9 ms·

My high-flying life as a corporate spy who lied his way to the top

151 points by aagha 3y ago

stametseater 3y ago
From the author's bio > Robert Kerbeck’s true crime memoir, RUSE: Lying the American Dream from Hollywood to Wall Street is the story of how a wannabe actor became the world’s greatest corporate spy. Frank Abagnale, author of Catch Me If You Can, said, “Kerbeck has mastered the art of social engineering, or what he calls 'rusing', and taken it to a whole new level,” Frank Abagnale is now believed to have lied about most of the cons he supposedly perpetrated. Is there any good reason to believe this Robert guy is more legit? Either way he's still a con artist I guess.
- ip26 3y ago
  It’s idempotent. He pulled the greatest ruse, convincing you of his exploits as a con artist when in fact he wasn’t the great con he said he was ;)
jnsaff2 3y ago
Yet another fiction writer that writes fiction and lies about it being a true story? Why would one trust a person who advertises themselves as a liar? Do they suddenly turn honest in order to write a book?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- metadat 3y ago
  To be fair, it's only a memoir. This doesn't invalidate your points, though - only recommended as a pure entertainment read.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Yeah, I'm extremely skeptical after just the first story in this article. It says it takes place in 2006. Why would this person spend an hour reading these names over the phone instead of emailing them? I could understand plausible deniability, but if the woman with cancer thought this guy was in the compliance office, surely she wouldn't be thinking he wants to sidestep compliance rules. The whole thing smells extremely fishy, perhaps I'm just jaded be all the ever present grift online these days. And these con artists "coming clean" to write a book so they can bask in the glory of their exploits? STFU, you're a slimy douchebag, and your attempt to write a "true crime" book is even lamer.
  - MagicMoonlight 3y ago
    Because the caller doesn't have a legit email. It's the same reason the tax man asks you to pay your taxes in gift cards
- cwdegidio 3y ago
  It totally screams of another "Confessions of an Economic Hitman." It will be a bestseller, be proven fake, and then quoted a million times.
  - nocoiner 3y ago
    I bought that book years ago, it was so stupid. It was like a naive teenager’s uninformed screed about how international trade, development and finance are intrinsically bad. I didn’t know about the fabulistic aspects of it, but that’s not surprising in the slightest. Come to think of it, I think I still have it on a bookshelf somewhere. I should banish it to the same place I banish books that I’ve read because they seem interesting but are just right/wing agitprop (e.g., books that come to mind in this category were books about the over-expansion of the federal criminal code, the East German stasi and the dysfunctionality of San Francisco - I’m happy to have my perspective changed, but I don’t find that I’m very receptive to arguments that boil down to “your beliefs are stupid and that’s why these things are bad”). Another notably stupid book that I bought was called “A History of the English Speaking Peoples” - I (foolishly) thought it was going to be about the remarkably resilient political systems and economies of US/UK/Can./Aus./NZ but it was basically a white supremacist tract. No thanks.
- aaron695 3y ago
  [dead]
- ycombiredd 3y ago
  Well, he names real names. Gardia (Fox) is a real person (and the Hags were a real SoCal punk rock skateboard gang; see https://bust.com/living/18944-hell-on-wheels.html https://bust.com/living/18944-hell-on-wheels.html ) I don’t know if they are still married as is implied to have occurred around y2k but I suppose if one wanted some validation of his claims, she could be reached. After all, he does implicate her in his “dark gray” market doings. Her Twitter account took no effort to find. I’m not dubious (or perhaps interested) enough to do any digging, but would be interested in learning if someone else does, having found the article an enjoyable read and kinda hoping as I read it that it was all true.
greatpostman 3y ago
Personally know someone that became in the top 50 people at a major USA bank. They were a “quant” and claimed to be using sophisticated algorithms to trade the market. In reality they were making gut based trades with fake software full of complicated derivatives trading algorithms. Fooled some of the most well paid people in the world
- supahfly_remix 3y ago
  Was this person ever found out?
  - greatpostman 3y ago
    They got fired and the whole trading operation collapsed. They never discovered the extent of the facade, but there were suspicions. The whole thing went on for 15 years. A major portfolio. By then he had enough to easily retire
    - vulcan01 3y ago
      Why would they be fired, if they were one of the top 50 people in the bank? From a pure profit perspective, if this guy was that good, did it really matter if he was using 'sophisticated algorithms' or not? (I may have misunderstood your first comment. If so, please let me know.)
      - __alexs 3y ago
        The risk profile of someone who is consistently lucky is probably quite different from someone who is consistently right.
        getlawgdon 3y ago
        The longer the horizon, the less so.
        fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
howmayiannoyyou 3y ago
White collar criminal investigations and prosecutions have declined as counter-terrorism, drug, counter-espionage and politically motivated investigations have (greatly) increased. Is it reasonable to expect the majority of people to act virtuously when doing so puts them at great disadvantage in an effectively unregulated environment? This is what Liv Boree might call a Moloch trap - a game theoretic perspective on the common good eroded as competing individual actors seek to survive and/or flourish. The private sector attempts to control its own. SCIP, the Society of Competitor Intelligence Professionals, has a code of ethics that wouldn't approve of this article. How many SCIP members adhere to that code is a separate question, one I'd rather not know the real answer to. Similarly, hiring managers and recruiters will sometimes interview for phantom job descriptions, the real goal being eliciting competitor information. Patriotism, religion, legalism, altruistic idealism... there's no shortage of things we can cling to when doing the right thing is difficult. But without accountability & enforcement, unrestrained competition makes unethical behavior almost appear to be a necessity. We really must do better, but we are now so far removed from the collective consequences of our individual misbehavior, the road to ruin might be unavoidable.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
  << has a code of ethics that wouldn't approve of this article I can understand why. There is a lot of innocence that has been largely taken away from Americans. I want to say that prior to 1950 -- maybe even prior to 90s if you want to feel particularly charitable, there is a reasonable argument to be made, that an average American simply had no way of knowing a lot of the machinations behind the scenes. Things were largely under wraps, but between internet, 9/11 and resulting massive expansion of information sharing, IC size alone in terms of absolute numbers increased drastically. It is like being a teen and experiencing with your own eyes what 'adulting' is all about. Your perspective changes. << We really must do better, but we are now so far removed from the collective consequences of our individual misbehavior, the road to ruin might be unavoidable. I agree. I am becoming increasingly concerned we don't really talk to one another. You can't solve anything if you don't talk to one another; not for long anyway. I like US. I want it to stay semi-nice place to live for my kids.
- joe_the_user 3y ago
htrp 3y ago
> until some tech industry folks created a little thing called LinkedIn that made publicly available much of the information I charged a lot of money for. TLDR: he was selling org charts for wall street banks
markus_zhang 3y ago
Well nowadays they might come as <put your favorite db/os/tool> account managers out there. I have seen one and then realized they are probably not account managers.
compsciphd 3y ago
reminds of the husband on The Americans. These days, it would seem that simple training of employees that requests such as these (if they are ever legitimate requests), should only come in over internal communication systems that effort is presumably put into keep only employees access to and would identify the employee using it. Wouldn't be full proof, but would raise the bar significantly and increase the crime committed thereby reducing those who are willing to do it.
- magnuspaaske 3y ago
  This is part of the training where I work. Some places even let people know to be careful when updating Linkedin, exactly because people are stalking it to find new people to lure into some ruse
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
easyTree 3y ago
-- More times than I can remember they’d say, “I can’t believe I’m actually talking to you.” And I wanted to respond: “You’re not.” -- lool :-)
rcurry 3y ago
Maybe this guy did some social engineering at one time or another but the idea that he could get any employee at a Wall Street firm to spend an hour reciting the cell phone numbers of all their executives is a load of bullshit.
mariojv 3y ago
I'm still reading the article, but "Rabbit Hole" is an interesting recent series on Paramount Plus if the idea of a show featuring corporate espionage is interesting to anyone. I think it's an under-featured mini genre given how many people work quite boring corporate jobs who could use something thrilling to fantasize about.
mock-possum 3y ago
it's pretty unbelievable that someone would be pulling in 7 figures just for providing a list of people that worked at a company. all of that information feels so public. his clients were really willing to pay so much to... poach the employees? this really really doesn't ring true for me.
i-use-nixos-btw 3y ago
Honest question - is bonding over the nationality of ancestors really that big a deal in the US? It seems to be a solid theme in this. It just strikes me as odd that a nation with such a patriotic mentality define themselves as Welsh, Irish, Scottish etc because their great grandparents came from there. Besides, it’s a well established fact that if you can’t sing Yma o Hyd from start to finish, your Welsh credentials are confiscated.
- cafard 3y ago
  Umm. Well, if you turn up for Mass on April 17 at St. Patrick's in downtown Washington, DC, you will see a number of users wearing sashes of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and when you leave, you will see some young women doing step dances before the door. (And if you continue on to bars with Irish names of one sort or another, you will find persons of many ethnic heritages drinking too much.) Alexandria, Virginia, used to have Highland Games, in which descendants of (generally lowland) Scots will toss cabers and so on. There are big Italian-themed feasts in New York. The Germans I think were a bit daunted by a couple of world wars in the last century.
  - cafard 3y ago
    Not "users", "ushers".

151 points by aagha 3y ago

From the author's bio > Robert Kerbeck’s true crime memoir, RUSE: Lying the American Dream from Hollywood to Wall Street is the story of how a wannabe actor became the world’s greatest corporate spy. Frank Abagnale, author of Catch Me If You Can, said, “Kerbeck has mastered the art of social engineering, or what he calls 'rusing', and taken it to a whole new level,” Frank Abagnale is now believed to have lied about most of the cons he supposedly perpetrated. Is there any good reason to believe this Robert guy is more legit? Either way he's still a con artist I guess.

ip26 3y ago
It’s idempotent. He pulled the greatest ruse, convincing you of his exploits as a con artist when in fact he wasn’t the great con he said he was ;)

jnsaff2 3y ago

Yet another fiction writer that writes fiction and lies about it being a true story? Why would one trust a person who advertises themselves as a liar? Do they suddenly turn honest in order to write a book?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
metadat 3y ago
To be fair, it's only a memoir. This doesn't invalidate your points, though - only recommended as a pure entertainment read.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Yeah, I'm extremely skeptical after just the first story in this article. It says it takes place in 2006. Why would this person spend an hour reading these names over the phone instead of emailing them? I could understand plausible deniability, but if the woman with cancer thought this guy was in the compliance office, surely she wouldn't be thinking he wants to sidestep compliance rules. The whole thing smells extremely fishy, perhaps I'm just jaded be all the ever present grift online these days. And these con artists "coming clean" to write a book so they can bask in the glory of their exploits? STFU, you're a slimy douchebag, and your attempt to write a "true crime" book is even lamer.
- MagicMoonlight 3y ago
  Because the caller doesn't have a legit email. It's the same reason the tax man asks you to pay your taxes in gift cards
cwdegidio 3y ago
It totally screams of another "Confessions of an Economic Hitman." It will be a bestseller, be proven fake, and then quoted a million times.
- nocoiner 3y ago
  I bought that book years ago, it was so stupid. It was like a naive teenager’s uninformed screed about how international trade, development and finance are intrinsically bad. I didn’t know about the fabulistic aspects of it, but that’s not surprising in the slightest. Come to think of it, I think I still have it on a bookshelf somewhere. I should banish it to the same place I banish books that I’ve read because they seem interesting but are just right/wing agitprop (e.g., books that come to mind in this category were books about the over-expansion of the federal criminal code, the East German stasi and the dysfunctionality of San Francisco - I’m happy to have my perspective changed, but I don’t find that I’m very receptive to arguments that boil down to “your beliefs are stupid and that’s why these things are bad”). Another notably stupid book that I bought was called “A History of the English Speaking Peoples” - I (foolishly) thought it was going to be about the remarkably resilient political systems and economies of US/UK/Can./Aus./NZ but it was basically a white supremacist tract. No thanks.
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
ycombiredd 3y ago
Well, he names real names. Gardia (Fox) is a real person (and the Hags were a real SoCal punk rock skateboard gang; see https://bust.com/living/18944-hell-on-wheels.html https://bust.com/living/18944-hell-on-wheels.html ) I don’t know if they are still married as is implied to have occurred around y2k but I suppose if one wanted some validation of his claims, she could be reached. After all, he does implicate her in his “dark gray” market doings. Her Twitter account took no effort to find. I’m not dubious (or perhaps interested) enough to do any digging, but would be interested in learning if someone else does, having found the article an enjoyable read and kinda hoping as I read it that it was all true.

greatpostman 3y ago

Personally know someone that became in the top 50 people at a major USA bank. They were a “quant” and claimed to be using sophisticated algorithms to trade the market. In reality they were making gut based trades with fake software full of complicated derivatives trading algorithms. Fooled some of the most well paid people in the world

supahfly_remix 3y ago
Was this person ever found out?
- greatpostman 3y ago
  They got fired and the whole trading operation collapsed. They never discovered the extent of the facade, but there were suspicions. The whole thing went on for 15 years. A major portfolio. By then he had enough to easily retire
  - vulcan01 3y ago
    Why would they be fired, if they were one of the top 50 people in the bank? From a pure profit perspective, if this guy was that good, did it really matter if he was using 'sophisticated algorithms' or not? (I may have misunderstood your first comment. If so, please let me know.)
    - __alexs 3y ago
      The risk profile of someone who is consistently lucky is probably quite different from someone who is consistently right.
      - getlawgdon 3y ago
        The longer the horizon, the less so.
      - fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago

howmayiannoyyou 3y ago

White collar criminal investigations and prosecutions have declined as counter-terrorism, drug, counter-espionage and politically motivated investigations have (greatly) increased. Is it reasonable to expect the majority of people to act virtuously when doing so puts them at great disadvantage in an effectively unregulated environment? This is what Liv Boree might call a Moloch trap - a game theoretic perspective on the common good eroded as competing individual actors seek to survive and/or flourish. The private sector attempts to control its own. SCIP, the Society of Competitor Intelligence Professionals, has a code of ethics that wouldn't approve of this article. How many SCIP members adhere to that code is a separate question, one I'd rather not know the real answer to. Similarly, hiring managers and recruiters will sometimes interview for phantom job descriptions, the real goal being eliciting competitor information. Patriotism, religion, legalism, altruistic idealism... there's no shortage of things we can cling to when doing the right thing is difficult. But without accountability & enforcement, unrestrained competition makes unethical behavior almost appear to be a necessity. We really must do better, but we are now so far removed from the collective consequences of our individual misbehavior, the road to ruin might be unavoidable.

A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
<< has a code of ethics that wouldn't approve of this article I can understand why. There is a lot of innocence that has been largely taken away from Americans. I want to say that prior to 1950 -- maybe even prior to 90s if you want to feel particularly charitable, there is a reasonable argument to be made, that an average American simply had no way of knowing a lot of the machinations behind the scenes. Things were largely under wraps, but between internet, 9/11 and resulting massive expansion of information sharing, IC size alone in terms of absolute numbers increased drastically. It is like being a teen and experiencing with your own eyes what 'adulting' is all about. Your perspective changes. << We really must do better, but we are now so far removed from the collective consequences of our individual misbehavior, the road to ruin might be unavoidable. I agree. I am becoming increasingly concerned we don't really talk to one another. You can't solve anything if you don't talk to one another; not for long anyway. I like US. I want it to stay semi-nice place to live for my kids.
joe_the_user 3y ago

htrp 3y ago

> until some tech industry folks created a little thing called LinkedIn that made publicly available much of the information I charged a lot of money for. TLDR: he was selling org charts for wall street banks

markus_zhang 3y ago

Well nowadays they might come as <put your favorite db/os/tool> account managers out there. I have seen one and then realized they are probably not account managers.

compsciphd 3y ago

reminds of the husband on The Americans. These days, it would seem that simple training of employees that requests such as these (if they are ever legitimate requests), should only come in over internal communication systems that effort is presumably put into keep only employees access to and would identify the employee using it. Wouldn't be full proof, but would raise the bar significantly and increase the crime committed thereby reducing those who are willing to do it.

magnuspaaske 3y ago
This is part of the training where I work. Some places even let people know to be careful when updating Linkedin, exactly because people are stalking it to find new people to lure into some ruse

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

easyTree 3y ago

-- More times than I can remember they’d say, “I can’t believe I’m actually talking to you.” And I wanted to respond: “You’re not.” -- lool :-)

rcurry 3y ago

Maybe this guy did some social engineering at one time or another but the idea that he could get any employee at a Wall Street firm to spend an hour reciting the cell phone numbers of all their executives is a load of bullshit.

mariojv 3y ago

I'm still reading the article, but "Rabbit Hole" is an interesting recent series on Paramount Plus if the idea of a show featuring corporate espionage is interesting to anyone. I think it's an under-featured mini genre given how many people work quite boring corporate jobs who could use something thrilling to fantasize about.

mock-possum 3y ago

it's pretty unbelievable that someone would be pulling in 7 figures just for providing a list of people that worked at a company. all of that information feels so public. his clients were really willing to pay so much to... poach the employees? this really really doesn't ring true for me.

i-use-nixos-btw 3y ago

Honest question - is bonding over the nationality of ancestors really that big a deal in the US? It seems to be a solid theme in this. It just strikes me as odd that a nation with such a patriotic mentality define themselves as Welsh, Irish, Scottish etc because their great grandparents came from there. Besides, it’s a well established fact that if you can’t sing Yma o Hyd from start to finish, your Welsh credentials are confiscated.

cafard 3y ago
Umm. Well, if you turn up for Mass on April 17 at St. Patrick's in downtown Washington, DC, you will see a number of users wearing sashes of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and when you leave, you will see some young women doing step dances before the door. (And if you continue on to bars with Irish names of one sort or another, you will find persons of many ethnic heritages drinking too much.) Alexandria, Virginia, used to have Highland Games, in which descendants of (generally lowland) Scots will toss cabers and so on. There are big Italian-themed feasts in New York. The Germans I think were a bit daunted by a couple of world wars in the last century.
- cafard 3y ago
  Not "users", "ushers".