How This Enron Exec Made $280 Million By Impregnating A Stripper, Destroying His Marriage And Losing His Job

Random Celebrity Article By Brian Warner on August 13, 2014

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A few months back I went to a strip club for a bachelor party. When I walked in, I had about $100 cash in my wallet. When I walked out, not only was all my cash gone, but the only thing left in my wallet was an ATM receipt for the additional $60 I withdrew while inside the club (with a $5 strip club ATM fee). Why did this happen? Because strippers are absolute Zen masters when it comes to extracting money from men. It's what they were put on this planet to do. But can you imagine a crazy reality where instead of taking money from you, a stripper actually ended up saving you a bunch of money? And not a few hundred dollars, not a few thousand, not a few million, but HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of dollars??? Sounds insane right? Well, believe it or not, this is exactly what happened to former Enron executive (and stripper aficionado) Lou Pai. Lou Pai might be the only person in history who actually managed to make $280 million by having an affair with a stripper, getting her pregnant and then losing both his marriage and his extremely high paying corporate job…

Lou Pai was born in Nanjing, China in 1946 and moved to the United States with his family at the age of two. His father was a math professor at the University of Maryland, Collage Park, where Lou would eventually earn both a B.S. and a M.S. degree in economics. In his college years, Lou was considered a mathematical genius. He joined Enron in 1987 and quickly climbed the ranks. At the time Lou joined Enron, the company was still a mid-sized, regional energy supplier. Within a decade, both Enron and Lou Pai were rising stars. Lou eventually became one of Enron CEO Jeff Skilling's most trusted and highest ranking executives.
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In March of 1997, Lou was named CEO of a subsidiary called Enron Energy Services (EES). The goal of EES was to sell gas and electricity directly to personal homes and businesses a market prices. Think of it like this: Right now the amount you pay for gas or electricity is a fairly fixed rate that is set by a utility company that is probably a pseudo-government entity. EES wanted to create an alternative private sector option that allowed consumers to buy energy on the free market, direct from a utility. EES spent a small fortune on advertisements around the country attempting to sell people on the idea of buying all their energy directly in one place. By consolidating the market and allowing people to buy energy on an open market, EES promised to save its users 5-15% a year on their energy needs.

Unfortunately, the implementation of EES' ambitious goals turned out to be a huge disaster. Between 1997 and 2001, EES blew through $500 million in operating expenses without ever generating any significant revenues. Between all of the various subsidiaries of Enron that Lou Pai ran, his tenure resulted in over $1 billion in losses.
But before shit hit the fan for both EES and Enron, Lou Pai was one of the most important and highest paid people at the company. During his tenure as CEO, Lou earned approximately $100 million in salary alone. He also received enormous grants of valuable Enron stock.
When times were good, Lou Pai also had a reputation for enjoying the Houston-area strip clubs. Actually, Lou Pai's penchant for strip clubs wasn't a reputation, it was a legend. According to Bethany McLean's amazing book on the rise and fall of Enron titled "The Smartest Guys in the Room":
"Only two things seemed to motivate Lou Pai. Money, and a peculiar fascination with strippers.

Money and Strippers

Lou would reportedly visit a particular Houston strip club (located not far from Enron's world headquarters) every night after work. He would conduct meetings at the strip club and treat the top performing salesman with wild back room parties that were all funded by his Enron corporate expense account. As legend has it, the strippers didn't believe such a mild mannered, almost meek, person was actually a powerful energy CEO. So how did Lou prove his identity? He allegedly would bring the strippers up to lavish Enron offices where they would continue the party late into the night. In order to avoid getting caught be his wife, on his way home Lou would stop by a gas station and splash a little bit of gasoline on himself to get rid of the stripper scent.
As you might imagine, coming home every night smelling like gasoline probably isn't a sustainable lifestyle. And eventually, going to strip clubs turned into a full on affair with a stripper named Melanie Fewell. Oh, and just like Mr. Pai, Melanie also happened to be married with two kids.
It was a mess that got even messier when the affair resulted in a pregnancy. When Lou's wife found out about the pregnancy, she filed for divorce. Not only that, around this same time Enron had just about reached their limit of Lou's strip club expenses and the secret disaster that EES had become. Lou wasn't exactly fired from Enron, but he also wasn't exactly encouraged to stay on as CEO of EES.
At this point, Lou Pai must have felt like he woke up in a nightmare. No more high paying job, his stripper girlfriend was pregnant, his marriage was destroyed and divorce proceedings were underway. Was Karma catching up? Well, considering what happened next, I don't really think you can believe Karma had any impact on Lou Pai.

In order to pay the costly financial terms of his divorce settlement, Lou Pai was forced to cash out 100% of his Enron stock. During a three week period between May 18 and June 7 of 2001, Lou sold off every single share he had ever been granted. He also exercised several hundred thousand Enron options. It was probably hard to do because at the time, Enron was absolutely kicking ass as a company and as a stock. Enron's all time highest price was $90.56 a share in August 2000. The average price Lou Pai got for his holdings between May and June of 2001 was $72 a share. The total value Lou Pai was left with after every share was sold? $280 million.
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Lou's ex wife Lanna L. Pai, with whom he had two children, was paid an undisclosed lump sum that is believed to be in the tens of millions. She also was granted the right to the couple's Houston mansion, a Houston condo and a $3 million house in Hawaii.
Meanwhile, Lou married his stripper girlfriend, now known as Melanie Miller Pai. Together, with their newborn child, the couple moved to Colorado where Lou became the second largest land holder in the entire state after purchasing a 120 square mile ranch in the Sangre de Cristo mountain range.
Timing Is Everything
Not long after Lou fled to Colorado, Enron slowly started to collapse as investors began to question the company's accounting practices and general business ethics. You know how Lou Pai was able to sell off his entire stake in Enron at an average price of $72 a share? That was June of 2001. Two months later, on August 15, 2001, Enron's share price sunk to $42. Two months later, in October, Enron dropped to $15. At this point, Enron's top executives like Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were quietly unloading massive amounts of their personal shares while simultaneously telling their own employees and outside investors that this was a GREAT time to buy more stock because Enron was sure to rebound imminently. Ken Lay sold off $90 million worth of stock during this period.
By November 28, 2001, Enron's share price dropped all the way down to $1.
On December 2, 2001, Enron filed for bankruptcy.

When you put it all together, Lou Pai is one of the luckiest people on the planet. By getting his stripper girlfriend pregnant, he was forced to sell off every single share of Enron he ever owned. He walked away just below the peak of Enron's stock price with an estimated $280 million dollars. His only real consequence came in 2008 when he agreed in an out of court settlement to pay $31.5 million in civil fines and restitution to Enron's investors. He admitted no wrong doing and never spent a moment in handcuffs. As part of the settlement, Lou Pai was barred from serving as an officer of a public company for five years.
He probably thanks God every night for giving him that "peculiar fascination" with strippers! The only other person who can probably relate is Mikhail Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire and Brooklyn Nets owner who pretty much owes his entire $10 billion dollar fortune to a private jet full of prostitutes. I bet those guys would get along very well.

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Relatives Of The Real-Life "Aunt Jemima" Demand $2 Billion In Unpaid Royalties From Quaker Oats And Pepsi.

Random Celebrity Article By Brian Warner on August 12, 2014

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When I was a kid there was always a bottle of Aunt Jemima syrup in the fridge and a box of the pancake mix in the cupboard. On pretty much every childhood birthday I can remember, I would request chocolate chip pancakes and then proceed to drench them in Aunt Jemima syrup. It's making me hungry thinking about it right now. On the other hand, even as a 10 year old, I always thought there was something weird about the brand's name and spokeswoman. Without knowing anything about the corporate history, something just felt off and slightly racist. Fast forward to the present, when everything is so politically correct, how is it still ok to have a brand that is pretty much blatantly racist? If the "Washington Redskins" team name is so controversial, why aren't more people up in arms about Aunt Jemima?
Well, it turns out some people are very angry at the brand. Angry enough to sue parent corporations Quaker Oats and PepsiCo, but not for the reasons you might think. Earlier this week, a group of people filed that claims their great-grandmother was the real-life model for the "Aunt Jemima" character. And if you think this is some silly little attempt to grab headlines and maybe score a small payout, you are wrong. The relatives have a fairly solid case and they are suing for no less than $2 billion in unpaid royalties.

Aunt Jemima History:
The concept of "Aunt Jemima" dates back nearly 150 years, decades before the syrup or pancake mix existed. Back in the late 19th century, Aunt Jemima was a popular minstrel show character. For those of you who do not know, a minstrel show was a form of entertainment popular after the civil war where white actors would dress up in black face to act out skits that today we would consider horrendously racist. In 1875 a song from one such minstrel show titled "Old Aunt Jemima" was recorded by an African American songwriter named Billy Kersands. When the song was performed during shows, Aunt Jemima would be portrayed by a white man in black face who act out stereotypes of a female former slave who is now a cook.
In 1889, two actors convinced the Peal Milling Company to use their version of Aunt Jemima as a pancake mix spokeswoman. This first iteration was a failure and soon the Pearl Milling Company was sold to the Randolph Truett Davis Milling Company in St. Joseph, Missouri. The R.T. Davis Milling Company hired a real-life former slave named Nancy Green to act as the spokeswoman for the newly launched Aunt Jemima pancake mix. In 1913, the R.T. Davis Milling Company changed its name officially to "Aunt Jemima Mills".
Over the next 33 years, from 1890 until her death in 1923, Nancy Green worked as "Aunt Jemima". Nancy would conduct pancake seminars at fairs and travel to towns across America to spread the word about the pancake mix.
In 1926, Quaker Oats acquired the Aunt Jemima Mills company. No real life person was used as an Aunt Jemima for the next decade. A woman named Anna Robinson played the character for Quaker Oats from 1933 to 1935 until she was replaced by a woman named Anna Short Harrington.

Anna Short Harrington:
Anna Short Harrington was discovered by Quaker Oats executives at a cooking fair where she had won praise for her own homemade pancake mix. She was exactly what they were looking for in a spokeswoman. Anna was hired on the spot as the company's new full time real-life Aunt Jemima and within months an ad featuring Anna appeared in the magazine Woman's Home Companion. The company also started using her recipe for mass production of their mix.
In 1937, Quaker Oats filed for a trademark for the brand. This is important: In their trademark application, they included a photo of Anna Short Harrington dressed up as Aunt Jemima. In the lawsuit that was recently filed, Harrington's descendants claim the company dissuaded their great-grandmother from seeking legal help to protect her rights in the trademark registration. Here's an example of Harrington's Aunt Jemima:

Jemima Gets A Reboot:
The image of Anna Harrington's Aunt Jemima went largely unchanged for more than 50 years. In 1989, Quaker Oats decided it was time to update Jemima's image. The face of Aunt Jemima that most of us are familiar with today, is actually Harrington's youngest daughter Olivia Hunter. This likeness is what you see at the super market right now on all Aunt Jemima-related products. For example:

The Lawsuit:
Enter a man named D.W. Hunter, Anna Short Harrington's great-grandson. In the lawsuit that was filed earlier this week, Hunter alleges that Quaker Oats has illegally used his great-grandmother's image and recipes for decades without ever paying a dime in royalties that should have been standard. Furthermore, he claims the company has gone out of its way to deny that his great-grandmother ever even worked at the company. Quaker Oats reportedly told Hunter that there were no employment records for Harrington or any proof that she was used as the basis for Aunt Jemima.
There's just one problem with that argument. Actually two problems. The first problem is the fact that when Quaker Oats filed for the trademark back in 1937, they reportedly included a photo of Anna Short Harrington dressed as Aunt Jemima. Woops. The second problem is the fact that the company just happened to hire Harrington's daughter to be the model for the current Jemima. That would be a pretty crazy coincidence considering the fact that Harrington supposedly never worked for the company.
Damages:
In his lawsuit, D.W. Hunter's legal teams have cited the standard royalty and residual policies that have been used in Screen Actors Guild (SAG) agreements for decades. Based on these industry standards, plus penalties and late fees, he is seeking $2 billion in damages from Quaker Oats and parent company PepsiCo. Lawyers on the other side have, not surprisingly, denies that this lawsuit has any merit.
Will this lawsuit be successful? At first glance it sounds totally unrealistic, but when you consider some of the above facts… who knows?! What do you think? Do Anna Short Harrington's descendants deserve $2 billion? Let's say that number is purposely outrageous because they are hoping to settle on something smaller but still significant. Do you think they deserve $500 million? $100 million? Nothing? Let us know what you think in the comment section below…

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Orlando Bloom Net Worth

How much is Orlando Bloom Worth?

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Net Worth:

$35 Million

Date of Birth

January 13, 1977

Place of Birth

Canterbury

Profession

Actor

Category

Richest Celebrities, Actors

Orlando Bloom Net Worth: Orlando Bloom is an English actor who has a net worth of $35 million dollars. Orlando Bloom began his career in London's West End and then became an international star with his performance as Legolas in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. He has subsequently appeared in many films including the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise, "Elizabethtown", and "New York, I Love You", and many more.

Born Orlando Jonathan Blanchard Bloom on January 13 1977, in Canterbury, Kent, England, he first entered the limelight in 2001 as the elf-prince Legolas in The Lord of the Rings. He made his breakthrough as the dashing elf warrior in the first movie of Peter Jackson's triology: "The Fellowship of the Ring" (2001). After the overwhelming success of the sequels, "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" (2002) and "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" (2003), Bloom became one of the brightest young stars in Hollywood. Having proved already that he is good with franchises, Orlando jumped ship to star with Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley in "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl" (2003). A move that helped him further capture the hearts of young moviegoers worldwide. Of Bloom's other efforts, one of the most notable can was the historical epic "Kingdom of Heaven" (2005). He also starred in "Elizabethtown" (2005). He regained his marquee status with his return to the ever-dependable Disney franchise installments "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" (2006) and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" (2007). His appearance in "The Three Musketeers" (2011) was received with little enthusiasm. But then, his role in "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" (2012) placed him once again in front of a large, welcoming audience. Still early in his career, Bloom continues to seek challenging new roles that will dazzle his fans. Away movies, he has one child with Australian model Miranda Kerr.