Marketing: Pied Piper of Wall Street

Although Cortes Wesley Randell, 34, liked to say that he "wouldn't consider hiring anyone over 30," the founder of the National Student Marketing Corp. was hardly a hirsute radical himself. In five years, he worked himself up to a Lear Jet and a $600,000 Virginia horse-country estate by tapping the youth market and using its glamour to make money on the stock market. Then the paper profits suddenly vanished. Last week N.S.M. stock had sunk to $3 from December's high of $72, the Securities and Exchange Commission was looking into insider dealings,...