Chris Mann Interviewed by CNN About Star; Says He Introduced Star to Pomponio

Video Team's Chris Mann was on CNN Tuesday night to talk about Marylin Star.

Mann: "The CNN Financial people interviewed me Tuesday. They ran a minute of a 30-minute interview.They loved this story. It's so much more interesting than an ebay merger. My impression is that she is a savvy little investor.

"Where CNN was going with this interview was, was she smart. Had she played the market before? Was it my impression that she would know the difference between what is right and wrong in the stock market? Would she have known that there were insider tips?

"I had an agenda. They had an agenda. My agenda was to show as many Video Team boxes on CNN as possible. Their agenda was to get me to say, 'Marylin and I had discussed the market before, and after her three years of intensive training in Wall Street classes, she was savvy with the ins and outs and intricacies of Securities and Exchange law. And she figured out that if she fucked Jim McDermott that he would not be able to resist giving her little inside tips of some bank mergers coming up. And with that, she and her friend, the also savvy and shrewd Anthony Pomponio, who I knew as Tony from New Jersey, were going to become little Wall Street mavens."

Mann said he introduced Star to Pomponio in Atlantic City during the 1995 ECVS. Pomponio, an Atlantic City casino high roller, came to the Video Team booth gushing about Star who was signing at the booth. Pomponio said that he was her biggest fan and wanted a chance to meet her. Mann made the casual intros. "He and Marylin became friends ever since," Mann recalls. "They were almost like boyfriend and girlfriend which I thought was a little odd."

"At the next convention which was the 1996 CES, they were an item together," Mann continued. "Some time later she struck up a friendship with Mr. high powered Wall Street guy Jim McDermott. It was an affair. She would come in and tell us about her rich stockbroker boyfriend and how she was living the high life. Evidently she not only maintained this relationship with Jim but she maintained her friendship with Tony and continued to pass the tips from Jim to Tony. Tony and her opened up their Schwab account and boom...boom...boom. How this got discovered remains beyond me."

"From the time I met Marylin she was an assertive, aggressive go-getter. She came into the business, made a bit of an explosion; she's a self-promoter. She launched her website. If there was a business opportunity to be had, she was right on top of it."