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PALM BEACH POST-FAMOUS NOE BROTHERS
The Palm Beach Post
Thursday, February 28, 2002
2 ELDERLY CONS COULD PAY FOR OWN EXTRADITION
John Pacenti Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Former Fort Myers prosecutor Louis S. Laurent II talks with a
sense of awe of the exploits of renowned con siblings Paul Randall
Noe and Clif Goldstein of Boca Raton.
"There is no organization or groups in the world who are as brazen
as they are - the amounts of money they got involved in," said St.
Laurent, who prosecuted Noe in the 1970s.
Now in private practice in Coral Springs, St. Laurent was in the
federal courtroom Wednesday to see the duo in custody.
Looking more like they belonged on a shuffleboard court than in
the courtroom, the two septuagenarians agreed to be extradited to
South Carolina to face charges they tried to bilk a golf course
entrepreneur there.
The brothers - Goldstein is 71, Noe is 74 - were told by U.S.
Magistrate Linnea Johnson if they wanted to get to South Carolina by
next week, they could pay their own way as well as the expenses of
federal marshals.
"We would like to get up there as soon as possible so we can
confer with attorneys there," Noe told Johnson.
Both men were still in the Palm Beach County Jail Wednesday night.
Noe did all the talking during the hearing because Goldstein, who
changed his surname after getting out of jail in 1991, recently had a
stroke, St. Laurent said.
The brothers, acting on behalf of a firm called Great American
Trust Corp., told South Carolina golf course entrepreneur Mike
Holland that they could get him a $200 million loan he would never
have to pay back, according to an FBI complaint.
All he had to do was put up $50,000 for lawyers' fees.
"They've only scratched the surface," the former prosecutor said
of the case against the duo.
St. Laurent told the FBI that some of his clients had dealt with
Great American.
The Securities and Exchange Commission says the brothers bilked 25
investors out of more than $1 million through their suburban Boca
Raton companies.
The brothers were first convicted in 1965 in Texas in an elaborate
fraud involving several banks that was chronicled in a 1973 book
called The Fountain Pen Conspiracy, later renamed Super Swindlers.
In 1982, The Wall Street Journal rated Goldstein one of the era's
top con men, and in 1988, Fortune named him one of the 25 most
fascinating business people and "one of the most notorious white-
collar criminals ever."
In 1986, Goldstein and his nephew were arrested at the
Philadelphia airport for trying to use counterfeit securities to buy
a failing New Jersey insurance company.
The firm collapsed a year later in one of the largest insurance
failures in the state's history.
Attorney Kenneth Stein represented both brothers in court on
Wednesday.
When asked whether his clients' criminal past would hurt their
chances in this case, Stein said, "I would hope not."
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