Tag Archives ⇒ New York penthouse

What’s Anne Hathaway doing in Cape May anyway?

July 23, 2008
· Martin Kelley

One of the things I don’t get about the press treat­ment of the Follieri/Galante scan­dal is their atti­tude toward actress Anne Hath­away. Until a few weeks ago she was the dap­per Ital­ian’s girl­friend and they were con­stant­ly pho­tographed togeth­er. But they broke up the week before the scan­dal hit the tabloids, and all we’ve got­ten are these sil­ly human inter­est sto­ries. We hear spec­u­la­tion she must be heart­bro­ken, we hear how she’s mov­ing on with her life, we even hear details about get­ting her dog back from her old apart­ment with Fol­lieri. She’s lost a lot of weight of her lat­est movie pro­mo tour and mys­te­ri­ous­ly showed up at a Cape May bar singing Jour­ney songs this week­end with a pho­tog­ra­ph­er con­ve­nient­ly in tow.

Hel­lo? She was on the board of direc­tors of the Fol­lieri Group’s char­i­ties. The New York pent­house they shared was paid for by conned mon­ey as were their lav­ish trips and high fly­ing lifestyle. Boyfriend dra­ma is the last thing she needs to be wor­ried about right now. I sure hope the FBI is care­ful­ly going through her check­book and date book right now. She both solicit­ed and received stolen mon­ey. No won­der she’s lost a lot of weight.

And what’s up with her get­ting off the plane from Lon­don and dri­ving a cou­ple of hours to the south­ern tip of the New Jer­sey? The Cape May Coun­ty house Fol­lieri bought from the bish­op was report­ed­ly just sold again. Could Anne Hath­away be on the deed or autho­rized to sign for  Fol­lieri? Idle spec­u­la­tion of course but I do wish her pub­li­cists weren’t mak­ing fools of the pop­u­lar press like this.

The Andrew Walton Idiot Defense

July 16, 2008
· Martin Kelley

Please read Galante and Fol­lieri: the Bish­op and the Con Man, which lays out the details men­tioned in this post.

The Dio­cese of Cam­den is in fran­tic spin con­trol mode after yes­ter­day’s rev­e­la­tions that Bish­op Galante per­son­al­ly received $400,000
from high fly­ing Euro­trash con man Raf­fae­lo Fol­lieri for the sale of a
beach house the Bish­op had been unable to unload. Fol­lier­i’s the guy
who’s been try­ing to buy up Catholic church prop­er­ties across the
coun­try while mak­ing out with his Hol­ly­wood girl­friend on San Tropez
beach­es and par­ty­ing it up with Bill Clin­ton’s sleezy billionaire
buddies.

It seems like a pret­ty clear cut case. Galante had his hand in Fol­lier­i’s cook­ie jar.
Sold his beach house to the guy who stood to prof­it most from the
Bish­op’s plan to sell off half of South Jer­sey’s church­es. Old­est story
in the book. Give him the cell next to Fol­lier­i’s and they can rem­i­nisce about
the good old days (NSFW).

I’ve been won­der­ing just how the Dio­cese would try to spin this story
as it waits for fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors to come knock­ing at the door. And
today the offi­cial Spokesper­son in Charge of Fairy Tales called up all the papers. Ladies and gen­tle­men, we present you with:

The Andrew Wal­ton Idiot Defense

Turns out some­one at the Vat­i­can called some­one at the
Dioce­san offices back in 2004 telling them to sell to Fol­lieri. That’s
it. No one can remem­ber who made the call. No one can remem­ber who took
the call. For all we know Fol­lieri filled his mouth with cot­ton balls
and did his best Mar­lon Bran­do imi­ta­tion from the pay phone across the street. 

The Arch­dio­ce­ses in Boston, New York, Newark and else­where told Fol­lieri they had enough bridges thank you very much, but poor Grand­pa Joe was con­fused and start­ed lend­ing him priests and giv­ing him the keys to the beach house.

How could any­one imag­ine that Fol­lieri was a crook? He seemed like any
oth­er Moth­er Tere­sa choir boy with his $10,000 suits, New York penthouse,
hero­in habit, con­vict­ed mob asso­ciates, San Tropez week­ends and expensively-maintained Hol­ly­wood girl­friend. “Nobody was aware of prob­lems with Mr. Fol­lieri or his com­pa­ny at that time.” Yeah right. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody. And I’m the wid­ow of the late John Paul II, recent­ly deceased Pres­i­dent of the Vat­i­can, with frozen assets in Nige­ria I’d like your help in secur­ing. Please email me back at your ear­li­est con­ve­nience Andy Wal­ton, I know you won’t be disappointed.