Michael James Brody, Jr. was an heir to the Jelke oleomargarine fortune; upon reaching his twenty-first birthday in 1970, he rented a mansion in Scarsdale, New York, and with his bride (whom he had met two weeks before when she came to Scarsdale to sell his friends some weed) announced to the world that he would start giving away his fortune to anyone who asked, because he wanted "peace in the world." He wrote thousands of dollars worth of personal checks and distributed his largesse to all who asked. He later said that the idea came to him while high on drugs. The response was so overwhelming that he soon had to go into hiding, at about the same time many recipients of his checks found when they attempted to cash them that they were worthless, since the bank they were drawn on refused to honor them. Brody's gift giving career ended in April 1970 when he was temporarily committed to a California mental institution after filing a false police report, and was then subsequently arrested on a charge of marijuana possession. In late 1971, he was arrested on charges of making threats against the life of President Richard Nixon, and was also found sitting on the lawn of his sister's house in Norwalk, Connecticut while the house itself burned to the ground. Although Brody was arrested on an arson charge, the charges were later dropped. Brody soon faded from public view, and subsequently took his own life.