Alan Shawn Feinstein: You know the name, but do you know how he made his money?

01:00 AM EST on Sunday, March 21, 2004

BY JENNIFER LEVITZ
Journal Staff Writer

CRANSTON -- Mars is in its heyday, but Alan Shawn Feinstein would rather not talk about his past promotional work for the Red Planet.

He would prefer to discuss the money his charitable foundation gives away here on Earth.

Yet, here he is, on a winter's day, Rhode Island's best-known philanthropist, being reminded about those Mars stamps he once pushed.

Feinstein, 72, is at his heavy wooden desk, in a brown vinyl chair with peeling arms. He has thick graying hair, and wavy bangs tamed flat on his forehead. He wears a lemon-yellow sweater. His tea is in a Grandpa mug.

Before him is a stack of those old direct-mail pitches, brought by a reporter.

"Let me tell you what happened," Feinstein starts. "First of all, we never made any guarantees whatsoever outside of our money-back guarantee."

It all goes back to when he was making his fortune. He published an investment newsletter and would invite readers to buy exotic collectibles marketed in deals with small countries.

Feinstein's Mars stamp set was issued from Sierra Leone, a war-torn nation on the western coast of Africa.

His offer quoted a "respected science researcher," who predicted that when alien life was discovered on Mars, the value of those stamps would take off.

Now, some 10 years later, Mars is in. The rovers are grinding through Martian terrain, beaming new discoveries back to Earth. There's talk of water. And if there was water, could there have been life?

Feinstein's Mars stamp investors think the time is right -- to sell.

Their offers on eBay and in the online classifieds make it hard for the philanthropist to leave his far-out business deals behind: "Purchased from Alan Shawn Feinstein, founder of the Brown Institute for World Hunger, Cranston, Rhode Island."

Feinstein enunciates carefully, and words like total come out "toh-tel."

"Isn't it a little pe-cul-yah," he says, "that you're spending time asking me about something I sold 10 or 12 years ago with a money-back guarantee, when, because of the tremendous readership I had, anything I mentioned sold a great deal, while in the past seven years, we've been able to raise 250 million. . . ."

He leafs through the papers.

"Here," he says.

"It's our one-year, ironclad, money-back guarantee. If you can get this anywhere else in the world at this price, or even close to it, or for any other reason, if you're not ABSOLUTELY delighted with it, return it to me for a FULL refund anytime in the next 365 days."

IT'S LUNCHTIME, and Feinstein gets up from his desk.

"Come on, we have to get out of here," he says.

He leaves with a small tote bag, goodies for children. He steers his white Grand Marquis, his first new car in 14 years, through the wide streets of Edgewood, a comfortable neighborhood of Cranston.

As he drives, he reflects on the stamp "purists," who had called his Mars promotion a gimmick.

"I was an outsider in that business," he says. "Someone comes along from the outside, and they are suddenly selling a tremendous amount. . . . People are very jealous of those who are doing more than they are.

"You can be the nicest guy in the world and there will still be a certain percentage of people who won't like it for one reason or another."

He arrives at Edgewood Highland School, where he trots down a hallway painted purple.

In the auditorium, he is welcomed by about 250 youngsters sitting four rows deep on the floor. The basketball hoop has been pushed aside. He stands before his Feinstein Junior Scholars, who keep a diary of their good deeds and receive rewards, free tickets and checks and such, from the Feinstein Foundation.

"Oh gee," he booms, "I'm so glad to see you. You're gonna be so glad I came today. I'm PROUD of the good things you're doing."

Eleven children unfurl a banner in his honor.

"Mr. Feinstein," they recite, in staccato, "thank-you-from-the-bottom-of-our-hearts."

A burst of applause lasts for 10 seconds. Feinstein accepts the adoration with outstretched arms.

"Now, it's my turn," he says.

"There are 128 schools in Rhode Island that are Feinstein Leadership Schools," he shouts, "but there is NO SCHOOL that is any bet-ah, or any dear-ah to me. I thank you, for all the good deeds you've done. I just wanted to tell you that I am just SO proud of you.

"GIVE yourself a big round of applause!"

They do.

"And how about a round of applause to the teachers who guide you."

Everyone claps, hoots, stomps.

He glances toward the door, where a reporter stands, and then turns back to the children.

"And I hope that this Journal reporter," he booms, "who has GONE BACK in my life now, 15 years, puts in something about the WONDERFUL teachers, puts in her story something about the wonderful teachers who care so much about their charge, their boys and girls, and encourage everything that I'VE been doing as WELL, as all the work they have to do anyway."

"Give 'em another round of applause!"

DOWN IN BROWNSVILLE, Texas, there is a different kind of Feinstein follower.

Art F. Ledezma Jr. is 46, lives with his parents, and has tried a number of moneymaking ventures, including selling "the heck out of" snore-relief formula.

"It's a combination of five oils," he says, by phone, "olive, sunflower seed, almond oil, sesame oil and peppermint oil suspended in water and a glycerin base."

This affable entrepreneur also once invested in stamps sold by Feinstein.

He recalls how Feinstein's offer just arrived one day in the early '90s.

Ledezma had been looking for opportunities. "Chain letters, you name it, all kinds of junk mail, all kinds of offers, network marketing and, somehow, somewhere, I must have gotten on a list. Alan Shawn must have bought a list. He sent me an offer, and I started corresponding with him."

Ledezma was drawn to what Feinstein was saying about Mars, and about the Sierra Leone stamps.

When Ledezma was young, he says, he had an encounter with a UFO. He and his friends were in Mexico, sitting on a front porch.

"I had seen meteors before, it was a real UFO," he says. "We couldn't perceive the velocity. Anyways, there were about 12 people at 10:30 at night. It left a lasting impression on me that there has got to be something out there."

So he bought the stamps, and tucked them away.

"When I saw all this stuff about the rovers going to Mars, how right now Mars is closest to Earth," he says, "I thought, man, I gotta get advertising and try to sell the stamp set."

He recently took his stamps from his safety-deposit box, where he'd been keeping them "real pristine" in bubble wrap.

"What Alan said was that as soon as they discovered something really, really credible, really good, really interesting . . . that those stamp sets would skyrocket in value, he quoted exactly."

(Actually, Feinstein quoted others who made those claims.)

"Every single letter, I have it in a plastic bag."

His stamps are for sale on 2,000 online classified sites.

Contacted by phone for an interview, Ledezma says: "Man, I thought somebody wanted to buy my stamps."

ALAN SHAWN Feinstein says he never imagined he'd make a lot of money. His parents were good middle-class people. He grew up in a Jewish and Irish neighborhood in Dorchester, Mass.

He was frail, back and forth to the doctors with asthma.

He couldn't play and run like the other children. "Yeah, I was a loner," he says. "I pretty much stayed to myself."

Once, at the park, two boys called him names and snatched his bike. They later felt bad, he says, and told him, "We've got nothing against you, kid, it's just that you're Jewish."

Feinstein says that such moments made him compassionate to those who were different, small, in the eyes of society.

He says his elders saw things in him. He keeps a letter from a priest.

"When you were a little boy," the priest wrote, says Feinstein, "your dad was my lawyer. He brought you into my office, and I said there was something very special about you, that are you were going to do remarkable things."

"He thought there was something special about me," Feinstein says, "and he was proven right."

AFTER HIGH school, Feinstein studied journalism and economics at Boston University. During summers, he collected trash.

After college, he wrote ads for a shoe company, but he wasn't happy. He returned to school for his master's degree. He taught grade school by day and wrote his novel at night. "I decided that I wanted to do something worthwhile," he says.

In his novel, Triumph, the main character writes ads for a shoe company, and rises to great power.

He says his work was a youthful attempt to join people of all faiths together -- and it was also probably based on his subconscious wish to be a man of influence.

A small publishing company in Boston printed his book. Sales were slow, so he stuck to the classroom, married, and moved to Bangkok, Thailand, to his wife's homeland. His wife, Pratarnporn Feinstein, soon got an offer to complete her residency in psychiatry in Rhode Island. By 1968, they were living in a pink-shuttered house on Alhambra Circle in Cranston.

The Feinsteins had three children, and the family was expressly known on the block for giving away good stuff at Halloween.

Feinstein taught school in Bristol. But he still hadn't found his calling, so he returned to writing.

He wrote a booklet, he recalls, "Making Your Money Grow." He says he advertised in some publications and sold several hundred thousand copies. He says he learned from "brilliant advertising writers."

A few books stand out on the dusty, disordered shelves in his office:

"How to Get Rich in Mail Order!"

"The Greatest Direct Mail Newsletter."

Feinstein made his big money, he says, from a newsletter and from collectibles. To find readers, he bought names from a "mailing list broker."

He paid $50 to $80 per thousand names, and says he probably queried several million potential customers.

Eventually, he built a hefty circulation for two newsletters, "International Insider's Report" and "The Wealth Maker."

"Over 400,000 people reading my newsletter, taking my advice," he says.

"There were coins, and presidential autographs, and items I was able to get from other countries. They could buy them from me."

He collaborated with the government of Guyana, in the northeast of South America, to bring out a set of cards honoring Babe Ruth on his 100th birthday. He says, with obvious pride, that each of the cards is lined in gold leaf.

On the front of each box of the "Official Baseball Stamp Cards" is a picture of Babe Ruth. On the back is a picture of Feinstein, and the story of how he bought the contract that sent Ruth from the Red Sox to the Yankees and then gave out replicas in exchange for $100 donations to charity.

Next to his image, the back of the box reads:

"Few people know the impact this man has had upon the legend of Babe Ruth and the bonds that bind them in their love and concern for children."

He says he has always been surprised by how his style of writing appeals to people.

"I remember I wrote to my readers, I was the first one to ever do this. I told them I had something for them, told them I had something for them," he says, repeating himself.

"I thought it would be very worthwhile, but I didn't want to reveal it publicly. I told them I didn't want to reveal publicly what it was. But if they sent me anywhere from $100 to $500, if they weren't absolutely delighted when they got it . . . then I would immediately send them a refund."

"That brought in $3 million," he says.

And what was the secret gift he sent them?

"I think that should remain proprietary."

ONE DAY in the 1980s, Feinstein took a call from a nun who asked him whether he had ever seen a bread line. "She invited me out to see one. I was surprised. It was very early in the morning and a line stretched around the block, all these people waiting and day-old bread -- and I guess that's what really started it."

In 1985, Feinstein offered Brown University $1 million to fight hunger, recalls Morris David Morris, a retired professor of sociology who was called upon to work with Feinstein and his donation.

"They were suspicious of him actually," says Morris, "because he is a sort of an oddball, a sweet oddball in the sense he's innocent. . . . He gives money and doesn't stand over you asking how you spent it."

And Brown was curious as to how Feinstein had made so much money, says Morris.

The Alan Shawn Feinstein World Hunger Program at Brown went forward, though Feinstein's fundraising style stuck out at the university.

Feinstein recalls how he once asked his newsletter readers to send money to Brown and 15,000 did. "The only reason they contributed was because I had suggested I would like them to."

"I wrote to Vah-tan Gregorian one day," he says, referring to Vartan Gregorian, the former president at Brown University and now the president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. "And I said, 'Vah-tan, you have the largest non-alumni following of any university in the country. What are you going to do with it?' "

Feinstein says Gregorian never answered him.

Feinstein, says Morris, was "this man who ran a newsletter and who constantly left the university a little uncomfortable by these imaginative programs."

"At one point," Morris says, "he had a proposal to raise money for Brown by getting some island nation to put pictures of Brown buildings on bills."

FEINSTEIN found opportunity for Brown, and his other charities, on Mars.

The 1976 Viking Orbiter Mission had picked up a picture of the Martian mountains. The rocks resembled a face. For the supermarket tabloids, it was as good as Bigfoot.

"A fellow by the name of Richard Hoagland wrote a book about it," Feinstein recalls, "claiming that the face was actually made by extraterrestrial life. I viewed it with tongue in cheek, but a great number of readers believed him and bought his book."

Seeing how his readers responded to the Mars book, Feinstein "made inquiries as to whether a stamp had ever been made of the face."

He says he offered his idea to his "overseas rep," who agreed that it would make a "wonderful stamp sheet."

His "rep" then worked a deal with Sierra Leone, which agreed to put its country's name on the 1990 "Face on Mars" stamp.

Sierra Leone is not prominent in the stamp world. But, like dozens of other small nations, Sierra Leone found that it could earn revenue from putting its name on coins or stamps. The items never circulate as legal tender, and are sold solely for the collectors market.

Typically, says Maria Libera, of the Universal Postal Union, in Bern, Switzerland, a small government will sell the right to use its name on a stamp or coin for a royalty, perhaps $10,000.

The items are then pitched -- think of those advertisements in Sunday supplements -- as exotic finds, and even good investments.

Madagascar, for instance, did a Princess Diana set. Antigua put out a Pokeymon stamp.

Feinstein offered his Sierra Leone Face on Mars sets for $135.

"I have received news from two different sources about secret, closeup photos of the Face taken by the Russians," he wrote, "revealing the Face to be so detailed there can be little doubt it was created by anything other than some kind of intelligent life!"

In "The Wealth Maker," he interviewed Hoagland, author of the Face on Mars theory.

Feinstein: "Why did you say that the Sierra Leone stamp set should soon be worth $10,000 or more?"

Hoagland: "That set is a commemorative. The value of a commemorative is dependent upon the intrinsic value of the event it is commemorating."

Feinstein: "What do you think that 'Face' is?"

Hoagland: "It is a constructed monument made by intelligent life. When the world finds that out, it will be nothing less than the greatest discovery in the world."

Feinstein: "What will it mean to us?"

Hoagland: "It will have an unprecedented effect on people everywhere, and on the value of the Sierra Leone set."

Feinstein won't say how many Mars stamp sets he sold. He says "that's proprietary information." He will say that he sold almost all of the stamps and that he made a "great a deal of money."

In 1991, around the time of the Mars promotion, Feinstein started his first charity, the Feinstein Foundation, based in a humble yellow and brick ranch, next door to Feinstein's family home in Cranston.

He says he started the foundation with a few million and kept rolling his own money into it.

Within a few years, he had given the foundation about $50 million.

FEINSTEIN retired from the newsletter business in 1996 and started another nonprofit, called the Alan Shawn Feinstein Foundation. He arranged for the Rhode Island Foundation to manage it.

"The minute he created a foundation he basically gave up the rights to his money," says Rick Schwartz, spokesman for the Rhode Island Foundation. "You legally have gotten your tax break and you have given your money to charity."

And so emerged the eponymous Alan Shawn Feinstein.

In time, in Rhode Island, classes commenced at the University of Rhode Island Alan Shawn Feinstein College of Continuing Education, the University of Rhode Island Feinstein Center for a Hunger-Free America, the Alan Shawn Feinstein Graduate School at Johnson & Wales University, the Feinstein College of Arts & Sciences at Roger Williams University, the Feinstein Institute for Public Service at Providence College.

When Feinstein's program at Brown University ended, he took $2.5 million to Tufts University in Medford, Mass., which opened the Feinstein International Famine Center.

He named a stage theater after his sister and an Alzheimer's center after his father, and placed a bust of his mother on a patch of grass in downtown Providence.

He gave 18 public schools $25,000 each. And there were all sorts of Feinstein grants.

"I'm honored that he calls me Ken," says Kenneth Grew, superintendent of the Foster-Glocester school district.

On a morning in January, Feinstein puts on a checked blazer with a U.S. flag pin, and in the front pocket a silk handkerchief. He wears a diamond ring, cut thick like a class ring, and explains that it belonged to his father.

He rides in the passenger seat of his Marquis, while his assistant Edward Walton drives down Route 195 toward Feinstein's next appointment.

The oldies are playing on the car radio, and Feinstein pulls out what looks to be a business card. He turns and hands the card to a reporter in the back seat.

"This is a Junior Scholar card. You have to commit yourself to the caring of others. You have to realize you can help make the world a better place. Do you know how many youngsters in Rhode Island have that card? Oh, take a guess."

"A thousand?"

Silence.

"There are 1,000," he says slowly.

"And 79,000 more. Eighty thousand boys and girls and over 1 million good deeds in every community in the state. A million good deeds."

"Five million," Walton corrects him.

"Five million?" Feinstein asks.

Walton nods.

"Five million, Ed."

"Oh, the good deeds," Feinstein continues, "read about them there. We encourage the students to do good for others. Simply put, they have to do good deeds, then they have a keepsake folder, and basically record their good deeds, and every time they look at that folder and see the good things that they accomplish, it will encourage them to do more and take pride in themselves and build their self-esteem."

The car pulls up to the Salty Brine studio in East Providence.

"We are cutting a recording to play in the sound dome at our kiosk at the Feinstein Imax for Feinstein Junior Scholars," Feinstein says. The Imax at the Providence Place mall bears his name. He doesn't own it, but he gave the owners a donation in return for their help with his community-service projects. He gets 10,000 tickets a year for children.

"When they get their free popcorn with their Feinstein Junior Scholar cards, the ushers at the candy counter will tell them to go to the kiosk."

Inside the studio, Feinstein records his message: "I wanted to tell you how proud I am of you, for all the wonderful things you do. This is Alan Shawn Feinstein,and uh, I know you're at the Feinstein Imax Theater, and I want to tell you this. At this theater, you're special. I hope to see you again soon and want you to remember that every time you do something good for somebody else, you're making the WORLD a better place. . . .

"I hope I see you soon. And, if you see me, anywhere, be sure to come up to me and tell me who you are. You're a Feinstein Junior Scholar and that makes you very special."

Later that day, Feinstein picks up the conversation about those Junior Scholars. "It's interesting," he says, "that you thought there were only 1,000 Junior Scholars."

WHILE FEINSTEIN turned his attention to charity, a Beanie Baby-style rush broke out over the Mars stamps.

People came to believe that the stamp sets were rare and bought them secondhand for thousands of dollars. Legitimate dealers priced them at around $100 or less.

Scott Stamp Monthly's annual Scott Catalog, the bible for stamp collectors, took the unusual step of putting a notation next to the Sierra Leone Face on Mars stamps:

"Extreme speculation has occurred with this issue, warning to collectors."

Don Carter is a retired chemistry professor from Wisconsin Area Technical College. He used to be editor of something called the Sierra Leone Stamp Collector.

"One guy wrote to me about 100 sets. It was the most pathetic thing. They thought they had a fortune on their hand and they didn't."

Eric Scott, owner of The Stamp Shop in Indianapolis, says people saw the Mars stamps as an investment opportunity. They would call his shop to sell them.

"We'd tell them what we thought they were worth, and they'd slam the phone down."

Michael Schreiber, editor of Linn's Stamp News, another leading stamp publication, says he has received queries about the Mars stamps -- as often as once a month over the years.

Schreiber says Feinstein's sales pitches were those typical ones that stop just short of promising anything. "He's selling dreams, he's selling imagination, he's not necessarily selling stamps."

Feinstein emphasizes that his record with the Better Business Bureau is spotless, and that most of his money has gone to charity. He also says that after he sold the Mars stamps, he advertised an offer to buy them back. He says his supplies were low.

He adds that some of his space collectibles did do quite well.

"As far as the Moon Mars card set goes . . . that set we sold for $18, and, the last I had checked -- of course, that's the only set that has all the astronauts that first walked on the moon, that set was made in this country -- it was valued in the catalogs at 50 or 100 dollars."

The Moon Mars set features astronauts, and, on one card, Alan Shawn Feinstein.

IN RECENT YEARS, former newsletter readers have been writing Feinstein, in Cranston, about the value of the Sierra Leone Mars stamps.

The Feinstein Foundation writes back, Feinstein says, explaining that "the last close-up photos of Mars seem to show that the face was nothing more than regular rock."

In Brownsville, Art Ledezma received one such letter from the Feinstein Foundation in 2001.

Edward Walton, Feinstein's assistant, wrote Ledezma that excitment over the stamps had cooled off.

To Ledezma, the letter was not entirely discouraging.

"On the other hand," Walton wrote, "should new pictures show otherwise or if/when extraterrestrial life is found, that could spark much interest in these items."

So Ledezma is watching CNN for news of the rovers. His Sierra Leone Mars stamps are up for sale for $5,000.

No luck yet.

Another Mars stamp seller on the Internet is asking $5,500. His pitch says the stamp set is destined to become one of the most valuable collectors' items ever known.

David Phillips, who runs stamp-site.com from Georgia, recently put a warning about the Face on Mars stamps on his Web site. He saw that a lot of people were trying to sell at inflated prices because of the hype over Mars.

But he found that not everyone is giving up on their Face on Mars stamps from Sierra Leone.

Someone named PhxTallGuy e-mailed: "These stamps mean more than your tiny brain could ever imagine. They represent the belief, albeit unpopular . . . that life started someplace other than on earth."

AFTER THE VISIT to Edgewood Highland School, Feinstein returns to the Feinstein Foundation. Down the hall to his office is an honorary degree, one of many. He says that it was when he started getting those degrees, that his parents seemed most proud of him.

"Any calls for me, de-ah?," he says to a college student who works in his office.

He takes out a tape recorder.

"You've seen me at elementary and middle schools, but I go to high schools, too."

He flips on the recorder. It plays the tape of his last visit to Bishop Feehan High School in North Attleboro. He listens to himself. When the applause starts, he holds up the recorder.

He starts going through files, pulling out fan mail and newspaper clips about him.

He looks again through that stack of old newsletters, and reads aloud that one-year ironclad money-back guarantee.

"I don't know anyone else that gave that kind of guarantee," he says.

Feinstein recently ran a full-page ad in The Providence Journal

His picture is in the top left corner. "I HAVE GREAT NEWS FOR YOU."

In the ad, he said he'd lost an unnamed key supporter, and was in a bind. He'd found a way, he wrote, to help the needy beyond his wildest dreams, and he needed to keep the momentum going.

Here is what he proposed:

Send money and he would match it threefold.

And, as soon as he received donations, he would send along a very special gift, "something I AM SURE you will treasure forever. Something you can not get anywhere else in the world!"

Feinstein won't disclose the departed supporter, but he's not broke.

The foundation's tax return for 2002 shows assets of $32 million, which Feinstein says is now down to about $25 million.

He plans to endow the Feinstein National Challenge, his annual multimillion dollar fundraising campaign to fight hunger. He wants it to go on, forever.

"If what I do, if what I do, helps to feed more people each year than anyone has ever done before," he says, "than I want to do everything possible to perpetuate it."

He says that the undisclosed treasure, the very special gift he touts, is a Mother Teresa coin from Turks and Caicos Islands in the British West Indies.

It's very rare, and very special. He obtained it through his government contacts, he says.

He says he doesn't plan to sell the Mother Teresa commemoratives, and wants to give the coins to people who share her heart.

At the end of the interview, he hands a reporter a document certifying that the coins were issued by Turks and Caicos, and minted at Osborne Coinage Co.

The Cincinnati firm also makes casino chips.

"You know what is going to be valuable?" Feinstein says.

"The Mother Teresa coin."