5 ms·

> The key to McMahon's swindle, and his successful defense in the ensuing lawsuit was that legal documents listed the height as 480" as opposed to 480'. Investo

> The key to McMahon's swindle, and his successful defense in the ensuing lawsuit was that legal documents listed the height as 480" as opposed to 480'. Investors didn't seem to notice, and McMahon never verbally stated that the actual height of the building would be 480 feet (150 m).[2][15][16] The proposed skyscraper depicted in the blueprints that he distributed (and which were approved by the investors) was clearly labeled as consisting of four floors and 480 inches (12 m)

jamesgreenleaf 6y ago
That's one expensive apostrophe. I wonder if similar scams via smart-contracts exist yet.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- roywiggins 6y ago
  Yes. https://obelisk.medium.com/meerkat-finance-and-the-0-that-was-worth-31m-769d9321d245 https://obelisk.medium.com/meerkat-finance-and-the-0-that-wa...
  - jamesgreenleaf 6y ago
    Wow. It seems like the saga is on-going. https://cointelegraph.com/news/dev-says-31-million-meerkat-finance-exploit-was-a-test-will-return-funds https://cointelegraph.com/news/dev-says-31-million-meerkat-f...
Judgmentality 6y ago
I feel like mistaking " for ' is understandable, but how do you not notice 4 floors when you're expecting 40?
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago
  Too late, investors already gave him money by then.
  - Judgmentality 6y ago
    I'm not sure when they gave him the money, but it specifically mentions the investors approved the blueprints with only 4 floors. I understand people can be lazy and make mistakes, but that's pretty egregious.
    - sbarre 6y ago
      Think of the times though, and the engineering savvy of the average person back then. A comparison for today might be to put the plans for a computer chip in front of an average non-technical small-time investor and then use slippery language to trick them into believing it is something it's not. Tell them it will be the next big thing and will return their money tenfold, and greed does the rest. It's quite possible back then that the investors, having never seen a skyscraper - or maybe even a proper blueprint - just didn't know what they were looking at, never mind doing any kind of real due diligence.
      - geoduck14 6y ago
        I heard about a guy who was collecting investments for "innovative" windmills. They (actually) had a small prototype that could handle wind upto 150 mph. And, if scaled up to full size could produce "lots" of electricity. They just needed money to build and test a full size version. The scam is that windmills don't actually scale very well. If you have 100 MW blowing at the blades, you need a tower that can handle 100 MW of force - or something like that. Of course, what do I know? I am but a humble computer nerd.
        ithkuil 6y ago
        Watt is a unit of power and not force, which is already a hint that things are more complicated than that, says another humble computer nerd
dzdt 6y ago
I cannot imagine such a swindle being attempted in the US today, much less successfully. I feel a little sadness for that. There is something attractive about a place where so many crazy things are possible. Not that I would trade my existence for that one, but I feel something akin to nostalgia for the wide-open possibilities of such a place.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- pyrophane 6y ago
  I don't know, I look at the world of cryptocurrencies and things like NFTs and think, man, there are some pretty wild swindles going on right now! Things that Mr. McMahon would never imagined possible when he put 480" on those designs.
  - roywiggins 6y ago
    Crypto is already there. Swap a O and a 0 and you get a 31m swindle: https://obelisk.medium.com/meerkat-finance-and-the-0-that-was-worth-31m-769d9321d245 https://obelisk.medium.com/meerkat-finance-and-the-0-that-wa...
- bombcar 6y ago
  Nowadays similar things get out to the public and bored internet people pick them apart. The best scams these days are hidden under NDA so you never hear of them (one hired someone to disprove maxwell’s equation as that was needed to run their over unity device. So he developed tests that could show if maxwell was right or wrong and collected the paycheck).
- cosmodisk 6y ago
  I do follow some of the shortsellers and read their reports on certain companies from time to time: America has no shortage of swindlers even today,only nowadays they have fancy job titles.
JdeBP 6y ago
This entire lengthy discussion is based upon the premise that the story is true. But in addition to Tom Scott's failure to find a historical contemporary source for any of it, mentioned elsewhere on this same page, there's the 2010 challenge to the article on the Wikipedia talk page. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:World's_littlest_skyscraper#Possibly_an_urban_legend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:World's_littlest_skyscrap... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:World's_littlest_skyscraper/GA1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:World's_littlest_skyscrap... It turns out that John Kelso was in the same boat as Tom Scott: having failed to find any contemporary evidence whatsoever for this. All of the supposition in this thread about how it could have happened has the unstated premise that it even did happen in the first place, for which no supporting evidence has come to light. The sad thing is that the article went through Good Article review and was rewritten with the intention of making it clear that the majority of the article was an unsubstantiated local myth; yet here we have people on Hacker News who have clearly not absorbed that from reading it. The rewrite has not achieved its goal.
- singlow 6y ago
  The Wikipedia article certainly does not make clear which parts are fact and which are legend. There is a disclaimer early on, but after that, many statements are made and some of them are obviously factual, while others are related to the myth. After all, the building was built and it is 4 stories tall. Was the legend just that the original plan was accurate, but misleading, when it could have been that the original plans actually represented a much larger building? Were there not really investors who claimed to have been misled? Was there a lawsuit or not? Seems like there should be some record of that if it happened. If in fact the majority of these facts are possibly just made up or of questionable origin, there should be no discussion of the details beyond the statement that there is a local legend and its general substance. The detailed accounting of it should be omitted entirely, or moved to a subheading that delineates the entire discussion of the urban legend apart from the verifiable facts.
m463 6y ago
This is some "Spinal Tap" level humor. If you want to see a fascinating skyscraper that is actually quite tall (overtall?) check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/432_Park_Avenue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/432_Park_Avenue 1/4 mile in height, but only 100' wide.

jamesgreenleaf 6y ago

That's one expensive apostrophe. I wonder if similar scams via smart-contracts exist yet.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
roywiggins 6y ago
Yes. https://obelisk.medium.com/meerkat-finance-and-the-0-that-was-worth-31m-769d9321d245 https://obelisk.medium.com/meerkat-finance-and-the-0-that-wa...
- jamesgreenleaf 6y ago
  Wow. It seems like the saga is on-going. https://cointelegraph.com/news/dev-says-31-million-meerkat-finance-exploit-was-a-test-will-return-funds https://cointelegraph.com/news/dev-says-31-million-meerkat-f...

Judgmentality 6y ago

I feel like mistaking " for ' is understandable, but how do you not notice 4 floors when you're expecting 40?

simonebrunozzi 6y ago
Too late, investors already gave him money by then.
- Judgmentality 6y ago
  I'm not sure when they gave him the money, but it specifically mentions the investors approved the blueprints with only 4 floors. I understand people can be lazy and make mistakes, but that's pretty egregious.
  - sbarre 6y ago
    Think of the times though, and the engineering savvy of the average person back then. A comparison for today might be to put the plans for a computer chip in front of an average non-technical small-time investor and then use slippery language to trick them into believing it is something it's not. Tell them it will be the next big thing and will return their money tenfold, and greed does the rest. It's quite possible back then that the investors, having never seen a skyscraper - or maybe even a proper blueprint - just didn't know what they were looking at, never mind doing any kind of real due diligence.
    - geoduck14 6y ago
      I heard about a guy who was collecting investments for "innovative" windmills. They (actually) had a small prototype that could handle wind upto 150 mph. And, if scaled up to full size could produce "lots" of electricity. They just needed money to build and test a full size version. The scam is that windmills don't actually scale very well. If you have 100 MW blowing at the blades, you need a tower that can handle 100 MW of force - or something like that. Of course, what do I know? I am but a humble computer nerd.
      - ithkuil 6y ago
        Watt is a unit of power and not force, which is already a hint that things are more complicated than that, says another humble computer nerd

dzdt 6y ago

I cannot imagine such a swindle being attempted in the US today, much less successfully. I feel a little sadness for that. There is something attractive about a place where so many crazy things are possible. Not that I would trade my existence for that one, but I feel something akin to nostalgia for the wide-open possibilities of such a place.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
pyrophane 6y ago
I don't know, I look at the world of cryptocurrencies and things like NFTs and think, man, there are some pretty wild swindles going on right now! Things that Mr. McMahon would never imagined possible when he put 480" on those designs.
- roywiggins 6y ago
  Crypto is already there. Swap a O and a 0 and you get a 31m swindle: https://obelisk.medium.com/meerkat-finance-and-the-0-that-was-worth-31m-769d9321d245 https://obelisk.medium.com/meerkat-finance-and-the-0-that-wa...
bombcar 6y ago
Nowadays similar things get out to the public and bored internet people pick them apart. The best scams these days are hidden under NDA so you never hear of them (one hired someone to disprove maxwell’s equation as that was needed to run their over unity device. So he developed tests that could show if maxwell was right or wrong and collected the paycheck).
cosmodisk 6y ago
I do follow some of the shortsellers and read their reports on certain companies from time to time: America has no shortage of swindlers even today,only nowadays they have fancy job titles.

JdeBP 6y ago

This entire lengthy discussion is based upon the premise that the story is true. But in addition to Tom Scott's failure to find a historical contemporary source for any of it, mentioned elsewhere on this same page, there's the 2010 challenge to the article on the Wikipedia talk page. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:World's_littlest_skyscraper#Possibly_an_urban_legend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:World's_littlest_skyscrap... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:World's_littlest_skyscraper/GA1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:World's_littlest_skyscrap... It turns out that John Kelso was in the same boat as Tom Scott: having failed to find any contemporary evidence whatsoever for this. All of the supposition in this thread about how it could have happened has the unstated premise that it even did happen in the first place, for which no supporting evidence has come to light. The sad thing is that the article went through Good Article review and was rewritten with the intention of making it clear that the majority of the article was an unsubstantiated local myth; yet here we have people on Hacker News who have clearly not absorbed that from reading it. The rewrite has not achieved its goal.

singlow 6y ago
The Wikipedia article certainly does not make clear which parts are fact and which are legend. There is a disclaimer early on, but after that, many statements are made and some of them are obviously factual, while others are related to the myth. After all, the building was built and it is 4 stories tall. Was the legend just that the original plan was accurate, but misleading, when it could have been that the original plans actually represented a much larger building? Were there not really investors who claimed to have been misled? Was there a lawsuit or not? Seems like there should be some record of that if it happened. If in fact the majority of these facts are possibly just made up or of questionable origin, there should be no discussion of the details beyond the statement that there is a local legend and its general substance. The detailed accounting of it should be omitted entirely, or moved to a subheading that delineates the entire discussion of the urban legend apart from the verifiable facts.

m463 6y ago

This is some "Spinal Tap" level humor. If you want to see a fascinating skyscraper that is actually quite tall (overtall?) check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/432_Park_Avenue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/432_Park_Avenue 1/4 mile in height, but only 100' wide.