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How Two American Kids Became Big-time Arms Dealers

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Re: How Two American Kids Became Big-time Arms Dealers

#21

Post by VladRussian »

steve-howard wrote: post #13

I'll admit, I read the first couple pages' worth then skipped towards the ends. This bothered me: "An ATF agent posing as an arms dealer spent weeks trying to wheedle Diveroli into selling arms. Diveroli refused, but he couldn't resist bragging about his exploits; as agents recorded his every word, he talked about hunting alligators and hogs in the Everglades with a .50-caliber rifle. Finally, the ATF agent lured Div…

Because of his youthful stupidity and greed, Diveroli thought what he played the system. If we look at the situation from outside : government got cheap ammo, and there was only one problem - it was illegal, so somebody needed to be scape goated. They needed to bury Diveroli. I liked how FBI raided their offices just on the mere basis of factually wrong whistleblow about Chinese AKs - one gets to wonder how that was enough for a raid and who really blown the whistle. The entrapment was a nice professional icing on the cake. The house always wins :)

Re: How Two American Kids Became Big-time Arms Dealers

#23

Post by zaidf »

Anyone else avoid getting into gov contract work simply because it feels like you almost have to break the law to get major contract or deliver on them?

This isn't the first time I'm reading a story and thinking to myself but wait, I thought all successful gov contractors pulled strings like this.

Re: How Two American Kids Became Big-time Arms Dealers

#24

Post by phugoid »

What impressed me is how they overcame their age and the size of their business to compete with the big players, through meticulous hard work and unscrupulous social engineering.

With better ethics, I would love to have someone like that on my team:

"Diveroli knew how to win them over with a mixture of charm, patriotism and a keen sense of how to play to the military culture; he could yes sir and no sir with the best of them. To get the inside dirt on a deal, he would call the official in charge of the contract and pretend to be a colonel or even a general. "He would be toasted, but you would never know it," says Packouz. "When he was trying to get a deal, he was totally convincing. But if he was about to lose a deal, his voice would start shaking. He would say that he was running a very small business, even though he had millions in the bank. He said that if the deal fell through he was going to be ruined. He was going to lose his house. His wife and kids were going to go hungry. He would literally cry. I didn't know if it was psychosis or acting, but he absolutely believed what he was saying."

Re: How Two American Kids Became Big-time Arms Dealers

#26

Post by staunch »

For every one of these you hear about there are 100 guys driving around in Bentleys that were smart enough to play it just a little bit safer.

There's a relatively small group of people that get to bleed us like leeches because the defense department is run like the dumbest of all big organizations: limitless funds and no consequences for employees when they make bad decisions.

People make fun of the startup founder that sells his nascent company to Google for $20M as if he took advantage of the big dumb company. That guy doesn't hold a candle to even the smallest of the criminals milking the US on a daily basis.

Re: How Two American Kids Became Big-time Arms Dealers

#28

Post by GeZe »

The article tries to paint the two dealers as "a couple of stoner kids", but in reality Diveroli, the creator of the business, was greatly helped by his family situation:

"Efraim Diveroli, by contrast, knew exactly what he wanted to be: an arms dealer. It was the family business. His father brokered Kevlar jackets and other weapons-related paraphernalia to local police forces, and his uncle B.K. sold Glocks, Colts and Sig Sauers to law enforcement. Kicked out of school in the ninth grade, Diveroli was sent to Los Angeles to work for his uncle. As an apprentice arms dealer, he proved to be a quick study. By the time he was 16, he was traveling the country selling weapons."

In this business, which is all about connections, Diveroli was blessed with a network of contacts through his family. Without these, it is doubtful Diveroli would ever have achieved anything close to what he did.

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