Jeana (DP)
Former Member
LOS ANGELES The Sultan of Sleaze has a hangover.
At 3 p.m., he answers the ringing phone in room 811 of his hotel on Sunset Boulevard and sounds bewildered to hear a reporter with whom he made an appointment calling from the lobby.
"I just hurled," he says. "Give me a few minutes. I'll be right down."
Arizona-based scandal broker David Hans Schmidt is in Los Angeles to talk about his biggest score yet: some eight volumes of heiress Paris Hilton's diaries, videotapes, clothing, sex toys, furniture, financial and personal records in short, a lifetime's worth of Hiltoniana that can be yours for the tidy sum of $20 million.
* * *
Schmidt stumbles into the lobby in black lizard-skin boots and blue jeans. He is twitchy and dehydrated. His forehead is breaking out, and there are dark circles under his green eyes. Salt-and-pepper chest hairs peek out from beneath a black silk T-shirt. He is clutching a white bedsheet.
"Enchanté." He goes for a hand kiss instead of a handshake and quips, "We could make some video."
A black Town Car is waiting to take him to CNN studios in Hollywood for one of many interviews he will do in the next 48 hours about the Paris Hilton storage-space caper.
Schmidt, 45, is a huckster nonpareil who has created a niche for himself as a broker of celebrity *advertiser censored*.
"I hear all the time: 'David Hans Schmidt, we called you, not because we heard you were the best, but because you're the only one,'" he says. "I'll get in a jet and go wherever I have to to chase this stuff down. I'm chasing rainbows to pots of gold at the end."
Schmidt has had his hands in such gilded muck as the racy snapshots of Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx, nude photographs of former Scott Peterson mistress Amber Frey, topless photos of Pvt. Jessica Lynch, and the honeymoon videotape of skater Tonya Harding.
He is currently involved in litigation over a sex tape starring Colin Farrell and Playboy Playmate Nicole Narain, which Farrell would like to keep private.
"My father always said to me, 'David, I don't care what you do, just be honest and hardworking. If you're going to become a garbage collector, be the best garbage collector you can,'" Schmidt says. "And that's pretty much what I do. I'm a garbage collector."
On Dec. 22, a "mom-and-pop operation" that purchases defaulted storage leases paid $2,775 for the entire contents of a Los Angeles-area locker space, Schmidt says.
MORE AT:
http://www.courttv.com/people/2006/0206/hilton_schmidt_ctv.html
At 3 p.m., he answers the ringing phone in room 811 of his hotel on Sunset Boulevard and sounds bewildered to hear a reporter with whom he made an appointment calling from the lobby.
"I just hurled," he says. "Give me a few minutes. I'll be right down."
Arizona-based scandal broker David Hans Schmidt is in Los Angeles to talk about his biggest score yet: some eight volumes of heiress Paris Hilton's diaries, videotapes, clothing, sex toys, furniture, financial and personal records in short, a lifetime's worth of Hiltoniana that can be yours for the tidy sum of $20 million.
* * *
Schmidt stumbles into the lobby in black lizard-skin boots and blue jeans. He is twitchy and dehydrated. His forehead is breaking out, and there are dark circles under his green eyes. Salt-and-pepper chest hairs peek out from beneath a black silk T-shirt. He is clutching a white bedsheet.
"Enchanté." He goes for a hand kiss instead of a handshake and quips, "We could make some video."
A black Town Car is waiting to take him to CNN studios in Hollywood for one of many interviews he will do in the next 48 hours about the Paris Hilton storage-space caper.
Schmidt, 45, is a huckster nonpareil who has created a niche for himself as a broker of celebrity *advertiser censored*.
"I hear all the time: 'David Hans Schmidt, we called you, not because we heard you were the best, but because you're the only one,'" he says. "I'll get in a jet and go wherever I have to to chase this stuff down. I'm chasing rainbows to pots of gold at the end."
Schmidt has had his hands in such gilded muck as the racy snapshots of Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx, nude photographs of former Scott Peterson mistress Amber Frey, topless photos of Pvt. Jessica Lynch, and the honeymoon videotape of skater Tonya Harding.
He is currently involved in litigation over a sex tape starring Colin Farrell and Playboy Playmate Nicole Narain, which Farrell would like to keep private.
"My father always said to me, 'David, I don't care what you do, just be honest and hardworking. If you're going to become a garbage collector, be the best garbage collector you can,'" Schmidt says. "And that's pretty much what I do. I'm a garbage collector."
On Dec. 22, a "mom-and-pop operation" that purchases defaulted storage leases paid $2,775 for the entire contents of a Los Angeles-area locker space, Schmidt says.
MORE AT:
http://www.courttv.com/people/2006/0206/hilton_schmidt_ctv.html
