When vast fortunes meet senectitude oftentimes a predator moves in to take advantage. Take, for example, the sad case of Brooke Astor. All the classic elements are involved: a doyenne, a fortune and a scoundrel. What made that case all the more tragic is that the predatory beast was Astor's own son. Our favorite social chronicler David Patrick Columbia once again tempts us with an interesting tidbit about the goings on among the socialite set on Manhattan's UES. From NYSocialDiary:
"There is a story going around these days, very sotto voce but so sensational that many are wondering how long before the lid blows off.
"... It directly involves some very prominent New York names, a very rich and now very elderly; woman who has lived the last fifteen years of her life almost as a recluse in her palatial Upper East Side apartment and her house out on the East End. A great friend of hers, or rather, someone she thought was a great friend of hers, someone she trusted above and beyond her own children, someone she trusted her very large fortune with, ripped her off.
"Ripped her off is the polite way of putting it, although the transfers or 'investments' appeared to be quite legitimate in that there were business deals, maybe not the kind you’d associate with a nonagenarian, but nevertheless, etc.
"And now, they say, it is Gee-Oh-Enn-Ee. All Gone ...
"... Some say there will be jail terms before it is over and a raft of names, associations with the friend; well-known, bigtime, social, celebrated, some implicated, most not, everyone looking for the guilt."
The full post here.
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