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Besides this being an impressively reported and written story, to me it's also another example of how wrong I continue to have been, since watching "Catch Me If
by danso 8y ago
Besides this being an impressively reported and written story, to me it's also another example of how wrong I continue to have been, since watching "Catch Me If You Can" and thinking that there wasn't much chance for a Fred Abagnale to exist in the modern centralized digital world (the Fyre Festival is of course another recent example of high-flying fraud). Reading about how easy it was for the victim's boyfriend, recently associated (but not convicted) with a criminal hacking group, to make himself seem like a big social media/crypto influencer makes me think that the arms race between verification and obfuscation will go on for a long time.
This story was also another reminder of how fast and overwhelming the news cycle seems to be these days. I remember reading Tomi Masters' death because of how unusual it was, but had completely forgotten about it until reading this story. If you asked me to remember when I first read about her case, I would've sworn it was at least half a year ago. But her death was reported in late December, so just about 1.5 months ago.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Abagnale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Abagnale
- Animats 8y agoarms race between verification and obfuscation will go on for a long time. It's worse at the top. Theranos. Madoff. MMM. Better Place. The entire binary option industry. Scams are getting bigger. Billion dollar scams were rare in history until recently.
- microcolonel 8y ago> Billion dollar scams were rare in history until recently. To be fair, a billion dollars was rare in history until recently.
- lstodd 8y agoThis. Big scams weren't rare though. Only no one studies history, but this is not new either.
- duxup 8y ago>Theranos That one still gets me as they solved none of the problems they claimed to have solved as far as blood testing goes, and there was zero legitimate indication they had....
- headcanon 8y agoLong story short, Elizabeth surrounded herself with politically powerful, but medically unqualified people like Kissinger and Gen. Mattis. The book Bad Blood does a very good job explaining the depths of the deception.
- sorokod 8y agoI think you make it too short. Isn't it interesting that people "like Kissinger and Gen. Mattis", hard and experienced men, allowed themselves to deceived by basically a pair of crooks?
- darkpuma 8y agoFrom what I've understand, upper management at Walgreens was very skeptical of Theranos but the CEO was very enamored with Elizabeth Holmes and wouldn't listen to anything negative his staff was telling him.
- duxup 8y agoThe other blood testing machine companies also knew that there was no way they solved all the problems Theranos claimed to solve all at once.
- User23 8y agoPretty privilege is real.
- roywiggins 8y agoI think some people just have a reality distortion field they can project, it works best in person, and the CEO spent more time in hers than everyone else at the company. It's the reason why nobody finds a con at all convincing when it's told second-hand. Being conventionally attractive is probably very helpful but I bet the bar is higher for women would-be con artists than men.
- pjc50 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alves_dos_Reis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alves_dos_Reis : man prints almost 1% of the GDP in Portugal in "real" forged notes through an elaborate scheme, and nearly manages to buy the bank of Portugal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_schemes_in_Albania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_schemes_in_Albania : entire economy of Albania consumed by pyramid schemes, resulting in civil war. (There's a lot more of this stuff in "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds", from earlier in history)
- JetSpiegel 8y agoAlves dos Reis is a great story. He managed to forge the central bank request to print notes, the notes were literally from the same printing presses so they weren't even fakes, as you mention.
- pjc50 8y agoI recently got hold of the book ("the man who stole portugal") and it's full of tremendous little details, like the notes being delivered by the printers in travelling trunks to the left luggage office of Victoria station. The whole thing relied on William Waterlow being spectacularly naive combined with Reis' skills in forging credentials and letters of introduction.
- adrianratnapala 8y agoI think Albania is a bit of a special case though. The crisis happened pretty soon after the fall of Communism. The country had not built up any the government institutions required to govern the new proto-democracy. As a result the government didn't merely fail to reign in the scams -- they actually encouraged them (presumably some government officials profited, which is why the people revolted). The result in Albania should be seen in the context of other major post-revolutionary histories. It was worse than the transition in, say, Poland but much better than, say, the French Revolution. The fact that the crisis happened to take the form of Ponzi schemes is just one example of the weirdness of history.
- y4mi 8y ago
- hopler 8y agoBinary Options aren't fake, they just sell an awful gambling product to dumb people. MMM what? 3M, or Mr Money Mustache's blog? What about Better Place? There wasn't just a startup that tried and failed and paid its insiders too much money? Madoff is an interesting case, because some of his customers were traditional conservative institutions, not just fools looking for a get rich quick scheme (who deserve what they get), but apparently avoided any auditing for many years?
- zozbot123 8y agoBinary options are "fake" in that they're often promoted by boiler-room operations in a fraudulent manner-- it's not like they're something that's actively traded on the market. If anything, it's more common to use a "collar" strategy in order to get a similar sort of exposure, but benefit from liquidity of the ordinary options markets.
- rkho 8y agoMMM is a ponzi scheme from Russia in the 90s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_(Ponzi_scheme_company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_(Ponzi_scheme_company)
- JetSpiegel 8y ago> In October 1994 Mavrodi managed to win a by-election to replace Andrey Aizderdzis in the State Duma, and with it immunity from prosecution.[17] Mavrodi claimed to be the victim of jealous bureaucrats, and that MMM shares would regain their value if he was elected.[18] During the campaign he was supported by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who hoped that Mavrodi would provide him with future financial backing.[19] After being elected he appeared in the State Duma only once, to vote against an attempt to strip him of parliamentary immunity.[20] This is after the bubble collapsed.
- User23 8y agoIt's a function of population growth. A sucker isn't born every minute anymore, it's more like four every second.
- nikkwong 8y agoIt's a function of the propagation of technology. Everything is automated, and all code is not equal. If you're to figure out some way to steal money electronically from your bank, and there is no defensive code in place, how will anyone ever notice? The automacy of code can allow these schemes to fly under the radar in a way that physical robbery can not.
- distant_hat 8y agoYou have to normalize to something like the GDP or GDP per capita or similar, with inflation numbers from the past cannot be compared to numbers in the present.
- moftz 8y agoCarders and fake ID manufacturers would be right in line with Abagnale's life. Everyone gets caught in the long run, the key is getting out of one scam and into a new one before you get busted.
- qaq 8y ago"Everyone gets caught in the long run" are there any reliable numbers of this?
- pitt1980 8y agoopposite of survivorship bias If you've heard of them, its because they got caught
- qaq 8y agoExactly there is a reason most APTs stay as some designation without any real people identified
- reitzensteinm 8y agoSampling bias would probably fit.
- PSZD 8y agoSomething that may not be obvious is how victims (companies, at least) frequently want to bury the story just as much as the person who conned them. "We lost 8 digits of internet money last night and have no idea who did it" just doesn't sound good to other people who are supposed to trust you.
- blang 8y agoFrank Abagnale has talked recently about how it would be much easier to do his crimes today: http://money.com/money/4953472/frank-abagnale-catch-me-if-you-can-scams-easier/ http://money.com/money/4953472/frank-abagnale-catch-me-if-yo...
- dmcdm 8y agoHe did a talk at Google where he asserted basically the same thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsMydMDi3rI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsMydMDi3rI Great talk by the way, he's an incredibly charismatic and well spoken story teller, also a consultant for the FBI and a successful businessman - which makes you think about just how important likability and charisma are both to being a successful social engineer and being successful in-general. People will let you stray pretty far from reality if they like you - Holmes, Abagnale, and apparently Troy Woody (at least to this poor girl). Eventually reality catches up, one way or another.
- ataturk 8y agoTypical Buzzfeed though--it is basically a story designed to continue legitimizing the pot biz. Instead of portraying the girl as a dumb stoner, which is really what she was, she is held up as some kind of brilliant hero. I've never met a single pothead who was actually brilliant except in their own minds and amongst their circle of (also high) friends.
- baud147258 8y agoTypical Buzzfeed though--it is basically a story designed to continue legitimizing the pot biz. Instead of portraying the girl as a dumb stoner, which is really what she was, she is held up as some kind of brilliant hero. I've never met a single pothead who was actually brilliant except in their own minds and amongst their circle of (also high) friends.
- fivefive55 8y agoThat's all you got out of this? Wow. Way to be ridiculously narrow minded.