Whether it was the chubby administrative assistants (photo) or the hardworking single mom working it at the local strip club, it’s clear that Danny Pang, the now-deceased California fund manager who died on house arrest while awaiting trial on fraud charges, loved the ladies. His attitude toward romance seemed to mirror his attitude toward money: The more of it he had, he seemed to believe, the better.
Of course, Pang could be as duplicitous when it came to love as he was with money. Soon before his death, it was revealed that in addition to his wife, he had a girlfriend in Taiwan. It wasn’t the first time: In this week’s epic Wall Street Journal story on Pang’s life and times, his ex-partner Jay Meehan recalls Pang’s romantic philosophy, which he learned upon the occasion of Pang’s first engagement:
Elaine Fan first met Mr. Pang while she was in college in California, and again when she was 25 on a flight back to her native Taiwan. They dated for less than a year when he asked her to marry him, she says. He threw an engagement party at the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel, a resort on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Several dozen guests dined in the hotel’s executive dining room.
Unknown to Ms. Fan, her fiancé was dating another woman, Janie Louise Beuschlein, whom he had met at a strip club, where she worked to help support two children.
He couldn’t, actually. In the end, Pang’s romantic Ponzi scheme fell apart: After his fiancée found out about the other woman, she broke off the engagement, and later, Janie, whom he did marry, ended up being shot under mysterious circumstances by Pang’s lawyer, on their fourth anniversary. So.
