Interesting that the article mentioned Jody Sherman. I've worked with him several times. He moved to LA after running a startup into the ground in SF, taking with him the last paychecks of those who he had lied to saying that their pay was just delayed due to a glitch. While on the plane heading to LA he used the in-flight phone to buy a Porsche (sight unseen) from a dealership using his investor's money that he pocketed while leaving his former employees to wonder what the hell was going on.

His plane ticket was paid for by the person sitting next to him -- a mutual friend. Jody was supposed to pay him back for the ticket. He never did.

Interesting that his "business failures" are the causation for a trend, as his businesses were never intended to succeed in doing anything other than separating investors from their money and trying to stay one step ahead of what inevitably caught up with him. People seem to think that he was overly optimistic and just bad at making a business succeed. That might be true; I do not know what he ever actually intended. I told him several times that in order to get one of his former businesses to succeed he would have to spend money on certain key pieces of infrastructure. He refused, saying he'd spend it later. What I didn't know at the time that he wasn't being simply unreasonable. The money was already gone. It just didn't say that on the balance sheet he was showing to those who worked with and who he approached asking to invest.