Its a perfectly legitimate business that brings in billions of dollars and may even be profitable with some optimization. To call it a scam a la a Ponzi scheme is a little too harsh.

WeWork isn't the scam. The way Neumann managed to cash out is the scam.

Was it a scam? Adam didn't violate any laws. Investors should have done diligence and all the self dealing would have came out during an audit. Fact they didn't is what i think is the scam. If i was an lp in the fund, i would think about suing the fund for the breach of duty.

Good scams start off as legal until new laws are written detailing how exactly the scams are illegal in the future.

Maybe, but this is very different from the original examples of Madoff and Worldcom. Their scams were flagrantly illegal at the time that they did them.

It's legal because the people that got duped were "professional investors". It will be a good case study for an investment analysis class though.

Would absolutely be a different discussion if they had IPOed.

No, it's legal because he never lied. He did all that shit right out in the open and disclosed it to potential investors in the S-1.