Another Aspen Life Invented: Patrick Imeson

September 19th, 2007 at 07:34pm Michael Conniff 2

Now the truth can be told about Patrick Imeson--or can it?

The truth finally came out about Imeson, but word on the street in Aspen for months and months was that he had managed to invent himself as a private equity investor so effectively that he had convinced John Calamos, he of the Forbes 400, to invest tens of millions of dollars in a raft of questionable companies, including AEX Jet, now grounded in bankruptcy. 

Imeson told Calamos, among many other things, that he was a U.S. Naval Academy graduate. He was not. He said he was an F-14 fighter pilot. He was not.

Patrick Imeson was nothing more than a con man, a guy who came to Aspen as a ski bum and schmoozed his way into managing a fund of more than $100 million. There was AEX Jet and Zele Cafe, but most of the companies he acquired from Calim Private Equity were far from Aspen and of no imminent value. There was an exception or two, but the Calim portfolio had more dogs than Krabloonik.

I can't help but think about this as a metaphor to hang on Aspen: the man who made himself up almost from scratch--and got away from it for years and years. Was he afraid? Did he ever think he would be found out? And what up the small lie upon small lie he had to lay down time after time to cover his tracks?

Like a Dreiser novel, Aspen is still a place where people can hack out a new existence presumably better than the last. The average person would never fabricate like Imeson, but once the story starts to go down, perhaps the impulse to hedge becomes irresistible. At the end of the day, maybe Patrick Imeson created the fate he deserved: a quick trip on a private jet to the gates of hell.

Entry Filed under: Snowmass, Aspen, Colorado, Business, People, Pitkin County, Fractional Post, The West, United Post