The Billionaire Boys Club: Rich Kids, Money and Murder

Joe Hunt, a mediocre scholarship student at an L.A. prep school, was by age 23 a failed commodities trader, but he nevertheless convinced some of his affluent former classmates to form the Billionaire Boys Club for the purposes of socializing and making fast money through shrewd investments. He virtually mesmerized members with his ``Paradox Philosophy'' (a sophisticated version of ``the end justifies the means'') and, by unscrupulous methods, raised vast sums of money--and lost millions. Hunt, in his turn, was duped by a con artist named Ron Levin; he informed his associates that he had killed him, and shortly thereafter other BBC members kidnapped and murdered Hedayat Eslaminia, the father of one of their own. L.A. journalist Horton suspensefully relates this shocking story from Hunt's boyhood through the 1987 trial at which he and two others were sentenced to life imprisonment. Photos. (Nov.)