I worked a little investment firm in college. A few years ago I looked up my boss, the owner. Found out he was in prison! For stealing $10m from a bunch of retirees in a really careless, sloppy way.

I think a surprising amount of people try it. But every SEC indictment is not news so we don't hear about the people who go to prison.

>I think a surprising amount of people try it. But every SEC indictment is not news so we don't hear about the people who go to prison.

But you rarely hear about the ones that tried it and got away with it, because they got away with it.

But you don't know how often people get away with it, because they get away with it. Maybe people get away with it 99 times out of a hundred, in which case scamming might be rational to somebody with no morals. But maybe the odds of eventually getting caught are much higher than the popular narrative would have you believe. Then immoral people like Holmes, with a feeling of entitlement and belief in ineffectual enforcement, get lured into a trap lifestyle that will more likely than not ruin their lives.

I worked for a guy that ended up embezzling for the next company (a consortium) that he fronted , when he was caught (met by sheriffs at SFO) the European members of the consortium wanted blood, the US ones wanted to sweep it all under the carpet - he walked away - last time I checked he was a VC

Dude - who is this person so the world can avoid working with him.

Oh I really don't want to get sued .... his name was all over the SFChron's biz pages once ....

There was at least one war criminal on her board, while several other war criminals in the country are enjoying their retirement, so no, that's not just a narrative. People like her literally get away with murder, all the time.

The "money is power" is not just a nice phrase from books. Money is power over how much effort others will spend to solve the problems of those who pays the money. So it's literally power.

However there're also other ways to control others to solve problems involuntarily.

Exploitation is the area in which the civilization is exceptionally strong.

So yes, starting from some level of money and power it's pretty easy to get away with proportinally more and more with the money and power increase.

> it's pretty easy to get away with proportinally more and more with the money and power increase

The power/money creates a inbalance with the punishment ( it has less side effects to do it). Either by people being influenced of your status or the fine not being relational to your wealth.

Untill you overdo it, which may be the situation with the previous president.

Ask John Corzine!

If you read the account of Anna Delvey’s fraud, you get a sense of how close she came to getting away with it. https://www.thecut.com/article/how-anna-delvey-tricked-new-y... I don’t know how common it is, but Holmes had the connections and experience to make something like that work I think.