Three links, all to do with scams

[dolorosa_12]

I have an endless fascination with scams, pyramid schemes, and multi-level marketing schemes (whether they involve crypto bros or fundamentalist stay-at-home mothers selling leggings and essential oils). There’s something about the peculiar, cultish nexus of capitalism, evangelical religion and self-help that is both infinitely interesting, and desperately sad.

I’m not sure if the release of the glossy new Shondaland drama about Anna Delvey happening at the same time as these three deep-diving articles is a coincidence, but in any case it’s an interesting juxtaposition.

These Women Say Satan Has Taken Over An Essential Oil MLM

The elaborate con that tricked dozens into working for a fake design agency

‘I More So Consider Myself a Con Artist Than Anything’ What Danielle Miller learned at Horace Mann and Rikers. (With bonus Anna Delvey: apparently there is something of a revolving door of overlapping New York socialite financial scammers.)

All three stories are at once fascinating from a sociological perspective, and desperately sad when thinking about the individuals involved.

Comments

[darkmarcy]

You put if perfectly, these things are infinitely interesting and desperately sad. And I am going to read all of those links.

[dolorosa_12]

I hope you find the articles interesting.

[darkmarcy]

Yes I did! And I continued to the LuLaRoe article linked under the first one as well. MLMs are WILD!

[dolorosa_12]

I did exactly the same thing when I first read the MLM article, although I'd already discovered a lot about LuLaRoe through a TV documentary that I watched towards the end of last year — LuLaRich.

[lirazel]

I have an endless fascination with scams, pyramid schemes, and multi-level marketing schemes (whether they involve crypto bros or fundamentalist stay-at-home mothers selling leggings and essential oils). There’s something about the peculiar, cultish nexus of capitalism, evangelical religion and self-help that is both infinitely interesting, and desperately sad.


Saaaaame. I could have written these sentences myself.

And I will definitely check these out, so thank you for linking them!

[dolorosa_12]

It's weird, isn't it? Every scam is its own specific thing, but they also all have this common thread running through them (cults too — I feel that cults/scams/MLMs are all basically different aspects of the same thing).

I hope you find them interesting!

[lirazel]

The book Cultish is about how people use language to manipulate others, and I think you might find it interesting. It's not quite as deep as I wish it was, but it still might be something you could grab from the library and enjoy.

I read the first two and found them very interesting! Hopefully I can read the third one later.

[dolorosa_12]

That book sounds good! I've added it on Goodreads. Sadly it's not available in my public library network, but hopefully it will be cheap as an ebook at some point.

[lirazel]

I wish I could recommend it as worth buying, but I don't think it's that good. Definitely a wait-for-cheap if you can't get it from the library.

[ermingarden]

Wow, those articles were fascinating – thank you for sharing!

I read a book last year you might like, since you're interested in scams – if you haven't read it already: Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World by Tom Wright and Bradley Hope. It's about Jho Low and the 1MDB scandal, and it's almost unbelievably wild.

[dolorosa_12]

I'm glad you liked the articles.

Thank you also for the recommendation — this is the scam that involved the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund, isn't it? I'll see if I can track the book down.

[ermingarden]

It is! I hope you're able to find it.

[olivermoss]

Oh cool! I'd just been reading about the fake design agency.

[dolorosa_12]

It's such a weird (and sad) story, isn't it?

[olivermoss]

It is. The pandemic has created such a perfect storm for scammers.

[blackcatofmisery]

"infinitely interesting and desperately sad" is the perfect description. I don't really understand the technicalities of their schemes; I get more of the psychology and reasoning behind their actions, which I find just as fascinating. My big takeaway is always these people are really ballsy to carry out their crimes. They're on a different level than a personal murder or break-in robbery.

=^..^=~

[dolorosa_12]

I totally agree. The sad thing is that victims of robbery or burglary get sympathy, whereas the victims of a scam often get blamed for it, as if they deserved what happened to them.

[blackcatofmisery]

Yes! I've known people who have fallen for scams, and they all do seem like they should've known better, but part of why scams are successful is their charm or ability to worry someone just enough to think something like "Maybe this is a good idea, just in case." We don't always realize that we're totally without our right to just hang up on someone or leave or ask for more time for a decision; it's that pressure that's hard to face. Robbery victims don't experience that; even mugging victims don't, but they are faced with possible violence, instead.

[naye]

Thank you for these links - I am absolutely the same with scams and MLMs (and also cults, because - honestly, where do you draw the line sometimes?). I wish the Anna Delvey thing had been a little more, hm. Concise? Or a straight up documentary. But man, what a story. Looking forward to reading these three!

[dolorosa_12]

I agree with you re: cults — they, along with self-help nonsense, exist in the same space as scams, MLMs, and some of the more ridiculous tech startups.

My suspicion with the Anna Delvey show is that it would have been impossible to make a documentary because the super rich people involved didn't want to talk to the media, and so it ended up being a dramatisation. I'm only two episodes in, and while I can see why Shonda Rimes was drawn to the story, I'm not sure it benefits from her melodramatic style of TV drama. I'll still watch it to the end, but I agree with you that a documentary would have been a better approach.

[adore]

You might have seen this already, but here's a piece about the literary conman Don Mallory: A Suspense Novelist's Trail of Deceptions. The mindfuckery when I first read it. The guy tried to write a dissertation on Patricia Highsmith's Mr. Ripley. Apparently inspired by him, he became an emotionally manipulative impostor of the publishing world. He was an editor for Sophie Hannah who wrote about an impostor in her post-Christie Poirot novel, 'Closed Casket.' 'While Hannah was writing “Closed Casket,” her private working title for the novel was “You’re So Vain, You Probably Think This Poirot’s About You.”' He told lies that were 'singularly advantageous to his career' and hurt people without crossing any legal lines. The publishing industry is wary of him now, but his first thriller about a guy who emotionally manipulates his victims was a bestseller.
Gah.

[dolorosa_12]

I read that article when it was first published, but I read it again today and just boggled at the whole thing all over again. The chutzpah is just extraordinary, and what I find particularly bizarre is that this guy was obviously clever enough and competent enough to succeed in the publishing world without all the lies and manipulations. He just wanted to do so.

[adore]

what I find particularly bizarre is that this guy was obviously clever enough and competent enough to succeed in the publishing world without all the lies and manipulations. He just wanted to do so.

I find that particularly disturbing too. He decided not to have sincerity in any of his relationships and abuse sympathies. He didn't need to, but he wanted to. And I'm just like... why would you want that? After laughing at everyone behind their backs, aren't you lonely at all?

[author_by_night]

I need to check those stories out later! I find scams sociologically interesting as well.

[dolorosa_12]

I hope you enjoy (if enjoy is the right word) the articles. I found them fascinating, particularly the one about the fake design agency.

[singedsun]

Highly recommend the podcast by Robert Blevins, Life after MLM. She exited LulaRoe and has taken on calling out the predatory nature of MLMs on a variety of platforms, but the podcast is really good.

[dolorosa_12]

Thank you for the recommendation. I can't really do podcasts, but I have no doubt that hers is excellent, and I admire her for doing what she's doing.