Meyer Blinder, Penny Stock King, Dies at 82
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: March 04, 2004
Meyer Blinder, who with his gold jewelry and extravagant promises became the self-proclaimed king of the nation's penny stock market in the 70's and 80's, died last Thursday in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 82.
The cause was a heart attack, his son Larry said. He said his father also had Alzheimer's disease.
In 1986, his firm, Blinder, Robinson & Company, ranked 10th in the nation in the number of brokers it employed; in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Blinder spoke of challenging Merrill Lynch for industry leadership. But in 1990, his company, which at one time had 66 offices in 37 states, was liquidated. In 1992, he was convicted on six counts of racketeering, money laundering and securities fraud and spent 40 months in a federal prison.
Penny stocks are low-cost, high-risk securities, usually trading for less than $3 a share. They are not listed on stock exchanges, and there is often a lack of reliable information about them.
Meyer Blinder, Penny-stock Brokerage King
March 1, 2004|By Claire Martin The Denver Post
Meyer Blinder, the bombastic penny-stock brokerage king whose mercurial career mirrored the rise and fall of the industry that enriched and then imprisoned him, died Thursday of cardiac problems in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 82.
Mr. Blinder's Denver-based brokerage, Blinder Robinson & Co., was credited with launching the penny-stock boom of the 1980s. He proudly referred to himself as "the king of the penny stock market," presenting his firm as the working man's Dean Witter.
 
Mr. Blinder was born in New York City to a financially struggling family. After two years of high school, he dropped out to help his mother run the family grocery store. The hours ranged from 5 a.m. to midnight, instilling the indefatigable work ethic that characterized his career.
He served in the Army during World War II and was part of the 1944 invasion of Normandy. Six days after landing in Normandy, an artillery attack left his body permanently peppered with shrapnel. For years afterward, Mr. Blinder enjoyed challenging people to feel the shrapnel fragments in his right arm.
On his return to New York, Mr. Blinder and his brother spent the 1950s running a coffee machine vending route. Employees watching the Blinder brothers recover the coins from the coffee machines often asked to join their business.
Instead, Mr. Blinder invited them to become shareholders of stock the brothers sold themselves. They earned such a comfortable financial cushion that Mr. Blinder retired for a few years in the 1960s.
By 1970, he was in business again as a Long Island stockbroker. In 1977, Mr. Blinder heard about a Denver brokerage facing liquidation. He took on the firm.
"We helped those customers survive and go on, instead of being stuck in liquidation," said his son, Larry Blinder, articulating the strategy that characterized other penny stock deals.
In 1979, he had trouble selling the stock of the New Jersey gaming company he had underwritten. Mr. Blinder bought the remaining public stock and told his brokers to recommend it enthusiastically to their customers -- improperly, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Meanwhile, Mr. Blinder took advantage of his discovery that money could be made by buying companies, taking them public, selling the stock cheap and collecting commissions as the stocks' value doubled and tripled -- then plummeted again.
"The number of people who actually made money in penny stocks is pretty small," said Henry Dubroff, editor and publisher of the Pacific Coast Business Tribune in Santa Barbara, Calif.
"What he did was hype the stock, take it public and then he made money even if it collapsed. He was really like a prototype for a lot of the excesses we saw later. There's very little difference between what the Enron guys did and what he did, except the Enron guys had a major accounting firm and computer technology that allowed them to manipulate the books in a way that a guy like Meyer could only dream of."
 
Even so, Mr. Blinder was a wealthy man, with an estimated net worth of $100 million. He shared his wealth, establishing a fellowship at the University of California-Los Angeles and donating money to Denver charities, including the Volunteers of America, which once named him man of the year, his son said.
Blinder Robinson & Co.'s headquarters was in a 10-story building he built in 1981.
"Meyer was bigger than life," said Denver attorney Philip Feigin, who was Mr. Blinder's adversary when he was Colorado securities commissioner. "He could be a loving, grandfatherly kind of guy, and he could be a tyrant. He made up his own rules, and he wasn't particular about the details. He really was a Denver legend. He symbolized an era ... that for years established Denver as the Beirut of American finance."
But Blinder Robinson & Co.'s investors, sinking their money into inflated stocks, steadily lost millions that were never recovered.
On Dec. 19, 1986, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Mr. Blinder with securities fraud, a charge he managed to elude until well after his firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1990. Two years later, he was convicted on federal charges of racketeering and money laundering, and he served 40 months at a federal prison.
"I'm free! I'm free!" he shouted when he was released, pausing for a cigarette before he climbed into a black Jaguar.
His financial troubles continued into 2000, when the Internal Revenue Service filed a lien against Mr. Blinder's Englewood home, filing a notice that he owed $5.07 million in back taxes for 1982, 1989, 1990 and 1991.
"He burned very brightly and met a sad end," Feigin said.
"He worked as hard as anybody, but you wish that he'd put that effort to more legitimate ends. He just wasn't wired to obey the law."
Survivors include daughters Carol Marcus of Cherry Hills Village, Colo., and Janet Blinder of Scottsdale, Ariz; his son, Larry, of Greenwood Village, Colo.; and eight grandchildren.


Meyer Blinder Blinder Robinson (Blind'em & Rob'em) Denver Colorado