Audio By Carbonatix
Consider this a prequel to this morning’s post about the Boca business dealings of Howard Needle. That post begged the question: Where did Needle get the original electronic cigarette that proved such a valuable tool for luring an investor like Richard Gladstone? It’s a story that Ron MacDonald can tell.
As he explains in the comments field of that post, MacDonald is the founder of Crown7, an e-cigarette company based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Needle was still publishing the doomed luxury magazine, Cravings Palm Beach, when last September, MacDonald says he got a phone call from Needle in which he claimed to have a quarter-million dollars he wanted to invest on a Crown7 infomercial. To MacDonald, who says he can usually trust his instincts for bullshit, Needle sounded like some 70-year-old with deep pockets — a demographic that, after all, is common to Boca. So he sent Needle about $500 in e-cigarette supplies, along with a bill. Below, the video from Crown7.com shows the kind of e-cigarettes he sent and which Needle smoked at the lounge, leading to his fateful encounter with Gladstone.
