I know France popularized the Guillotine, but what was the highest profile case of an American fucking around and finding out?
Elizabeth Holmes, Sam Bankman-Freid, and Martin Shkreli come to the top of mind. Maybe Bernie Maddoff?
Maybe the highest profile cases have yet to occur. Here’s hoping.
Brian Thompson and Alex Jones are the only example of rich people falling from grace because of people in a different class that I can think of. Most examples like Elizabeth got clapped because they played class warfare tactics against their own team. Grifting is only allowed against the poor, otherwise it’s called securities fraud.
Bernie Madoff had the largest fall from $65 billion estimated at peak to $17 billion at time of arrest then dying in prison.
Changpeng Zhao of Binance will be the richest person in the US, and probably ever, to do time in prison after conviction, but his wealth won’t be impacted and it is only a few months, so hardly much Finding Out involved.
Sam Bankman-Fried is potentially an even bigger Find Out than Madoff, because unlike Madoff who maintained a large estate even after going to jail, SBF has gone from around $24 billion to $15.5 Billion at time of arrest, to now close to zero on paper as almost all his wealth was tied up in FTX and crypto and it was “all” siezed as part of his conviction and the FTX winddown. Now that said, he probably has a lot of crypto stashed in cold wallets somewhere that have appreciated substantially since his arrest, so it is hard to know how much he would be worth if he ever got access to them, but as I understand it he is basically banned from using computers and facing over 100 years on his sentence, so he better be putting in a lot of good behavior of he ever hopes to see any of that secret stash again.
Brian Thompson, UnitedHealthcare CEO? The one that Luigi allegedly took out.
Whomever murdered this Brian gentleman wasn’t the State but I appreciate the sentiment.
The people doing the guillotining weren’t the state (at first anyway)
Murder? Self defense
How about the owner of Trump Burger getting deported?
Oh. I guess he’s nowhere near the richest, I gave him extra credit for irony.
The irony on this one was chefs kiss
Brian Thompson
Founding Father, Alexander Hamilton was shot and killed in a duel for insulting Vice President at the time, Aaron Burr.
I don’t think he was that rich… surely there’s richer Americans who opposed even richer Americans and got knocked down, like at least Aaron Swartz. Not that I disagree with them on what led to their deaths. (Also, insult? More like going to great yet civil and pleasantrishly-polite lengths to oppose his campaigns.)
Can we add Kennedy (Vietnam) and Lincoln (Slavery) too? Or were their FO not related to their FA?
We don’t fully understand JFK’s assassin, but it is likely not due to Vietnam as Vietnam wasn’t a major issue at the time of Kennedy’s death.
Lincoln’s assassination could be seen as a defense of slavery and other Southern “rights”.
I’d say Elon Musk. He threw how many millions at Trump’s presidential run thinking Don would return the favor once he was president…
So how’d that work out for you, Elon?
I see him more as a south african with pretensions of ideologically becoming an american, regardless of his papers.
He certainly FA plenty. I think he also FO plenty (more than just your example) but either he’s very clever about covering up his looming bankruptcy or he really is too big to fail.
Third option, he manipulates the stock and crypto markets and nobody bats an eye, netting huge sums of wealth.
That’s money he found between his couch cushions. It’s a rounding error on his balance sheet.
Still worth $500 billion usd. Waiting for the FO.
Less about monetary FO and more the pride and self righteous FO
Fair play.
I wish I could say Trump but the man evidently has an unlimited lifetime pass to fuck around without finding out.
