Greene way out of the PR closet now

Remember last year when I posted on the million-dollar wedding of real estate mogul Jeffrey Greene and New York real-estate executive Mei Sze Chan, at the groom's 27-acre Beverly Hills estate? Boxer Mike Tyson was the best man. I called Greene "one of L.A.'s least-public billionaires," but noted how he was coming out of the publicity closet. This week he stepped out further, being named to the Forbes list of 400 richest Americans for the first time, coming in at #355. He is profiled as The Reluctant Billionaire and as not very traditional: he let madam Heidi Fleiss stay at his place for a year after she got out of prison, and once sued director Ron Howard over a house rental gone sour (and lost big.) Sample:

If the rich are truly an eccentric bunch, newly minted Forbes 400 member Jeffrey Greene will fit right in. The Los Angeles real estate mogul insists he shuns publicity and extravagance--yet his public relations firm directed a reporter to meet him aboard Greene's 145-foot yacht, Summerwind, docked at the Sag Harbor wharf amid the playlands of New York's tony Hamptons....

When Greene is not sailing he bounces between five homes, including a 63,000-square-foot one in Beverly Hills, Calif. Greene dubbed the mansion Palazzo di Amore prior to using it last year to host his $1 million wedding, which the 53-year-old is quick to point out was his first. Boxing bad boy Mike Tyson was Greene's best man. Celebrities like director Oliver Stone looked on as reporters chronicled the affair.

So Greene now has been featured in Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and on "Nightline." Not a thing about him in the local Los Angeles Times, I'm told, which a search of the LAT archives seems to confirm — but with a caveat that LATimes.com searches are not always reliable. By the way, a Times reporter (as well as other journalists) did attend the big wedding. Maybe there's a story still in the works. The photo with the Forbes story is by Nathaniel Welch.