Anyway, so…Burkle agrees to give him $100 million. On what basis? Well, Follieri tells him he's got the "right of first refusal" to buy the property and he's tight with this Monsignor named John E. Kozar. Sometimes Follieri would dress up Kozar in nicer robes that he kept in his office so as to pass him off as more than a monsignor.
Now, the Vatican's finances don't have anything to do with the American Catholic Church's. No one knows this better than fucking Monsignor Kozar, who just issued a batch of radio addresses on May 29 with this explanation:

This year was chosen for this project, Monsignor Kozar observed, because of its missionary significance for the Church in the United States. On June 29, 1908, a decree of Pope Pius X removed the designation "mission territory" from the Church in the United States, meaning that we were no longer dependent upon the sacrifices of the Catholics of Europe - through the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, one of the four Pontifical Mission Societies - to support our pastoral and evangelizing needs.

Moreover, the whole point selling off all that property was that the Vatican wasn't footing the bill. If the Vatican had been footing the bill, maybe some pretty art would be in the hands of some post-traumatic altarboys right now, but it's not. Anyway, so yeah, Monsignor Kozar totally knew that Follieri was full of shit, but pretty much every thinking person should have known, particularly Ron Burkle and, like, hello, the people in charge of selling Catholic church properties. But no! Because those people are fucking stupid, as a National Catholic Reporter story revealed in 2006:

“When Raffaello wants to meet with the bishop, they put the touch on from the Vatican and they get the meeting,” said one East Coast diocesan real estate professional. “They’re about as connected as it gets.”

Or here:

How well wired is the Follieri Group? In early 2005, Catholic blogger Domenico Bettinelli, editor of the Catholic World Report, summed it up: “Unless [Andrea Sodano’s] name was Wojtyla, you couldn’t get a better connection.”

Oh look, a Catholic blogger. That guy sure must feel stupid now!

I wonder if it was really a private eye or if it was the FBI. If it was really a private eye, maybe they were representing “supermarket billionaire Ron Burkle’s Yucaipa Cos.” who sued Follieri after accusing him of misappropriating more than $1 million.

Uh, ya think? By the way, Burkle actually sued him for $55 million and according to the Journal the indictment reads reeeeally similarly to his lawsuit, and also, just incidentally, if you were an FBI agent, interviewing you, why would you bother misrepresenting yourself? As a private investigator of all genius covers? Isn't that sort of like me calling up the DA's media relations department for a statement so I could post an update on my Tumblr?</

Wow, it’s funny to be caught up in the middle of all this, especially since I really don’t know anything about it.

JESUS MARY AND ALL THE APOSTLES BETTINELLI ARE YOU THE DUMBEST PERSON FUCKING EVER?

So much for us Catholics and our dogged prosecutory persistence in seeking/missionary zeal for finding the truth, right! I guess that's what I would say, if Ron Burkle and Bill Clinton weren't the biggest suckers in this whole fucking scam. A billionaire and a Rhodes scholar ex-president. Neither of whom ever had to believe in trans-substantiation.

Follieri Charged With Fraud; Claimed Special Vatican Connection [National Catholic Reporter]
Dear Anne Hathaway, If You Don't Read Your Ex-Boyfriend's Indictment You Are Going To Hell
Anne Hathaway's Ex Gets 21 Million Bail With Home Detention
Italy's Man From God [NYT]
Give Anne Hathaway's Ex Credit (Cards) [Fox News]
Vatican Ties Go Just So Far For Follieri Group [Post-Gazette]
Vatican Asks Condoleezza Rice To Help Stop A Sex Abuse Lawsuit [National Catholic Reporter]
Catholic Real Estate Bonanza [National Catholic Reporter]

• First Class lounges aren't really exclusive enough for Jennifer Lopez anymore, but she's got a resourceful fix: she slips through a mysterious unmarked door in the lounge, giving the illusion she is entering some platinum VIP area, when really she's just hiding in a storage closet. Yeah, I couldn't have made that shit up either. [MSNBC]
• Oh shit, and this JUST HAPPENED: so maybe JLo was just avoiding getting served with the $5 million lawsuit filed by the flight attendant her guard dog attacked. [TMZ]
• But a subpoena in that 1999 nightclub shooting — shit, it sucks when you realize something that feels forever ago actually was forever ago — found her! [NY Post]
• Verne Troyer is suing TMZ for $20 million over that sex tape thing. Not because it's a sex tape, but for copyright reasons. Show of hands: did anyone actually watch the clip of this? I really don't think he lost too many otherwise paying customers. If amateur midget porn is what you're into is a little clip really going to sate you? [TMZ]
• Bill Clinton and Oprah Winfrey ran into each other at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday party but sources say it didn't seem like they had much to say to one another. [Page Six]
• Will Anne Hathaway put aside the hurt she feels and save the poor puppy Raffaello Follieri can no longer afford to have walked? Well, Anne?? [Page Six]

• And speaking of our dashing Italian Vati-con, some socialite is pissed she invited him and Anne to some event and they paid for tickets and never showed up. Cry me a fucking river, Lauren Vernon. [NY Post]
• Babyshambles is pulling out of the Glastonbury Festival. [Guardian]
• Amy Winehouse is…still planning on performing! [Telegraph]
• "I do not speak to those two. First of all, he drinks too much. And is very insulting. And they are not invited to my July Fourth party in the Hamptons, which is very big and which is my fifth annual and which everybody wants to come to. She and I will keep doing the show, of course, but I will have nothing to do with her otherwise." Now, I know it's summer, when Cindy Adams devotes an entire column about a group of reality stars who actually fess up to making less than $1,000 a show, but this column is seriously kind of awesome. [NY Post]
• You can take Donda West's surgeon off your list of "Notorious Hollywood Plastic surgeons most likely to be nabbed on DUI charges" now. [AP]
• If you haven't already heard about this from that one guy you know who could die happy if only for another Phish Reunion tour, well…Phish might be reuniting. [Reuters]
• Will Smith's Fourth of July movie sounds reaaally promising. [Fox News]
• Jessica Biel is looking kind of gaunt and French these days, like she's taken up an unhealthy lifestyle or something, and I mean that in the best way possible. [People]
• Engaged: Uma Thurman, to some "financier." [He's Elle Macpherson's ex! -Ed.] [NY Daily News]
• Engaged and actually planning to wed: Portia to Ellen. [NY Daily News]
  Engaged and not actually planning to wed: Joel Madden to Nicole Richie. [People]

You probably feel like a fool. Ohhh, poor you! How do you think fucking Ron Burkle feels about that $55 million?? Ron Burkle, a man whose name is not exactly synonymous with "integrity"! Ron Burkle, a man who spent a few hundred grand trying to sabotage the career of a fucking gossip columnist who pissed him off.

That's why I entreat you to read the indictment, Anne. Sure, some painful memories will come flooding back: the custom-made suits from Milan. The "flowers, cosmetics, clothes, wine, expensive dinners, dog walking services and orthodontist expenses." The $30,000 housecall. The Caribbean vacation in 2006. The two-story apartment in Rockefeller Center that Raffaello rented for visiting members of the clergy. The notable absence in said apartment of any visiting members of the clergy!

A wise woman once said: "A woman especially if she has the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can." Wait, does that ring a bell?? Yeah, genius it was the tagline for Becoming Jane. The thing is, it doesn't apply to women who have no actual knowledge to conceal. And I'm not trying to get you to pull an Ophelia here but did the Feds even bother trying to question you? Did you ever get deposed? Let me tell you Anne, I would love love looooove to live in a world that allowed me to believe you waited until last week to dump him because you were recording his phone conversations, "backing up" his hard drives, strategically digging through his wastebaskets and mastering his rhetorical tics in preparation for your directorial debut, an epic black comedy on the striking guilelessness of powerful, influential, successful, and thoroughly rotten people when they believe themselves to be possibly in the presence of Christ Himself. At turns subtle and madcap, stark and decadent, it could serve as a scathing cinematic indictment of …well shit, you name it: organized religion, the human condition, Money, Power, the Vatican, vanity, "Love," your idiot self, even your ex-boyfriend.

But I somehow doubt it! Which is why right now, I hate to break it to you, he may be the one going to prison, but he is also kind of "winning."

Rafaello Follieri: The Indictment [WSJ]
Earlier: Vaticonned! How Anne Hathaway's Boyfriend Got Clinton To Underwrite Their Fabulous Romance

"Look, a gag rule on three nuns! Holy mackerel!" said Diaz, 74, in the parking lot outside the convent. "They do this to the ones who've been around for 57 years? No wonder they don't get more vocations. Would you want to join?"

Yeah, she figured out pretty quickly that was a fucking stupid idea.

Nuns' Evictions Pose Perception Problem For Catholic Church [Washington Post]

Ok, so basically Doug Band befriended Raffaello two years ago probs at some party with models, and Clinton agreed, through a fund he co-ran with supermarket billionaire/Page Six fanboy Ron Burkle, to invest up to $100 million in Raffaello's plan to redevelop Catholic Church properties that the Church would have to sell to pay their massive sex-related legal bills, which Clinton related to, being himself mired in sex-related legal bills. (It made sense that Raffaello would be the one to do this because he had reached the advanced age of 27 years old and knew the nephew of the Vatican's secretary of state, and yeah, I bet you forgot the Vatican had a "secretary of state.") To his credit, Raffallo's resume also included numerous other business successes that were completely made-up, and his father was a famous businessman in Italy because he had been convicted of fraud. Anyway, so Doug Band took a few hundred Gs from Raffaello, who in turn took a lot of money from various other big money types, for introducing Raffaello to so many big money types, who invested in them because investments related to the Clintons have always gone so well, and meanwhile Raffaello commenced snagging $40,000-a-month co-ops, accepting Clinton Global Initiative distinctions, and fucking Anne Hathaway. Oh: and buying private jets. He was so busy he forgot about the whole real estate thing! And then Ron Burkle caught on and got mad. And planted a blind item in his favorite newspaper suggesting he was cheating on Anne Hathaway? But she didn't dump him and so finally Ron Burkle sued and now Clinton comes out looking like he's totally learned that lesson about rich people who spend all their time jetskiing and dropping your name are probably shady and have no agendas other than fame and model fucking but provide good distractions to keep the media away all those damaging stories about real issues and shit.

How Bill Clinton's Aide Facilitated A Messy Deal [WSJ]