit suicide just after returning home from a party. On Friday, November 12, 2004, federal agents received a videotape that explained why such an apparently successful man had become so desperate. On the tape he confessed that he had purchased the radio station by embezzling from his clients’ investment accounts and that he had misappropriated tens of millions of dollars of his clients' money over 20 years. Many of his clients had trusted him with their life savings, hoping for a comfortable retirement.
Bleidt's world of extravagant living began to cave in when a client, a Greek Orthodox Church from Weston, MA, wanted $1.5 million of its money that Bleidt could not produce. Bleidt vowed that he would cooperate with the FBI, local authorities, and the SEC in their investigation of the case. His assets have been frozen, his passport revoked, and he is on a suicide watch.