Cozy bedtime reading about MLMs and bankruptcies
June 25, 2021 9:52 PM   Subscribe

Please share your favorite online longform journalism about scams, frauds, shady businesses, failed businesses, and the like. Preferably with minimal violence, though.
posted by moonmilk to Grab Bag (38 answers total) 80 users marked this as a favorite
 
Dan Davies Lying For Money is a book, but journalistic in prose, and it’s superb.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 9:59 PM on June 25, 2021 [7 favorites]


This longform NYTimes article about the baby formula gray market is excellent and gripping.

The lottery story linked at the bottom of the page is also great.
posted by mekily at 10:39 PM on June 25, 2021 [3 favorites]


Are you open to books? I have a zillion of 'em.
posted by praemunire at 10:39 PM on June 25, 2021


This article about the social media app Fling and its founder is one that has really stuck with me.
posted by greycap at 11:18 PM on June 25, 2021 [2 favorites]


It's not journalism but a firsthand account of fraud at Amway: Merchants of Deception, since you said MLM. I thought it was absolutely gripping, and the author can really write.
posted by pH Indicating Socks at 11:38 PM on June 25, 2021 [3 favorites]


iiluminaightii on YouTube - yes it’s video. But their sources are in a pastebin link the description which are often articles.
posted by Crystalinne at 12:38 AM on June 26, 2021 [2 favorites]


Dan McCrum's investigative reporting at FT helped crack open the 2 billion euro Wirecard accounting fraud.

If you're prepared to venture into the wild world of short-seller podcasts, there's an amazing interview with MiMedx whistle-blower Mary Armstrong.
posted by are-coral-made at 12:49 AM on June 26, 2021 [3 favorites]


CoffeeZilla on Youtube, expose on fake gurus on Youtube on crypto, investments, and more.
posted by kschang at 1:11 AM on June 26, 2021


A writeup of the Bre-X scandal in the Calgary Herald. No byline, for some reason.

The movie Gold about it with Matthew McConaughey, iirc, was entertaining.
posted by porpoise at 1:42 AM on June 26, 2021 [1 favorite]


There are many good articles about Theranos, the fraudulent healthcare startup that promised to revolutionize the way blood is analyzed. Here's one such article.
posted by alex1965 at 3:45 AM on June 26, 2021 [1 favorite]


"Sex and Death on the Road to Nirvana" is a Rolling Stone article about guru Michael Roach, who organized a three-year-long (!!!) meditation retreat. One of the participants ended up dying.
posted by alex1965 at 4:07 AM on June 26, 2021 [3 favorites]


The Dirtiest Race in History about the Ben Johnson doping scandal at Seoul 88 Olympics.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 4:28 AM on June 26, 2021


UFOs are much in the news lately. Mick West has done a great job at debunking recent claims (Google his name). I like this article about a seemingly-weird UFO encounter reported by the Chilean military -- an encounter that was mostly likely based on misidentifying a commercial airliner. Earlier this month, he wrote an article for The Guardian. And he has some excellent YouTube videos where he explains why the recent UFO sightings probably have mundane explanations.

The late Philip J. Klass was an earlier UFO skeptic. I know that you (the OP) are looking for articles, but I'm going to recommend a book from 1976: UFOs Explained. It's been years since I read the book, but I think each chapter stands on its own as a discussion of one particular UFO sighting. There was one story that I found especially fascinating. It concerned an alleged UFO-landing in a small town. The landing turned out to be faked by someone who was admired as a pillar of the community, had no history of eccentric behavior, and had no obvious motive to stage the hoax.
posted by alex1965 at 4:32 AM on June 26, 2021


The New Yorker: The Perfect Mark, about a priest who falls for a Nigerian scam and goes to jail for it.
posted by Melismata at 4:54 AM on June 26, 2021 [2 favorites]


Scam!, a book about an Irish Traveller clan who are con artists in the US.
posted by Melismata at 4:59 AM on June 26, 2021


Response by poster: praemunire - yes, please share your book recommendations!
posted by moonmilk at 6:03 AM on June 26, 2021




"The Professor, the Bikini Model, and a Suitcase Full of Trouble" tells the story of a physics professor whose ego and libido caused him to fall for a pretty obvious scam that involved him smuggling drugs out of South America. Make sure you read to the end, because there's some extra information provided toward the end that makes a big difference in how you view the story.
posted by alex1965 at 7:12 AM on June 26, 2021 [1 favorite]


I really liked "The Golden Age of White Collar Crime" and "The Rise and Fall of an Herbal Viagra Scammer" (despite the platform of the latter).
posted by gemmy at 7:48 AM on June 26, 2021 [1 favorite]


If you want something ongoing, this article about stablecoins is very interesting: The Bit Short
posted by crocomancer at 8:50 AM on June 26, 2021 [1 favorite]


How Anna Delvey Tricked New York’s Party People — Jessica Pressler for The Cut.
posted by scruss at 9:00 AM on June 26, 2021 [4 favorites]


A book, not an article, The Confidence Game by Maria Konnikova.
posted by essexjan at 9:11 AM on June 26, 2021 [1 favorite]


This is a podcast, but if you are into the general topic and need a chuckle, check out Scam Goddess. Every week she talks about a famous or less famous scam, and there are great emails and calls from listeners who have been scammed or scammed people. There was one about someone who opened a high end local bakery but was actually buying frozen bread and heating it up in the back by setting it on top of the radiator (!}. The host is hilarious.
posted by freecellwizard at 9:21 AM on June 26, 2021 [4 favorites]


The podcast "The Dream" is amazing. Season one is about MLMs and season two is about the wellness industry. I preferred the MLM stuff, and it is juicy as hell.

The book "Veritas" is about forgeries in Biblical scholarship and is juicy as heck. This article is by the same author and is fantastic. Bible frauds, man!
posted by Charity Garfein at 9:49 AM on June 26, 2021 [6 favorites]


Book: Bad Blood, about the rise and fall of Theranos.

Podcast: Chameleon, about a scam where film-adjacent professionals (trainers, makeup artists, etc) get lured into self-financing trips to Indonesia for fake movie productions. I won’t spoil how this one ends because the mechanics of how the scam works and who’s involved are genuinely surprising. There are also written articles by the podcast creators about their process if you don’t like audio, but I wouldn’t read ahead if you have any intention of listening to the podcast.
posted by ActionPopulated at 1:09 PM on June 26, 2021 [3 favorites]


Books not already mentioned:

The Billion-Dollar Whale
The Smartest Guys in the Room
Traders, Guns, and Money
Fools' Gold
Shredded (about RBS)
Rogue Trader

These are mostly about securities fraud.
posted by praemunire at 1:44 PM on June 26, 2021 [1 favorite]


And if you want to do your own research instead of just reading ONE journalist's take on things...

"Pigeon King" scam

"The Emu Scam" of India

"The Ant Farm Scam" of China

"ZeekRewards" scam of North Carolina

"Gemcoin Scam" of Arcadia, California
posted by kschang at 2:59 PM on June 26, 2021


I've only got podcasts, but if they qualify: The Missing Crypto Queen by the BBC was a wild ride. I'm going to second The Dream. And on the "failed businesses" side of things, but more in the direction of general failures, there’s Cautionary Tales.
posted by antinomia at 4:39 PM on June 26, 2021


Bombardiers by Po Bronson is a horrifying riot.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:26 PM on June 26, 2021


Just sign up for Matt Levine's Money Stuff! it's free.
posted by ferret branca at 7:10 PM on June 26, 2021


It's 100 years old, and might be a rehash of an older Will Irwin book, but Confessions of a confidence man: a handbook for suckers is a jolly read
posted by scruss at 7:45 PM on June 26, 2021


When they're still writing about a scam from 1822, you know it's good: The conman who pulled off history’s most audacious scam (about Gregor MacGregor, excerpt from The Confidence Game by Maria Konnikova mentioned above).
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 9:16 PM on June 26, 2021 [2 favorites]


Who The Hell is Hamish, a podcast about an Australian con man is quite good.
posted by vespabelle at 11:31 PM on June 26, 2021 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: These are all great - thanks, everyone!
posted by moonmilk at 4:34 AM on June 27, 2021


The Last Days of Target, on Target Canada's utter implosion. Remarkable because it felt like the public really wanted them to succeed; they just bumbled their way into bankruptcy.
posted by emeiji at 6:13 PM on June 28, 2021 [3 favorites]


On the topic of books about scams, no list is complete without the classic The Big Con.
posted by dr_dank at 6:43 PM on June 29, 2021 [1 favorite]


ZenMasterThis: "Bombardiers by Po Bronson is a horrifying riot."

A novel, that one is. (Not saying it's fiction...)
posted by chavenet at 6:47 AM on July 8, 2021 [1 favorite]


When Genius Failed (ebook at your local library) is about a hedge fund that had Nobel Prizewinners but collapsed spectacularly. It was also the subject of the NOVA episode Trillion Dollar Bet.
posted by Monochrome at 3:15 PM on July 8, 2021


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