An environmental nonprofit run by Eagles great Don Henley has agreed to give back half of a $100,000 donation by convicted ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein, according to the South Florida Business Journal.
According to their mission statement, the Caddo Lake Institute seeks to protect the ecological, cultural and economic integrity of Caddo Lake, wetlands located on the border between Texas and Louisiana.
"The Institute wants to help settle this and help make the victims whole," Caddo Lake president Rick Lowerre told the South Florida Business Journal. "We understand the law and the problem and we want to resolve it. ... We just thought he was an attorney and we sent him a nice thank you letter."
Before Rothstein's $1.2 billion fraud scheme imploded in 2009, Henley dedicated the song "Life in the Fast Lane" to Rothstein and his wife, Kim, at The Eagles' concert at Bank Atlantic Center.
When political blogger Buddy Nevins alluded that the concert dedication was connected to the Rothsteins' sizable donation, a commenter named Scott W. Rothstein shot back in the comments section of BrowardBeat.com:
...the shout out was for my one year wedding anniversary and it was a surprise for my wife. Don Henley is a friend and the shout out was not "paid for" through charity or otherwise. ...I chose the song because kimmy and i always joke that my fast paced business and personal life have caused me to suffer the early onset of what we call marital dimentia....you know...selective recall ....so it was a lot of fun for us. Lets not read any more into it and spoil the fun.
Rothstein's "fast-paced business and personal life" resulted in a 50-year prison sentence for the partner of the Fort Lauderdale law firm Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler. His $1.2 billion scam allegedly involved touting "lucrative" investments in fake legal settlements.
When his scam was revealed in 2009, Rothstein fled to Morocco and even considered suicide.
But as reported by the Associated Press, he later testified, "I made a decision to come back, turn myself in, go to prison and tell the government everything I knew about everyone else that had committed crimes and everything about my crimes."
When the Rothstein's amassed goods were auctioned off in October, their outrageous collection included Kim's copy of the Eagles' Greatest Hits Volume 2 LP autographed by Don Henley and the rest of the band.