Given how long it took to catch him, after years of outrageous purchases and shady business dealings, it makes me wonder if frauds are much more common than conventional wisdom would lead one to believe.
My feeling from a decade in large companies is that fraud is actually more common than non-fraud; for every real project I saw that was interesting, there were two or three that were nothing but tissue-thin propaganda.
So assuming the politics of every day life apply to the world at large, I can totally see fraud as completely rampant without batting an eye.
I gotta say, ditching a small airplane 30 miles off shore in the Gulf of Mexico is a hell of a risky way to collect $50,000 in an insurance payout. You've got a lot of faith in your ability to make a "water landing", much less that someone comes out and gets you before something goes wrong.
Sounds like a hell of a lot more fun than setting a house on fire.
yeah, the article seems to paint a pretty clear picture of a guy who figured out how he could crash-land a plane and get paid for the experience. he probably would have done it for $5.
I don't want to read a novel before being able to understand what this is about. At least the article could provide a quick glimpse at what the fraud scheme is. I kept reading for 5-6 minutes and then lost interest.
I don't understand this comment at all. First of all, the first paragraph is about a suspicious plane fire - the plane literally burned in half sitting in a hangar. That should provide you some hint about what the fraud scheme is going to be. There's even an animated image of a plane on fire! Did you need the author to print "this is a story about insurance fraud" in big bold print at the top of the story? Secondly,…
Apparently, HN is this user's version of book club. Rather than discussing the merits of the article, they'd rather discuss the style of the prose.
Given how long it took to catch him, after years of outrageous purchases and shady business dealings, it makes me wonder if frauds are much more common than conventional wisdom would lead one to believe.
Fraud is extremely common and the best way to avoid it is to get personal recommendations for anything important, like business contacts, lawyers, or accountants. Over a decade ago, a friend of mine was under the legal age when he sold his collection of websites with the same theme for around $100m. I'm sure you've heard of at least one of the properties. Being underage, he didn't know how to protect himself, and he…
Wow that's a crazy story that would benefit from the streisand effect to enact some justice on those scumbag lawyers. Any idea why your friend isn't trying to actively expose these individuals who screwed him over?
No joke. 4 out of 5 times I open a news article on HN it is some kind of novella I have no interest in. In our age of short time spans and competition for attention you would think news magazines would be concise and to the point, I would even say, lapidary. But for some reason they became an outlet for graphomania?
> In our age of short time spans and competition for attention you would think news magazines would be concise and to the point, There are terse news outlets, but news magazines whole reason for existence, from the beginning, is providing deeper, more complete coverage of fewer stories than “short-deadline, break-it-first” media like TV and newspapers.
More flowery, yes. Deeper and more complete? I didn't notice that.
Fraud is extremely common and the best way to avoid it is to get personal recommendations for anything important, like business contacts, lawyers, or accountants. Over a decade ago, a friend of mine was under the legal age when he sold his collection of websites with the same theme for around $100m. I'm sure you've heard of at least one of the properties. Being underage, he didn't know how to protect himself, and he…
Wow that's a crazy story that would benefit from the streisand effect to enact some justice on those scumbag lawyers. Any idea why your friend isn't trying to actively expose these individuals who screwed him over?
Well, at first he was worried that he'd be known as a sucker and wouldn't be able to raise money for another company. "I sold XYZ for $100m, now fund my new thing ABC." Sounds a lot better than the raw truth. Since then, he's started something that's doing well. Some pretty interesting investors, some market traction, but he's still no where near being worth $100m.
Well MLM scams are alive and well today and have been coming out of Utah for the last 20 years so I'd say fraud is pretty common. Check Craigslist for some fun frauds and scams, they're right out in the open. Social media are open markets for fraud too
My SO had an acquaintance try to convince her and her friends to join an airplane game scheme a week or two ago. I read the google drive PDF that they use to convince people, and it's terrifying how effectively it would prey on desperate people. Also crazy: nobody in the scam checks that NOT ONE of the people in that document (who mostly have unusual names) has a meaningful presence on the internet.
I gotta say, ditching a small airplane 30 miles off shore in the Gulf of Mexico is a hell of a risky way to collect $50,000 in an insurance payout. You've got a lot of faith in your ability to make a "water landing", much less that someone comes out and gets you before something goes wrong.
Ah but he claims he actually did that to sell waterproof iPad cases, according to the end of the article. Makes sense to me.