KING OF THE SNITCHES
by zekefaux
Baruch Vega ran a scheme that ensnared Colombian cocaine kingpins and gave him a life of luxury. Then one put a price on his head. [Read it]
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SIGN HERE TO LOSE EVERYTHING
by zekefaux
Look out, the stranger on the phone warned. They’re coming for you. [Read the story] Update: Federal, state and local authorities are cracking down on the merchant cash advance industry in response to this story and the rest of the series I wrote with Zachary Mider. The U.S. Senate and House proposed bills, several New York State lawmakers called for a ban and the New York Attorney General started an investigation. New York’s mayor also called for a review of […]
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“They go out and find the morons for me.”
by zekefaux
It was a Davos for digital hucksters. One day last June, scammers from around the world gathered for a conference at a renovated 19th century train station in Berlin. All the most popular hustles were there: miracle diet pills, instant muscle builders, brain boosters, male enhancers. The “You Won an iPhone” companies had display booths, and the “Your Computer May Be Infected” folks sent salesmen. Russia was represented by the promoters of a black-mask face peel, and Canada made a […]
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THE PHANTOM-DEBT VIGILANTE
by zekefaux
On the morning a debt collector threatened to rape his wife, Andrew Therrien was working from home, in a house with green shutters on a cul-de-sac in a small Rhode Island town. [Read it]
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GOING ROGUE BRO
by zekefaux
On the night he cut a deal with the FBI, Guy Gentile was on his way to a Connecticut casino for his cousin’s bachelor party. He’d jetted up from the Bahamas, where he was running an online stock brokerage that cleared a million dollars a year without much effort on his part. Then 36, he was a working-class kid who’d finagled his way into the dicier edges of finance, and he dressed the part, with neatly trimmed stubble, designer jeans, […]
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DORAL MURDER MYSTERY
by zekefaux
Maurice Spagnoletti was hired to clean up Doral Bank. Did he uncover something that got him killed? [Read it] Update: Two years after this story, U.S. authorities charged four people with Spagnoletti’s murder.
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LOSE GOD, GET RICH
by zekefaux
Abe Zeines’s hilltop mansion in Puerto Rico looks like a frat house after a rager. A wrecked golf cart blocks the driveway. An SUV with a blown tire sits on the grass out front. A porch overlooking the Caribbean is littered with beer bottles and cigarette butts. [Read it]
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DEATH SPIRALS
by zekefaux
Two thousand people cheered as Joshua Sason walked up to a boxing ring at an arena in Providence late last year. He trailed the actor Miles Teller, and the crowd was made up of extras—they were shooting a boxing movie, directed by the guy who made Boiler Room. Sason got to make a cameo in the fighter’s entourage because he’s producing the movie with Martin Scorsese and put up the budget. He’s 27 years old. [Read it]
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ONDECK IPO
by zekefaux
Onstage at a conference in San Francisco in May, Noah Breslow is gliding through a slide presentation on why his company, OnDeck Capital, is going to make bank loan officers as obsolete as travel agents. [Read it]
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