🦹♂️🤑 Grifted: Mugshots, Memoirs, and Mergers 💣 💸
🕵️♂️ Grifted: Volume 6
Top of the Series: WorldCom — The Telecom Giant That Billed Us for a Fantasy
Previous: 🧪 Grifted: Theranos – A $9 Billion Lie Disguised as Innovation
🧩 Grifted #6: From Boardroom to Courtroom
Hook:
Some got prison. Others got book deals.
One or two got rehired.
Where Are They Now?
Some got prison. Others got book deals. One or two got rehired. And most? They’re still grifting — just with better lighting and legal teams.
📜 Previously on Grifted
You’ve followed the stories. The collapses. The cults of personality. The people who smiled wide as they burned billions. But what happened after the headlines?
This chapter is your official catch-up:
Who’s behind bars,
Who’s quietly planning a comeback,
And what their trajectories say about American justice — or the lack thereof.
🎭 The Grifter Recap – Where Are They Now?
A noir investigation into the American grift.
The file hit my desk just past midnight.
No return address. Just a manila envelope, fat with ink-stained secrets and slick with the scent of expensive cologne and cheaper justice. Labeled in red sharpie, all caps:
“WHERE ARE THEY NOW?”
I lit a cigarette, poured two fingers of something amber and judgmental, and cracked the seal. I knew what I was holding wasn’t just a list. It was a ledger of sin. A cast of characters who once played CEO and visionary by day — and con artist by moonlight. And now? Some of 'em had traded corner offices for bunk beds. Others for book deals. One or two even got promoted. Most? They’re still out there. Still grifting. Just with better lighting... and legal teams with polished shoes and hollow souls.
I’ve been chasing grifters for a while now.
You know the type. Glossy smiles. Elevator pitches slicker than a greased eel. They burned billions and called it innovation. Left workers in the cold and called it disruption. Now the spotlight’s gone dim, and the smoke has cleared. But make no mistake — the stage is still set.
This isn’t a new caper. It’s a postmortem.
A blood-splattered after-action report from the white-collar crime scenes they never cordoned off.
You’ve read the headlines.
You’ve seen the mugshots.
But here’s what they didn’t tell you.
You want justice? You won’t find it in the closing bell. You want the truth? It’s buried in paperwork, NDAs, and the kind of friendly smiles that smell like fraud. But if you want answers—real ones—then you follow the trail. Past the hype. Past the headlines. Past the crypto castles, the Ponzi pulpits, and the reformers-turned-repeat offenders.
That’s where I come in.
Because Grifted is just the first case file.
The deeper story? It’s in the book.
📚 Pre-order Collaborate Better at CollaborateBetter.us
🔎 It’s not just about chasing grifters—
It’s about building teams too smart to fall for them.
Because if you're not building a fraud-resistant culture…
You might already be working in one.
Case closed.
For now.
The Lineup: Where Are They Now?
🩸 Elizabeth Holmes
They called her a genius. A disruptor. The next Steve Jobs in a black turtleneck and a smirk you couldn’t quite trust.
Her company, Theranos, was built on vials of hope and horsesh*t — promises of revolution through a single drop of blood. Only problem? The tech was vapor, the results were fiction, and the billions were very real.
Now she’s doing 11.25 years in Bryan, Texas. But don't count her out just yet. Hollywood’s in love, and she’s still clinging to the mic. Her biggest invention may still be herself.
🏛 Sunny Balwani
If Holmes was the face, Sunny was the iron fist. COO of Theranos, enforcer of secrecy, and her sometime-lover in a plot thick with denial and delusion.
He got 12.75 years. No interviews. No glamor. No podcast docuseries.
Just a jumpsuit and silence — the most authentic thing he's worn in years.
🪙 Sam Bankman-Fried
Poster boy of crypto's fever dream. Wild hair, nerd cred, and the kind of confidence that only comes from being raised on game theory and no consequences.
He sold altruism but delivered an empire built on IOUs and vapor coins.
Sentenced to 25 years for the con of the decade.
Still insists it was all an accident. Still has defenders in forums and Discord servers with usernames like "ETH_4_Lyfe."
But the jury? They didn’t buy it. Not the altruism. Not the act.
💔 Caroline Ellison
Alameda Research CEO. FTX insider. Lover, lieutenant, and eventually—the canary who sang.
She pled guilty. She testified. She broke down on the stand in a story too raw for Netflix — but perfect for a generation reared on moral ambiguity.
Now she waits. Awaiting sentencing. Awaiting judgment.
In a different world, she could’ve been the fall girl. In this one, she might just walk — but not without a limp.
👨💻 Gary Wang & Nishad Singh
Coders. Founders. Ghosts.
They helped build the backdoor into FTX’s guts — the secret trapdoor that siphoned customer money to fuel Alameda’s degenerate bets.
They’ve pled guilty. They’ve testified.
They don’t speak to the press. But their fingerprints are all over the vault.
This is just the first half of the file.
The rest? It gets darker. Bodies drop. Fortunes vanish. And some of these names — well, they’ve started new companies, launched consulting firms, even taken the stage as ethical thought leaders.
And if that doesn’t make your stomach turn, then maybe you’ve already joined the grift.
You want justice? Keep reading.
You want redemption arcs? Buy a screenplay.
Me? I’m just here to pour the truth out like a whiskey in a dirty glass…
…and make sure the next chapter burns just as hot.
📉 Bernie Ebbers — The Pastor-Turned-Ponzi Prophet
They called him the “Telecom Cowboy,” but don’t let the hat fool you. Bernie Ebbers didn’t ride horses — he rode cooked books and bloated spreadsheets.
As CEO of WorldCom, he spun an $11 billion accounting scandal, one of the biggest in U.S. history. His southern charm masked a northern chill — the kind that could make your 401(k) freeze to death overnight.
The jury handed him 25 years in 2005. But he didn’t serve them all.
By 2019, he was released for health reasons — thin, frail, and blind in one eye. A year later, he was dead.
Cause? Officially, heart failure.
Unofficially? Let’s just say some debts collect interest long after the cell door shuts.
The company? Gone.
WorldCom filed Chapter 11 and was swallowed up by Verizon in 2006 — cleaned up, rebranded, and stripped of the stench. But even now, you can still hear the dial tone of that disaster if you listen close enough.
🔥 Enron: The Original Sin of the Modern Grift
Before there was Holmes, Bankman-Fried, or even Madoff’s pyramid palace, there was Enron — the OG con of the 21st century.
They didn’t just cook the books — they flambéed them.
🗳️ Poll: Which is worse for society in the long run?
💥 The original fraud — billions lost
😈 The comeback story — no remorse
🧱 Institutional silence — it protects the rot
🧠 Collective amnesia — history repeats
😐 The fact we treat it all like a twist ending
💀 Kenneth Lay
The boss man. The founder. The preacher of deregulation and “free markets.”
Lay was convicted in May 2006 for fraud and conspiracy.
He never saw the inside of a prison.
In July, just two months shy of sentencing, he dropped dead of a heart attack on vacation in Colorado.
Or so the official story goes.
No autopsy. Cremated in record time.
Some say he took the coward’s exit. Others whisper: assisted suicide.
But one thing’s for sure — the final chapter of Ken Lay reads more like a Cold War spy novel than a courtroom epilogue.
🕳 Jeffrey Skilling
Lay’s right hand. The “smartest guy in the room.”
He got 24 years, shaved down to 14 on appeal. Walked out in 2019 with just enough time left to plot a comeback.
He started a new venture, Veld LLC — a digital energy marketplace that fizzled into vaporware faster than a blockchain startup.
By 2022, it was deregistered.
Skilling can’t run public companies anymore, thanks to a legal ban.
But that doesn’t mean he’s gone.
Not really.
He’s lurking in the corners of capitalism, watching the market, waiting for his second act — or third, depending on your definition of redemption.
😔 Andrew Fastow
The numbers guy. The loophole artist. The wizard behind the curtain.
Fastow built Enron’s labyrinthine shell game — and then walked straight into a courtroom and confessed to every trapdoor.
He did six years in a cell.
Now? He tours college campuses as a business ethics speaker.
Yeah. You read that right.
The man who weaponized “technically legal” now preaches on the perils of morality-by-metrics.
To his credit, he owns it. He talks remorse. He talks damage.
And he warns the future generation not to be as clever as he was — unless they want orange jumpsuits with their MBAs.
📊 Tim Belden
The trader with the magic fingers — fast, precise, and just crooked enough to warp the entire California energy market.
Belden pled guilty. Cooperated. Got a reduced sentence.
Now? He’s back in the game.
Energy GPS, Portland. A consultancy whispering secrets into the ears of utility titans.
Still charting currents. Still forecasting value.
Let’s just hope this time the lights stay on in California.
🐴 Lou Pai
The phantom.
He vanished before the storm hit. Cashed out over $250 million in Enron stock and disappeared into Colorado ranchland.
Never charged. Never interviewed. Never looked back.
He later popped up as co-founder of Element Markets, a renewable energy firm.
No headlines. No handcuffs.
Just a man who saw the iceberg and leapt into a lifeboat — wearing a Rolex.
📦 Mid-Post Pop-Out
🎯 How This Applies to Your Org: 3 Checks to Detect a Grift in a Suit and Tie
🕴️ Is failure being framed as "wisdom"?
If someone’s resume includes a financial crater but their keynote is titled “Lessons in Resilience,” hit pause.
From Fastow to Skilling, many didn’t get canceled — they got converted.
In a market that forgives fraud faster than failure, charisma can outpace consequences.
🧳 Is the comeback story skipping accountability?
If someone reappears in your industry with a podcast, a partner fund, and a fresh logo—but no mention of past damage—you’re not witnessing growth.
You’re watching the reboot of a bad series, sold as prestige TV.
Apologies without ownership are just rebrands in nicer fonts.
🔍 Is your organization obsessed with redemption, but allergic to reflection?
If you celebrate “thought leaders” who dodged indictments but blacklist employees who raise concerns, you’re not building a resilient culture—you’re curating a controlled narrative.
Peter Madoff did time. Now he’s quiet. Others? They’re loud—and back on stage.
✅ Bonus Rule: Vet the comeback before you amplify the mic.
If someone’s selling ethics right after selling out the system, ask who benefits from their resurrection.
Because in this economy?
The grift doesn’t disappear.
It evolves.
⚖️ Arthur Andersen — The Cleaner That Couldn't Clean Itself
They were the fifth pillar of accounting.
Arthur Andersen didn’t just audit — they blessed. They baptized. They turned sins into stock gains.
Until Enron.
They shredded documents like confetti at a ticker-tape parade.
Got convicted of obstruction of justice in 2002.
The firm imploded. Thousands of jobs — gone.
The Supreme Court overturned that conviction in 2005.
But by then? It was too late.
The name was radioactive.
Like a ghost in a bespoke suit, Andersen Global was quietly formed by former partners. As of 2025, they’re whispering about an IPO.
But to those who remember …?
🕵️♂️ Andersen Global: Rebranded, But Not Redeemed
Andersen Global may wear a new suit, but its tailoring still bears the imprint of Arthur Andersen’s legacy. This isn't just a rebrand—it’s a resurrection by alumni who watched one of the most catastrophic collapses in corporate trust unfold from the inside. While they now avoid audit work (conveniently sidestepping the very mechanism of their downfall), their re-entry into the legal and consulting arena should give us pause.
In an era of deepfakes, shell firms, and AI-assisted obfuscation, we should be especially wary of trusted names wrapped in new packaging. If history teaches us anything, it’s this: grift doesn’t disappear—it evolves. And sometimes, it comes back wearing cufflinks with its old initials polished clean.
💸 The Fall Guys Who Fell Up
Not every body hits the pavement. Some land on cashmere cushions and keep the scam alive — this time with SEC filings and better PR.
🏦 Jimmy Cayne — Bear Stearns' Gambler King
They say Jimmy Cayne never met a bridge hand he didn’t like.
He ran Bear Stearns like a poker room — fast, loose, and full of tells.
In 2008, the cards collapsed.
Bear’s bets on toxic mortgage sludge sent shockwaves through the system. And when the smoke cleared, Bear was gone — sold off to JPMorgan Chase for $2 a share. A fire-sale price. A clearance rack for catastrophe.
Jimmy?
He stepped down in January 2008, before the firm fully imploded.
Lost most of his fortune.
Died in 2021, reportedly of pneumonia.
But let’s be honest — it was ego that suffocated first.
No charges.
Just one more king who thought the table couldn’t turn — until it folded beneath him.
🏚️ Dick Fuld — The “Gorilla” of Wall Street
If Bear was a poker game, Lehman Brothers was the Roman Empire — and Dick Fuld was Nero, fiddling as the Street burned.
They called him “The Gorilla” — not because of his charm, but because he never blinked.
He stared down subprime mortgages like they owed him rent.
And when Lehman filed for bankruptcy in September 2008, it became the largest collapse in U.S. history.
The spark that lit the fuse of the global financial meltdown.
So what happened to the Gorilla?
Nothing.
No charges. No courtroom. No orange jumpsuit.
Instead, Dick Fuld got back in the game.
He founded Matrix Private Capital Group — a wealth advisory boutique for high-net-worth types with more money than memory.
Need investment advice from the man who torched the global economy? Step right in.
He even cozied up with Option3Ventures, dabbling in cybersecurity investments.
On the board of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, too — because every good villain needs a nonprofit veneer.
No fraud this time, at least not on paper.
But in a noir city of smoke and shadows, some ghosts never really leave the scene. They just wear better suits.
🧑⚖️ The Madoff Dynasty — House of (Credit) Cards
Bernie Madoff didn’t run a business.
He ran a mirage — a $65 billion Ponzi scheme that fooled everyone from billionaires to barbers.
He dressed it in Armani, wrapped it in performance charts, and made it look like God's own hedge fund.
In 2009, he got 150 years in prison.
He died there in 2021, as alone as the numbers he invented.
But the Madoff tale didn’t end with Bernie.
Mark Madoff — his eldest son — died by suicide in 2010, exactly two years after Bernie’s arrest.
A hanging. A dog sleeping nearby. The press turned it into opera.
They said Mark was never charged. But guilt doesn’t need an indictment to find you.
Andrew Madoff, the younger son, tried to live clean.
Said he didn’t know about the scam.
He died in 2014 of lymphoma.
He always said the scandal worsened his illness. Some believe it broke more than his body.
Peter Madoff — Bernie’s brother, chief compliance officer — didn’t get off easy.
He pled guilty, took a 10-year stretch, and served it.
Now? Out. Quiet. No headlines. Just one more ex-con with a Rolodex full of ghosts.
And Ruth Madoff?
The matriarch of the house of sand.
She forfeited $85 million, kept a few pearls, and now lives in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where the lawn is manicured, and the neighbors pretend not to know.
They were all players in the long con — each one a chapter in the pulp anthology of American excess.
Some got caged.
Some got cremated.
Some got companies, again.
But none got justice that could undo what they did.
And that, my friend, leads us to the final chapter.
Shall I proceed with the final post preview — Lessons from the Great Business Lies — in full noir style to close out Grifted with a hard-boiled exhale?
⚖️ Justice By the Numbers
🧠 What Have We Learned?
Cue the saxophone. Dim the lights. This is the part where the detective leans back in his chair, lights a Lucky Strike, and tells you how the city really works.
🧩 1. Systemic Accountability Is the Real Vaporware
Justice is supposed to wear a blindfold, but in this city?
She peeks — especially if you’re rich, well-dressed, and fluent in offshore accounting.
Investigations dragged on like a dying neon sign.
Convictions, when they came, were polite. Delayed. Dressed in apologies and reduced sentencing.
Most of the big players?
They lawyered up, cooperated halfway, or vanished behind shell corps and settlement clauses.
The rest? Too rich to chase, too slippery to hold, or too dead to prosecute.
And the victims?
They got pink slips, empty pension accounts, and stories nobody wanted to print.
If you steal $50 from a gas station, you do hard time.
But if you steal billions, you get a ghostwriter and a Netflix deal.
🪞 2. White-Collar Crimes Come With Second Acts
In the noir flick of capitalism, jail is just a narrative beat — not the finale.
Skilling walked out and tried launching a new gig in the same sector he helped burn to the ground.
Belden, the energy-market saboteur, now advises clients on renewables with a straight face.
Fastow, the man who bent rules into razor wire, now lectures about ethics with PowerPoint slides and dry-erase pens.
Fuld? The Lehman gorilla now plays money whisperer to the ultra-wealthy through Matrix Private.
And Peter Madoff, Bernie's brother, served his time and faded into the suburbs — no headlines, no questions, no apologies.
Turns out, orange jumpsuits aren’t prison garb — they’re just temporary branding.
🧃 3. Some Grifters Still Hold the Mic
The most dangerous part of the con isn’t the fraud itself —
It’s the story they leave behind.
Rewritten, retweeted, reframed.
A lot of these characters didn’t just dodge consequences —
They rebranded failure as wisdom.
Burned down empires and came back as gurus.
You’ll find them on podcasts.
On conference stages.
On LinkedIn, hawking leadership workshops and startup insights —
Like nothing ever happened.
And while the people they conned are still looking for work or nursing 401(k) trauma,
the grifters are raising capital.
⚖️ 4. The System Isn’t Broken. It’s Working As Designed.
There’s a joke somewhere here —
but it’s not funny.
The law isn’t about justice. It’s about precedent.
And in this town, power makes the rules, then hires the judges.
Institutions get protected.
Executives get golden parachutes.
Whistleblowers get blacklisted.
And the grift?
It doesn’t end in court.
It evolves — into consultancies, memoirs, and private investment funds.
We don’t have a justice gap.
We have a grift pipeline.
💡 Final Lesson: If It’s Too Good to Be True, It’s Probably On CNBC
Here’s the final punchline, kid:
Today’s grifter doesn’t wear a ski mask.
They wear Allbirds.
They name-drop MIT, cite “emerging markets,” and say “let me circle back.”
They know the script.
They know the optics.
And they know that as long as it’s wrapped in disruption or impact or future-of-X… someone will buy it.
What we need isn’t just more regulation.
We need bullsh*t detectors hardwired into the org chart.
We need:
Internal controls that don’t rely on charisma.
Radical transparency before the subpoena.
Psychological safety that lets the right people speak up before the wrong ones cash out.
Cultures that reward truth over storytelling.
Because in this system, honest teams don’t just compete with dishonest ones —
They’re outgunned, outfunded, and out-slicked by folks who’ve already memorized the ending.
🗳️ Poll: When you see a white-collar felon back in business, what do you feel first?
😡 Outrage — they should’ve stayed gone
🙃 Cynical amusement — of course they are
🥱 Resignation — same story, different suit
🤑 Jealousy — they fail upward better than I rise
🧽 Indifference — I’ve gone numb to grift
🕵️♂️ Fade to black. But don’t fade out.
The final chapter of Grifted is coming — and this time, the spotlight swings back to you, me, and the teams we build. No fake gurus. No redemption arcs. Just the real playbook for spotting the grift before it starts.
If you’ve made it this far, you already know the stakes.
🎯 Subscribe now so you don’t miss:
🔥 The explosive finale of Grifted
📖 Exclusive excerpts from my upcoming book Collaborate Better: From Silos to Synergy — How to Build Unstoppable Teams
💡 Hard-won lessons on trust, transparency, and building cultures too sharp to fall for false prophets
Because the next con might not be on the front page —
It might be in your Slack channel.
👉 Hit Subscribe and join the resistance at the whiteboard.
The next drop? You’ll want front-row access.
💊 New in the Vault: The Martin Shkreli File
🕵️♂️ Subscriber-Only Special
He called himself a genius.
The press called him "Pharma Bro."
But behind the smirk, there was a spreadsheet full of secrets—and a Ponzi in a lab coat.
This exclusive Grifted installment unpacks the rise, the lie, the crash, and the comeback attempt of the man who turned public outrage into personal branding.
🧠 Hedge fund fraud
💉 Drug price hijacking
🎵 A $2M Wu-Tang flex
📉 And a trial that revealed it all
You’ve heard the headlines. Now read the autopsy.
The boy genius didn’t just play the system—he memo’d it into submission.
And now? He’s out of prison, back online, and just one crypto-pitch away from Act Two.
🔒 Unlock the full file — available only to paid subscribers.
Because if you don’t know the grift, you’re probably funding it.
🕵️♂️ Subscribe to read
🧭 Up Next in Grifted...
🎭 Grifted #8: Lessons from the Great Business Lies
Hook: What honest teams can learn from dishonest ones.
Lessons:
✅ Build psychological safety without blind trust
✅ Design for internal controls without killing innovation
✅ Embrace radical transparency before it's subpoenaed
✅ Recognize how charismatic leadership can become a Trojan horse for systemic rot
Because if you're not building a fraud-resistant culture…
You might already be working in one.