FanFare

Elizabeth Carmichael, a larger-than-life entrepreneur rose to prominence with her promotion of a fuel-efficient, three-wheeled car known as The Dale.
posted by porpoise on Aug 22, 2023 - 2 comments

In 1987, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) takes an entry-level job at a Wall Street brokerage firm. By the early 1990s, while still in his 20s, Belfort founds his own firm, Stratton Oakmont. Together with his trusted lieutenant (Jonah Hill) and a merry band of brokers, Belfort makes a huge fortune by defrauding wealthy investors out of millions. However, while Belfort and his cronies partake in a hedonistic brew of sex, drugs and thrills, the SEC and the FBI close in on his empire of excess. [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown on Sep 23, 2022 - 16 comments

On apple TV+: Follows the story of Eric C. Conn, a Kentucky attorney who managed to steal over $550 million dollars* from the U.S. government through its Social Security program. [more inside]
posted by Captain_Science on May 23, 2022 - 0 comments

With OxyContin abuse spreading across the country, Bridget brings the fight to Purdue; Rick and Randy seek to find a whistleblower within Purdue to tie their case together.
posted by CMcG on Nov 1, 2021 - 2 comments

Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos, is headed to trial for allegedly defrauding investors and patients by misrepresenting the capabilities and accuracy of her blood-testing technology. Winning the jury's sympathy is her best option to get acquitted. There are several ways she can do that. [more inside]
posted by bq on Aug 27, 2021 - 3 comments

In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood testing significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn’t work. [more inside]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis on Mar 27, 2019 - 10 comments

The story of Theranos, a multi-billion dollar tech company, its founder Elizabeth Holmes, the youngest self-made female billionaire, and the massive fraud that collapsed the company. Directed and written by Alex Gibney (Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room).
posted by Cash4Lead on Mar 21, 2019 - 19 comments

A mysterious thief has been using the internet to steal a bizarre array of items - watches, scooter parts, clown costumes. This week, Alex heads straight towards his hideout.
posted by bq on Jun 15, 2017 - 12 comments

A meet-cute where two men discover their shared childhood fascination with a local mansion and the strange widow who lives there. Turns out that the widow has a dark past--her husband was Dr. John Romulus Brinkley, an eccentric genius and medical fraudster who built an empire in Depression-era America with a goat testicle impotence cure and a million watt radio station. [more inside]
posted by radioamy on Jan 19, 2017 - 11 comments

This week:

• Trump tries to spin his terrible debate performance by citing terrible, exploitable online polls, and his thin skin somehow gets even thinner, as he casts aspersions on a former Miss USA winner by, well.... Oliver: "That is a candidate for President of the United States urging America to check out a sex tape. Just do me a favor. Look up into the sky right now. Higher. No, higher still. Do you see that? Way up there? Way up above the clouds? That's rock bottom. And we are currently way down here."
• And Now: Newscasters Quoting Movies
• Main Story: Police accountability, or rather its lack, as it turns out that police who use deadly force practically never get called on account for it, due to a variety of increasly infuriating reasons. YouTube (20m)
• And Now: Newscasters Quoting Movies, All Christ Matthews Edition
• More on Wells Fargo, how the company retaliated against whistleblowers who called an internal ethics hotline to warn of wrong-doing. It turns out that the case for ethics had been made by a training video that Wells Fargo themselves had commissioned. The host of that video, it turns out, now works as a writer for Last Week Tonight! He stars in an update for that video. YouTube (4m)

[more inside]
posted by JHarris on Oct 4, 2016 - 6 comments

This (last) week:

• The protests in Charlotte over yet another police shooting, and the release of video from the incident.
• Employees for Wells Fargo created a huge number of accounts for people without their knowing, in order to extract fees for those accounts, due to an "aggressive" sales campaign.
• And Now: Wait, Is WCBS2 News at 11 Just Fucking With Us At This Point?
• Main story: The scandals plaguing the Clinton and Trump campaigns, how the Clinton ones tend to be more annoying than truly serious, while the Trump ones tend to all be blockbusters that would doom any other candidate, resulting in scandal fatigue. YouTube (21m)

[more inside]
posted by JHarris on Oct 4, 2016 - 2 comments

The story of the 2007-2008 credit and housing bubble collapse, seen through the eyes of a handful of misfit financial investors who predicted it would happen. Based on the book by Michael Lewis.
posted by zarq on Dec 28, 2015 - 42 comments

A story of Abraham Bolden, the first black Secret Service agent on the White House detail. A story of divine fate and segregation within the Secret Service. [more inside]
posted by Going To Maine on Jun 28, 2015 - 1 comment

A drama about the awakening of the painter Margaret Keane, her phenomenal success in the 1950s, and the subsequent legal difficulties she had with her husband, who claimed credit for her works in the 1960s. [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome on Dec 28, 2014 - 8 comments