Bad Boys

By John S. DeMott.

They took ski trips to Vail, Colo., and gambling junkets to Las Vegas. They played polo together and lived in luxury condominiums in fashionable West Los Angeles. The Billionaire Boys Club was a group of about 30 rich kids who were out to have fun and get richer, but authorities say their lavish life-style and freewheeling investment philosophy soon led some members to swindles and violence. In Santa Monica last week, the B.B.C.'s compelling but manipulative founder, Joe Hunt, watched as jury selection began for his trial on murder charges, which could put him on death row.

Hunt, 27, began the club in 1982 as a fraternity to channel investments into commodities and small businesses. Formed by several alumni of an exclusive North Hollywood prep school, the club included sons of some of the Los Angeles area's richest families. By all appearances, the last thing the Billionaire Boys needed was more money. But their high-octane style burned through their bank accounts: Hunt once spent more than $20,000 on motorcycles and equipment for club members.

The group was also apparently done in by Hunt's so-called paradox philosophy, readymade situation ethics that exempted them from common precepts of right and wrong. Last August attorneys for the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed suit, charging Hunt and two others with commodityexchange violations and fraud. The suit said the group had bilked 80 outside investors out of $1.6 million, often through schemes that used new investors' money to pay "dividends" to older clients.

The murder case began when Hunt himself became the victim of a scam. Ronald Levin, a wealthy, self-styled free-lance journalist, told Hunt he had put $5.2 million in a brokerage account for Hunt to trade with. Hunt's investment decisions soon made the bundle grow to $13.5 million. When he began pressing Levin for his promised share of the profit, Levin would not pay up. There was no investment account, Levin confessed, only a fake one set up with the broker's cooperation on the pretense that Levin was doing a story about commodities. Hunt did not react kindly, say prosecutors. In June 1984, prosecutors charge, he forced Levin to sign over a $1.5 million check (it later bounced). Then, they say, Hunt murdered Levin. Levin's body has never been found, and the hardest material evidence against Hunt is a yellow legal pad headed "At Levin's: TO DO," followed by seven pages that describes how a murder would take place.

Defense lawyers say the pad contains no such recipe for killing but just "writing on a piece of paper." They say Levin was facing grand-theft charges for receiving stolen goods, and is probably not dead at all. Says Defense Attorney Arthur Barens: "Mr. Levin has ample reason to absent himself from the proceedings."

Even if Hunt wins acquittal in the Levin case, he and three others face charges of having killed Hedayat Eslaminia, a former Iranian government official and the father of a club associate. Authorities say the group, including Eslaminia's son, killed the wealthy Iranian in July 1984 during a desperate kidnaping intended to extort money for the club. The Billionaire Boys may soon be paying a high price for their investments.

With reporting by Scott Brown/Los Angeles