Free Republic

Brad Bleidt rationalized his heavy drinking and an apparently busted marriage on the ``magnitude'' of a Ponzi swindle that left him in a ``hell of guilt,'' he says on a tape intended to be his last words to his wife. ``I've lived with that horror of the day of reckoning for years and that's sort of where the drinking's come from and me being distant and me being removed,'' Bleidt said in the rambling message to Bonnie Bleidt left just hours before he botched a suicide bid. Bleidt gave little chance for his wife to brace herself before launching into...

Christopher Egan said Thursday that he has backed out of plans to purchase business radio station WBIX (AM 1060, Boston) in the wake of the investment scandal and attempted suicide by its current owner, Bradford C. Bleidt. Egan, the son of EMC Corp. founder Richard Egan, announced he was withdrawing from the deal to clear the way for a court-appointed receiver to recover assets of investors that Bleidt has admitted to cheating. ''I am very disappointed that this deal cannot go forward, but it is more important that investors cheated by Brad Bleidt have an opportunity recover some of their...

Regulators are scrambling to determine how much money disgraced radio-station owner and self-anointed financial guru Brad Bleidt may have swiped to start his mini-media empire - and whether investors will ever get a dime back. ``We're going to do everything we can to recover the money,'' said (MA) Secretary of State William Galvin. Bleidt, 50, allegedly tried to commit suicide last week after sending a tape to regulators on which he claimed he stole tens of millions of dollars from clients of his Boston-based financial management firm Allocation Plus Asset Management Corp. By yesterday, regulators identified a handful of banks...

Brad Bleidt saw a struggling radio station on the AM dial as the kind of opportunity worth taking a chance on. But it may have been the catalyst to unraveling two decades worth of lies and a dark secret that apparently haunted him to the brink of self-destruction. Bleidt - who on Wednesday night had joined a celebration for WBIX-AM, the all-business station he controlled for much of this year - was in critical condition yesterday following an apparent suicide attempt at his home in Manchester-By-The-Sea, Mass.. A taped confession delivered Friday to the Securities & Exchange Commission included stunning...