New York- A plush bachelor party for disgraced tycoon Dennis Kozlowski’s son-in-law included booze, scantily clad women on a yacht and even a dwarf for hire – and Wall Street companies apparently paid for all the hijinks.
Private jets whisked a crew of money men down to Miami from Boston and New York for the no-expense-spared weekend shindig for Thomas Bruderman, then a hotshot trader at Fidelity and the future hubby of Sandra Kozlowski.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether firms eager for Fidelity’s business helped foot the bill for the March 2003 bash, The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.
A federal grand jury in Boston is looking into whether corporate money was used for prostitutes and drugs during the weekend, the paper said.
Besides bikini-clad women plunging off the boat and waiters arriving on Jet Skis, the bash included 4-foot-2 Danny Black, who rents out himself and other little people for all occasions through his shortdwarf.com Web site.
“I’m like the Heidi Fleiss of dwarfdom,” Black explained to the Daily News yesterday.
Black wouldn’t say who hired him and said he only found out last week that he was entertaining one of the poster boys for corporate piggery. Kozlowski was awaiting trial at the time for using Tyco money for lavish personal expenses.
“Dennis was the guy with the $7,000 shower curtain, and now I’m like the 29-cent dwarf,” said Black, whose rates really start at $150 an hour.
Thomas Bruderman’s father pooh-poohed reports of wild bacchanalia.
“It wasn’t like a three-ring circus, it was a nice party,” said the dad, also named Thomas Bruderman, 63, of Fairfield, Conn. “There was only one dwarf. His name was Dan. He wasn’t a clown or anything. He was just a nice short person.”
Bruderman said he had no idea Black was hired for the event – and never wondered why he was on board.
“If a short person comes to a wedding, what do you do, go up to him and ask, ‘What are you doing, you dwarf?'” Bruderman asked. “He was funny, he was nice. He was just like one of the guests.”
The father of the groom said there were only a couple of young women on the boat. He believed them to be girlfriends of his son’s pals.
He insisted Kozlowski – who once blew $2 million on a Roman-themed birthday party for his wife on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia – sat next to him, sipping white wine and munching on sandwiches.
“Dennis was with me most of the time,” Bruderman said. “It wasn’t like he was with a midget or anything.”
After the yacht docked, the bachelor party moved to Miami’s landmark Delano Hotel on South Beach for the rest of the weekend.
According to The Journal, investigators are looking into whether Bruderman and others enlisted their companies to pay for the shindig as a business expense.
Federal regulators are probing whether that would violate rules prohibiting firms from paying for anything other than “ordinary and usual business entertainment.”
Bruderman was later disciplined by Fidelity and has since quit his post at the $1.1 trillion mutual fund giant.
Kozlowski was convicted last month of looting Tyco of hundreds of millions and faces up to 30 years behind bars when he is sentenced next month.
The elder Bruderman said he is amazed at all the fuss over his son’s bachelor party.
“Now there’s probably going to be a protest by the national short people’s association,” he said. “I can’t believe this.”
