For that subset of “true crime” followers who’ve a penchant for fraud tales, October is popping right into a plethora of high-profile cases. Donald Trump is facing civil prosecution for his decades of defrauding banks, buyers, insurance coverage corporations, and tax assessors. Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced CEO of FTX, is standing prison trial on accusations that each one that cryptocurrency buying and selling was simply cowl for heaps and plenty of fraud. And Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., got hit with another spherical of indictments for defrauding marketing campaign donors, together with simply taking their bank card info and apparently shopping for good issues for himself with it.
For the accused, issues haven’t been trying nice. These new prices in opposition to Santos comply with a responsible plea from his marketing campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, suggesting she’s turning state’s witness in opposition to him. Bankman-Fried has additionally misplaced management of his co-conspirator, former girlfriend Caroline Ellison, who has pled responsible and testified for hours against him at trial on Tuesday. Trump, whose social media presence resembles a coked-up chimpanzee on good day, is doing worse than common in the face of each day proof that his “wealth” was composed of lies greater than actual cash. In response to being faraway from the Forbes listing of 400 richest People, Trump screeched repeatedly on Truth Social that Forbes “is managed by Communist China” and accused them of conspiring with the New York legal professional common.
It is enjoyable watching such unhealthy guys face the music, however there may be one factor all these cases are missing, if one craves a satisfying story of crime and punishment: Sympathetic victims. Trump’s schemes principally concerned swindling banks and insurance coverage corporations. Santos allegedly cheated and outright stole from Republican donors. And Bankman-Fried’s empire was constructed on the backs of the sorts of tech bros who, after they’re not gushing about the glories of cryptocurrency, are arguing that Elon Musk is a brilliant genius. Completely different, if overlapping, sufferer swimming pools, however they principally have two issues in frequent: They have a tendency to embrace reactionary politics and they’re extraordinarily onerous to really feel sorry for.
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This will likely shock loads of individuals, however unsympathetic victims are frequent in fraud cases. Conmen choose to exploit individuals’s base instincts, equivalent to greed or conceitedness. That is additionally why the victims of these crimes are disproportionately from the proper aspect of the political spectrum. There’s nothing a fraudster loves greater than a possible mark who believes he’s smarter, savvier, or extra entitled than everybody else. Proper wing politics not solely attracts such individuals in, however as soon as in, the rhetoric of conservatism convinces them even additional that they know higher than the “sheeple.” An overblown self-opinion, frequent in GOP circles, is an indication in your again that claims “Swindle me.”
There’s been loads of consideration paid to how Bankman-Fried publicly positioned himself as a liberal determine, donating closely to Democrats and speaking up an enormous sport about “efficient altruism.” However when one digs in even somewhat deeper, that narrative begins to collapse. Most of the journalists who have been hyping FTX and cryptocurrency weren’t “liberal” in any significant sense of the phrase. The glowing protection got here principally from the tech and enterprise press, that are principally apolitical, if not downright conservative. As the Washington Post’s in-depth reporting reveals, Bankman-Fried donated “$5.2 million to Joe Biden’s presidential marketing campaign,” however “the marketing campaign had by no means even bothered to name him.” In the meantime, Senate Minority Chief Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., sat down to dinner with the cryptocurrency dealer.
Extra to the level, the chatter about “effective altruism” that Bankman-Fried used to paint himself as a noble determine could have borrowed its aesthetics from liberal academia, however it’s simply the identical proper wing arguments we have heard for many years. It is the “noblesse oblige” posturing of Nineteenth-century industrialists, who pretended that constructing just a few museums made up for grinding underpaid employees into mud. Or with Ronald Reagan’s “trickle down” economics that pretended we might all (ultimately!) see a share of the huge fortunes hoarded by the extraordinarily rich. As philosopher Émile P. Torres pointed out in Salon, the individuals pushing “efficient altruism” are sometimes additionally infatuated with different far-right concepts like eugenics.
However trying previous pseudo-philosophy to the materials victims of FTX is much more clarifying. Merely put, crypto preyed on libertarian dweebs. It is a group that will not be non secular, however in any other case tends to the proper on environmentalism, economics and tradition battle hotspots like gender and race equality. These are the same folks propping up far-fight “intellectuals” like Jordan Peterson or Richard Hanania, males who use pretend science to prop up reactionary politics, as a substitute of waving a Bible round.
It is also a bunch of principally males whose religion in their very own intelligence far outstrips actuality. It makes them perpetually inclined to crackpot financial theories, from clinging to the gold normal or arguing that earnings taxes are unconstitutional. Crypto preyed on that libertarian need to really feel smarter about cash than everybody else, proving of course that the reverse is true.
Crypto bros are simply the most ridiculous model of the identical phenomenon. Trump’s victims could have been extra conventional bankers, however it seems he used related theatrical ways to hoodwink them out of trying too intently at what he was promoting and the way little worth it really had. He threw cash round, put his title on all the pieces, and, crucially, used threats of authorized motion to silence most individuals who would dare publicly query his shell sport. In principle, banks should not have been wowed by all this foolish conduct. In observe, nevertheless, Trump’s fakery labored shockingly nicely to loosen up money reserves from individuals who actually ought to have recognized higher.
However whereas their schticks are very completely different, Trump and Bankman-Fried have been working the identical grift: Interesting to the ego wants of their principally conservative marks. Flattering them into pondering they’re in on the floor ground of one thing novel, adventurous, and daring, whether or not it is Twenty first-century tech of crytpocurrency, or the Reagan era-style of capitalist boosterism that Trump hails from. The important thing, all the time, is to flatter the mark into pondering he is half of one thing past the attain of mortal people, so he does not look too intently to see if that gold you are promoting him is admittedly simply painted-up items of wooden.
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In contrast to these two, Santos is a small-time participant in the fraud sport, allegedly screwing individuals over for a whole bunch of hundreds — at the most, just a few million — as a substitute of the billion-dollar scams Trump and Bankman-Fried are accused of operating. However his scheme operated on related logic. After years of allegedly operating different nickel-and-dime scams, Santos seems to have concluded, for good cause, that the GOP donation pool consists of simply shaken down marks. And, in his two-bit approach, he performed them like fiddles. Holding himself out as a homosexual and Latino Republican was its personal spin on Bankman-Fried’s “efficient altruism” schtick: A approach to persuade grasping reactionaries that they are really good individuals. It is a lie, however a profitable one.
Clearly, there are shady characters from each side of the aisle, as the recent indictments of Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., show. Notably, nevertheless, Menendez’s alleged crimes are about bribery and influence-peddling, not fraud. That is definitely not as a result of Menendez is an effective particular person. On the opposite, what he is alleged to have accomplished, in phrases of sharing info on American diplomats, might have triggered actual hurt to harmless individuals. No, it is in all probability simply that defrauding Democrats is loads more durable to do than defrauding Republicans, and so loads fewer individuals are tempted down that pathway.
From Donald Trump to George Santos, fraud cases expose the gullibility of rich conservatives www.salon.com 2023-10-12 10:07:51
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