Marylin and Gillies. \nNEW YORK - "For God's sake, I'm an adult-movie actress. I'm not a professor of economics," pleads Marylin Star (Kathryn Gannon) from hiding in Vancouver, through her friend Marc Medoff of Adult Press Service. "Would the world give me a break here?"
In her first known statement for the public since her name surfaced last week in an insider trading scandal, Star says she's the real victim in the flap. She's accused of receiving inside tips on forthcoming mergers from investment banker James McDermott and then passing them on to industrialist Anthony Pomponio, resulting in both Star and Pomponio each making over $80,000 in the stock market.
McDermott and Pomponio are free on bail and say they'll fight the charges. Star fled to her native Canada when a warrant was issued for her arrest. She's now staying with her fiance Michael Gillies in Vancouver.
Gillies, ironically, is no stranger to stock scandal - he's a former Vancouver Stock Exchange regulator whose job included stopping insider trading; and, he's the former chief financial officer for a communications company that was involved in one of Canada's greatest stock scandals.
That's according to the New York Post and various Canadian newspapers, all of whom reported it over Christmas weekend, while Star and Gillies stayed secluded in his Vancouver penthouse, mulling over whether she would turn herself in to American authorities in an insider trading flap.
"I was manipulated," she says in her statement through Medoff. "Looking back, there's no question about that. I trusted older, more experienced, powerful, wealthy people who I assumed were acting properly."
She told Medoff she was spending the worst Christmas of her life behind closed doors because she fears going out, even though the FBI warrant for her arrest is all but useless in Canada and the State Department, reportedly, isn't trying that hard to extradite her.
But she took a somewhat bold stance in her statement. "When all is said and done in this case and everything comes out," she says, "we'll see who turns out to be the sleazy ones -- the guys in New York City on the Wall Street stock-market scene, or the girls in Los Angeles who do X-rated sex scenes. Let's see who gets labeled 'sleazy' then."
She says she may be able to tell the whole story "someday", adding that McDermott and Pomponio will be her "soulmates for life. I love you, I forgive you."
Gillies, however, was caught in an insider trading snare himself. Five years ago, Cam-Net Communications Network president Robert Moore was cited for securities violations, the Post says, after he sold over $2 million worth of company stock without filing insider-trading reports. His replacement was Darryl Buerge, who quit two years later when the U.S. Attorney in New York accused him of trying to bribe stockbrokers.
Cam-Net stockholders accused Moore, Buerge, and Gillies of inflating company stock price artificially, the paper continues, and the company settled that suit with a $2.2 million stock and $175,000 cash payouts to plaintiffs.
The Post also quotes Star's former husband, Bruce Akahoshi, as saying Gillies had better know what he's getting into, that Star had given Akahoshi great sex and heartache and herpes. He also claims Star married him only to get a green card - they met in a Calgary strip club and married in Lake Tahoe in 1994.
"I'm nothing special," Akahoshi tells the Post. "I don't make much money. I don't make $4.4 million like (her former lover James) McDermott. That's the kind of guy she was looking for." And he also says their own relationship soured when she decided to become a porn star, taking on a Jekyll-Hyde personality with Marylin Star as Hyde and Kathryn Gannon "as sweet as pie".
As Christmas approached, Star was reported mulling over how and when to turn herself in to American authorities, with Gillies and other friends saying she wasn't really aware she had done anything illegal and wanted to get the entire flap behind her.
But Pomponio said just before Christmas that Star's claims of innocence and betrayal are "more than ridiculous. And it's untrue," he told the Post. "She's a very determined person, and she knows what she wants." Nevertheless, he also told the Post it is "possible" she didn't know she had done anything illegal.
Medoff, said before last weekend Star remained distraught over the entire insider trading flap. The Post says she called him at about 3 a.m. last Thursday "hysterical".
"She was crying," Medoff tells the Post. "She feels betrayed and victimized by the people around her...She never thought she was doing anything illegal. She thought she was in conformity with the law."
Star's attorneys are said to be trying to negotiate a plea deal and she's still mulling whether to surrender. "She wants to come out," Medoff tells the Post. "She wants to talk. Things are at a boiling point." But he also says Star is "scared for her life. There's no question about it...She knows what she's dealing with."
