Scam Artists I Have Known
Yesterday the Geek Squad came and with much wrangling (mostly “not my job” kinda stuff), I managed to get my TV’s switched over from Direct TV satellite service to streaming (I have the Cox Cable Gigablast 1 Gbps service). I have Apple TV ($149.95 and already obsolete from what I can tell) on the Office and Guest Room TV’s. I have FireTV from Amazon ($29.95… what a deal) for the Master Bedroom and Kitchen TV’s and I simply have Samsung SmartTV working on my Living Room TV. As best I can tell, all five of my TV’s are Samsung SmartTV’s and I shouldn’t need the belt and suspenders of either Apple TV or FireTV, but I have it since trying to get anything but my main Living Room TV working on its internal SmartTV works seemed harder than just adding the FireTV’s and the AppleTV’s were added a few months ago before I knew what I now know or think I now know until I know something different. The point is, I am currently flying without DirectTV but have yet to pull the plug on that, which I will do at the end of the month if this trial continues to work for us. You see, being able to cancel a $256/month service is well worth all the hassle since I’ve replaced it with Hulu Live+ ($75.95), which when combined with my Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max and AppleTV subscriptions still nets me a big savings each month…or so I hope.
Now that I have my entertainment system updated and optimized (Ha!), I am also slowly stripping away the other telecomm vestiges. Today I got Verizon to FINALLY cancel my Ithaca land line. It was tough and involved a website, a chat and finally a Muzak-laden phone call and a healthy dose of patience. In the end they accepted my resignation from my 26-year service history on the Ithaca house and told me they would send me a credit check for $30 for the rest of the month. I was tempted to say, “keep it” since the $1,200/year I spend on a service I haven’t used for a decade or more made the $30 seem pretty trivial.
Then I spoke to two of my life insurance companies where I am trying to change the trustee on the insurance trust from my 7-year-dead ex-accountant to my very much alive older sister. One insurance company is brain dead and I’m registering my complaint for the next step in the process. The other is more with it, but slowwwwww.
Last night we started watching (on Hulu Live+!!!) the new Inventing Anna series that is all the rage. It is a true (mostly) story about a young Russian-born socialite who bamboozled her way into a NYC, Paris, Hamptons, Ibiza lifestyle by pretending to have a rich Daddy and a trust fund. As she sits at Rikers Island asking for designer panties from the Manhattan Magazine (a.k.a. New York Magazine) writer who is trying to write her sensational story, she has not lost any of her imperiousness. It is classic tale of faking it on the road to making it. It seems to be a theme as the other night we watched Tinder Swindler about an Israeli who pretended to be Simon Leviev, the rogue son of Billionaire Lev Leviev. He was not just imperious in his attitude after being released after five months from Israeli prison, but he is actually trying to cash in on the fame of his swindling shenanigans as he runs around the world pretending to be the Prince of Diamonds.
Here’s the thing, I know Lev Leviev, having run his Africa Israel (USA) operation from 2008 to 2010. I’ve been in the fancy hotel room with the guy in Hong Kong, Tel Aviv and London (I never made it to Moscow, Thank God). I’ve met his shady Chinese/Angolan connections…the people who invented the concept of Blood Diamonds extracted from the warlords or South Africa. I watched the Dragon Lady of China Sonangol spit on the floor of that same fancy hotel. I knew the now deceased Jimmy Cayne and have had him blow cigar smoke (illegally) into my face in his ebony black Demons Den on Vanderbilt Street. Those and other moments were written up in House of Cards by William Cohen and made into the Adam McKay movie, written by Michael Lewis, The Big Short. I also ran a hedge fund that was founded by a big swindler from Newport Beach and an ammonia/hydrogen scientific research start-up founded by an even bigger swindler and shady man with a dark and mysterious past. I call myself a man of high integrity, but I manage to be unable to avoid all the corrupt and slimy sorts wherever I go. While I watched the Manhattan Magazine reporter going through the visitors drill at Rikers Island, I was reminded of my pal who spent nine days at Rikers and who I visited at the Brooklyn Federal Correctional Facility…tan jumpsuit and all.
But I have a rhetorical question. Who are the bigger swindlers, the people who pump up their social media presence and then ride it to free drinks and lavish hotel stays on the coattails of rich friends who have probably made their money through some shady means, or the likes of Verizon and the life insurance companies? I am teaching a course in business ethics, so I am thinking about the integrity theme every day. It is getting very hard to draw the line that says the Geek Squad, DirectTV, Hulu Live+, Amazon Prime, AppleTV, Verizon, Cox Cable, Spectrum (Cable and Wireless), Equitable, Mass Mutual, CIGNA, Northwestern Mutual, Citibank, Chubb Insurance, Visa, American Express, and Experian Credit Agency are any better or worse than Anna, Simon, Jimmy, Lev or anyone else that gets characterized as a scoundrel. I feel like the world is loaded with people of entitlement who want to take advantage of anyone and everyone. Some just steal money. Others make it impossible to stop paying them money. Some threaten to sue you if you don’t keep paying them money. Still others sue you in hopes that you will pay them not to sue you or to just make them go away. The scams and the scam artists come in all colors, flavors and styles.
One of the easiest things to do has been to find good grist for the ethics mill. I have a list of case studies on ethics as long as my arm that I can draw on to tell horror stories. The trick is to not make my students numb to the reality that there may be a sucker born every minute, but that there is a scam artist born every second. When its all around you it risks becoming the norm and we expect it and are less shocked by it. Donald Trump got fired by his long-time accountants this month. They said his tax filings since 2011 are suspect and cannot be relied upon. I guess this absolves the accountants for having represented to the world that his finances were valid and correct for the past decade. Who is the bigger scam artist, the con man who wears it on his sleeve or the accountant who everyone assumes has a higher ethical standard to uphold? It’s a crazy world we are living in and all I can say about all the scam artists I have known is that they shouldn’t look back on any of this for fear that they will be turned into pillars of salt.