Remaining anonymous as he posted on Twitter under the handle @GSElevator was simply a “device,†John Lefevre said on Tuesday, that allowed him to paint a broader picture of life on Wall Street.
In a first-person post on the blog Business Insider, Mr. Lefevre said that the Twitter handle wasn’t even a single person, but an “embodiment or aggregation of ‘every banker,’ a concentrated reflection of a Wall Street culture and mentality.â€
Mr. Lefevre was identified last month as the author of the Twitter posts that purported to reveal the uncensored comments overheard in Goldman Sachs’ elevators. Mr. Lefevre, it turned out, was not a Goldman Sachs employee. Instead, he was a 34-year-old former bond executive in Texas â€" albeit one who had been offered a position at the fabled Wall Street firm.
Now, Mr. Lefevre, whose Twitter handle has already yielded a book deal, has decided to shed some light on his pretend life inside the Goldman elevator.
According to the former trader, his pseudonymous writings were clearly poking fun at the world of bankers and traders and weren’t meant to be taken literally. “For the avoidance of any doubt, any person who actually thought my Twitter feed was literally about verbatim conversations overhead in the elevators of Goldman Sachs is an idiot,†he wrote.
Here is a highlight from Mr. Lefevre’s piece:
Many months ago, I tweeted about totaling a new Maserati, which is something that actually happened to me. I should have seen it coming; I was so intoxicated when I bought the car (just 5 days previously) that the dealership had to drive me home in it.
Right after that tweet, I had a few friends email me and say that I must be the person behind GSElevator.
And another:
Being anonymous had this enigmatic mystery and intrigue; it protected my privacy, but also prevented me as a person from getting in the way of the message. But to be clear, it was never about hiding.
And a third:
Being called a “fake†or a “hoax†by the same people who embraced me as “satire†is simply laughable - and it really speaks to the silly and opportunistic attempts at cheap headlines.
