“I’m going to tell you what was weird to me: the fact that the Four Seasons has a private elevator. I never knew that. They have a private elevator for just certain people,” he says. “But my life leading up to that point felt surreal, so part of that night felt natural.”"
Reminds me FDR and the Waldorf-Astoria: https://www.6sqft.com/theres-a-secret-train-track-hidden-in-...
> The concierge then hands him an envelope with orders to circle the block twice before receiving further instructions.
What was in that envelope?
Many celebrities ended up involved, and it's a story that wouldn't be believed if it were fiction.
At the center of the tale is Jho Low, the wild-spending financier who burst onto the scene in 2013 by backing “The Wolf of Wall Street,” Scorsese and DiCaprio’s $100 million look at financial fraud and bacchanalian excess. As Low’s influence in Hollywood grew, scores of celebrities partied on his private jet, drank his Cristal and accepted his lavish gifts (DiCaprio landed a $3.2 million Picasso and a $9 million Basquiat), at least until his elaborate embezzlement scheme unraveled and he became a fugitive.
https://www.amazon.ca/Billion-Dollar-Whale-Fooled-Hollywood/...
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-entertainer-convicted-enga...
Launder money? That he deflects when the topic of money comes up is telling enough.
The wheel still turns. There's a few similar stories with the line "I never wanted to sell my soul, I just wanted the money"
Nevertheless I'd be curious to see the documentary, the hidden camera of the meetings with the Chinese spy would be very interesting!
Not passing any judgement on this particular persons story, just a bit funny.
Nothing will ever be as funny as Holmes' deep voice, though. The fact that she conned so many people is really one of the greatest modern examples of just how effing stupid most people are, especially those with a fair bit of power and money.
Carreyrou's book and pod are truly excellent.
I have a cousin with two special needs children. When I was first told that people in Silicon Valley fake neurological disabilities for clout, I didn’t believe it. I’ve worked in finance in the 1980s and ‘90s and I’ve seen some low behavior, but the fake speech issues of Holmes and the fake autism of Bankman-Fried are the sorts of things that even investment bankers would call unethical.
-edit- justice.gov says: "Michel was convicted of conspiracy, concealment of material facts, making false entries in records, witness tampering, and serving as an unregistered agent of a foreign power."
Obviously the AI that wrote the ad code has become sentient and it is trying to break free.
I still don't know what the guy actually did.
Maybe it's because i'm distorted by my profession but I like articles that describe facts in chronological order.
Here's it's as if there was a montage for an action movie with flashbacks and scenes and you're supposed to put the story back together
Songs on that album that contain the phrase "Dirty Cash":
Blue Angels
Cant Stop the Shining Pt 2
Get Your Groove On
Frowsey Pt 2
For the Love of This
Dirty Cash (Instrumental, lol)
Yeah eh Yeah eh
Avenues
Another One Bites the Dust
It's a solid dope album though, great production values if you skip the filler interludes.
---
Jho Low, a Malaysian financier, masterminded one of the largest embezzlement scandals in history through 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a sovereign wealth fund intended to spur economic development. Over $4.5 billion was siphoned from the fund to finance a lavish lifestyle, high-profile investments, and extensive political influence campaigns. Fleeing justice in Malaysia, Low focused on cementing his power in the U.S., including efforts to influence the political landscape and suppress investigations into his crimes.
Pras Michel, a founding member of the hip-hop group Fugees, became entangled in Low's schemes, leading to his conviction on 10 criminal counts. Michel first met Low in 2006, and by 2012, he was a key player in Low’s efforts to use his ill-gotten wealth to influence U.S. politics. Low funneled $20 million to Michel to gain access to then-President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. Knowing direct contributions from foreign nationals were illegal, Michel orchestrated a scheme using straw donors and political committees to route Low’s money into the campaign. Michel also used funds to buy seats at fundraising events and pressured wealthy acquaintances to participate.
By 2017, Michel’s involvement deepened as he acted on behalf of both Low and the Chinese government without registering as a foreign agent. In exchange for millions, Michel attempted to influence the Trump administration to drop the U.S. investigation into Low and to extradite Chinese dissident Miles Guo, a target of Beijing. These actions violated federal law, which requires registration for such foreign lobbying efforts.
Michel was also convicted of laundering millions of dollars tied to the 1MDB embezzlement and attempting to obstruct justice by pressuring straw donors to support his version of events during the investigation. The trial revealed Michel’s use of burner phones to contact witnesses, an act he later admitted was misguided. His defense argued that Michel was unaware of the legal boundaries and acted on bad advice from his attorney, including the use of artificial intelligence to craft his closing argument—a controversial decision.
The prosecution presented Michel as a knowing participant in a broader conspiracy to influence U.S. politics and aid foreign interests. Testimony from high-profile witnesses, including actor Leonardo DiCaprio and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, underscored the scale of the scheme. Michel was ultimately convicted of conspiracy, campaign finance violations, acting as an unregistered foreign agent, money laundering, and witness tampering.
All that said, being Black in America (and lots of other places) is a never-ending stress factory. We must change our racial societal structures and perspectives to end this centuries-long callous misery.
Regardless, if we use our resources to help others, that happiness will return to us from within us. There is only one source of happiness: to make others happy and then reap the benefits via the universe's natural karmic flow.
Most people are only concerned with selfish desires such that even their charity is for their own benefit, such as their public image or tax breaks. Truly doing something to help another human being -- without any self-concern save reaping the karmic happiness return -- is truly rare on Earth, but once one tastes that sweetest of nectars, one wants nothing else, ever. This world would be a different place if we human beings judged ROI in this most compassionate of ways.
> Adding to his woes, the government seized roughly $80 million from him.
That to me means that he was distinctively rich
The more I watch the behavior of the wealthy the more I see that either 1) there is never enough to satisfy them or 2) (more likely) getting it is the thing they enjoy — so why would they stop at some arbitrary point?
I think his wealth or lack of is orthogonal. The article in fact mentions his motivations being more along the lines of enjoying living on the edge, living dangerously (see his documentary work).
I mean, can't be doing all _that_ badly.
I think the same is true of positive attention. We’re social creatures, that’s part of how we survive. In the past we wanted to be part of a group, and having status in a social hierarchy could be a matter of life or death. Now that there are billions of people, and social networks make it possible to interact with a LOT of them. Humans evolved in circumstances where we weren’t ever likely to have as much attention as we wanted, so our wiring tells us to glut ourselves on as much attention as we can, which can hurt us (obsession, narcissism, etc.).
It’s better to have $5 million than to be broke. That absolutely true. But there is a level of wealth and position where you absolutely must participate in the most evil parts of society to stay where you are. The level of money that you can quietly have is not one that rich people are impressed by. There is a higher level, which you cannot have without the support of society, and the support of society is something you do not get unless you are actively participating in terrible things, either as a willful actor or, more likely in this case, a patsy who usually has no idea what’s going on.
I do wish this article had been more concrete about what those terrible things were, though. And I have no sense of where the man was truly a criminal or just way out of his depth. When people in the arts and sciences get caught up in these things, it tends to be the latter.
William Gibson, as usual, summed it up perfectly in Idoru:
“[Slitscan's audience] is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, Laney, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.”
Recent events, especially here in America, only ever prove Mr. Gibson's understanding of the widespread lowness of the human condition. But all his "prescience" is really due to his profound humanity.
Or it reveals actual reality: if you have lots of money, you probably don't have as many restrictions on what you can and can't do, so it may allow your "true self" to be actualized. Your true self may not be as noble as you think.
Who let's not forget, would go on to hang with Steve Bannon during the Trump years and use influence to build up scams to defraud 1,000s of gullible anti-PRC Americans (and others) out of a billion with a B dollars - he was the fraudster CCP claimed he was all along (scammed banks in PRC), albiet a connected one with some limited insight into old CCP drama, hence US treated him as valuble anti CCP dissident. Truly top kek leopardsatemyface development that no one would have forseen.
A chinese fraudster who scammed PRC banks that "defected" by claiming to be a dissident, that PRC said for years was a fraudster, who would go on to defraud Americans out of a BILLION dollars, because US state department thought he was some anti CCP dissident with deep insight into the CCP, instead of you know... a fraudster. Though to be fair, both could to be true. I hope US got a billion dollars worth outdated info from him.
ugh. why do you suppose there is a two degrees of magnitude difference in crime between poor and rich nations? there is no connection to theft not sounding that bad when you are starving?
also, are you supposing all the gangs breaking into&robbing homes are actually bored millionaires?
Even in America alone there are a vast number of people living in extreme poverty. And the overwhelming majority will live perfectly normal lives, even if it means on occasion living off iceberg and ramen, as was the case for myself when growing up.
If poverty/desperation drove crime then there would be vastly more criminals, especially in rural areas, yet criminality remains relatively rare.
You'll find far less tolerance for criminal behavior among those who grew up in poverty, because they are the ones who have lived through it all and seen with their own eyes the sort of people who go down the wrong road. And the fault for going down that road lies with nobody besides those people.
Why not let me take it off both of your hands so you can live the ascetic lives you crave? Deal?
Terry Gilliam said much the same thing when talking about making Brazil in the 1980s.
"People think I am a prophet and that Brazil described the world we’re living in now a few years ago. But we were living in that world then; people just weren’t paying attention the way they do now."
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/magazine/terry-gilliam-is...
But I never hate, because hate is a poison to one's own soul, and must always be avoided. I do, however, feel a hot righteous anger at those that manipulate others for personal gain, especially when it's combined with callous disregard for their victims' well-being.
I wish more people were like you, who have found reasons to grow their compassion. Peace be with you, and your cousin's family.
It also damages our perceptual clarity. When Jesus said to "Love your enemies", there is a very pragmatic aspect to this beyond just trying to show them a better way. We can only see a person clearly if we love them; otherwise, we will see them through the lens of our prejudices, enmities, greed, ... whatever.
Selfless love also does not mean letting the Nazis of the world steamroll you and then proceed to dominate the next underpriviledged group. No, compassion demands that we protect the innocent, including ourselves. First, however, we must self-evolve ourselves back towards innocence by embracing universal -- but carefully watchful -- compassion.
It's a tricky business, being human :-)
But, wow, the wonders!
Is that true?
I get what you are saying. In my mind it is more like: it would be nice to be wealthy, but you don't want to get wealthy enough that you show up on the radar of the world's bad actors.
Think of it as game theory; or think of it like simple mob dynamics. Play Wolf or Mafia, and get an idea of how powerful information asymmetry can be.
Look down stream at where our cobalt, our lithium, our chocolate comes from; what we've done to Africa and South America and indigenous people everywhere; look what Epstein did, and who with, and how media covered it; look at the history of colonialism; look at how people who spoke out against Afghanistan/Iraq/Syria/US torture/drone assinations/Israeli occupation and atrocities were and are being treated by the political and media class. Look at how climate protesters are smeared while polluters are green-washed; not sometimes, but as a matter of course. There's not many ways to explain all the above without the original claim as a large factor.
I'd recommend Chomsky, Naomi Klein, John Perkins, Sarah Kendzior and Whitney Webb if you want to learn more.
No I'm not. I said "there's something to it". I'm not OP, and I think OP could be understood to be speaking as "in the vast vast majority of cases" rather than an unbreakable now-and-forever rule. It's wise to interpret people in the most charitable reasonable light, generally.
> but is it absolutely true, and absolutely true today
If it's true in 99% of cases, or 100%, the difference is pretty small. Seems odd to focus on.
And we weren't discussing whether or not this would be true in a hundred years, but what the situation is now and historically. Certainly there is a potential for radical change; I would even call it necessary.
(emphasis added)
I’m a founder of a venture backed seed stage startup, as a missionary not mercenary founder i do not seek extraordinary wealth but my shareholders do and I have fiduciary duty as well as substantial ownership. I struggle to accept without clear demonstration that my mission’s success means I “ABSOLUTELY MUST participate in the most evil parts of society”. This is a very strong claim, I don’t think it applies to me!
At the very least you have to exploit the labor of the bottom 99% of society in order to attain 1% wealth.
When you get to the level of Musk, I think it's almost self-evident that it isn't possible to attain that much wealth, without being directly responsible for a significant fraction of all the evil in the world.
That's slightly different from "participating in evil parts of society" but I think that it certainly would be difficult maintain that kind of wealth but somehow avoid participating in the activities of your peers.