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- [00:00]
A
The following podcast contains explicit language.
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B
Hello, and welcome to the Scams edition of Slate Money, normally your guide to the business and finance news of the week. But this week we have an incredibly special guest, and we're just going to devote the entire episode to scams. I'm Felix Salmon. Infusion. I'm joined, as ever, by Anna Shymansky and by Jordan Weissman. Hello. The core Slate Money team. But we are very excited to have in the studio Aminatou Cel.
- [00:46]
C
Hi.
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B
Introduce yourself. And what is your podcast? You have a great podcast.
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C
Listen. So I definitely scammed my way onto this show.
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B
How did you do that?
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C
As we're all about to find out, I don't know anything about money except how to spend and not have a lot of it. I host a podcast called call your.
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B
Girlfriend, and it's excellent and you should all download it and use the sponsor codes.
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C
Please stop buying Casper mattresses off of this show and buy them off of my show.
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A
This is the entire podcast economy just got summarized.
- [01:22]
C
Listen, you know, every once in a while, when I need to buy things, I'll use other podcast codes. That's. It's. You know, I'm just like, it's. You gotta.
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D
Underground. Black. Black market.
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C
Yeah.
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A
Or scratch your back. I'll scratch.
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C
We also definitely get a lot of advertisers who obviously, like, want to advertise with women, which is great, but it means that, you know, like, some stuff that I really want, like, I won't even name those businesses are all on the dude podcast. And I'm like, ugh, which one? You know, like, where am I gonna. Which code am I gonna use for this thing? So I feel like you gotta spread the love around.
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B
So, yeah, you can use my code for a rocket mortgage when you refinance your home.
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C
I am so excited for when I scam my way into homeownership. This is gonna be great. Thanks.
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A
Partying like, it's 2007.
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B
So.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So this episode is all about scams. And the reason we're gonna talk about scams is because of a New York Times magazine piece. This, like, was the germ of the episode about Amanda Chantal Bacon. Amina, who is Amanda Chantal Bacon?
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C
Amanda Chantelle Bacon is a poet. An engineer. No, Amanda Chantelle Bacon is a woman who owns a store in Venice, California, where she sells expensive juices and smoothies.
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B
And assorted products, and it's called Moon something.
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A
Moon Juice.
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C
Moon Juice.
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B
Moon Juice.
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A
She's an astral presence.
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C
Exactly.
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B
And she kind of wafts around in A sort of blond linen clad way. And people aspire to being like her. And she manages to charge astonishing amounts of money for various lotions and potions which have no actual effect. Is that more or less?
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C
Listen, looking dewy and glowy and being at one with, you know, the universe is like, it's expensive.
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A
So this woman came to my attention for the first time before this New York Times article, thanks to Gwyneth Paltrow. This is the woman who invented sex bark. And I forget what it was like some other.
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C
Can you please tell us what sex bark is?
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A
I still haven't quite figured out what sex bark is, but it's like, you know, it's like any other candy bark you eat, except this one. Like, it's dusted with one of their supplements and it apparently gets your libido going. It's like there's some, like, in Eastern medicine, they say, like oysters or an Aphrodite. This is the Venice, California version of that. And so she got on. She. She, like, appeared with Gwyneth Paltrow and made sex bark. And this became a thing. And it wasn't the first time that this girl had been, or this woman had been made fun of in public and then bounced back and made more money.
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B
She. She is a favorite target of the Twitters, as is Gwinnie and this entire sort of mini industry of what we can probably call, like, scamming rich people.
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C
I know. Well, I have feelings about all of this. And like, to be clear, Amanda chantal bacon is 100, like, 100% sells garbage products that do not, like, do not live up to the expectation of whatever it is that she tells you. But, you know, but another way to look at this is like, what is the harm in buying a $31 smoothie if you know exactly what you're getting into? Right?
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B
Well, the harm, I would say, can be quantified quite exactly. It's $31.
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C
Well, but listen, people who are people who can afford to listen, I have had the smoothies. They're delicious. It's totally fine.
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B
They're not delicious.
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C
No, they're actually amazing. But I think that the thing about why she was in the news that was so interesting to me is. And I think you touched on this by, like, talking about Gwyneth Paltrow. Is that the way that we talk about the. This, you know, the, like, hippie. The, like, upper scale hippie, industrial food scamming complex is. It's interesting because there are a lot of women who participate in that economy, right? So, like, Gwyneth Paltrow, somebody that is like, definitely has built an entire empire on telling you kind of nonsense about your body, but also, like, sells $400 slides on her website. Right. And that's.
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B
That's the kind of shoe, right?
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C
Exactly. Like a. It's literally a flip flop.
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A
Oh, my God.
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C
And you know, it's like, like, it's one. It's like capitalism on fire. Um, yeah.
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D
And I would say, like, I. I have no problem with the $400 shoes. I feel like, hey, if people are gonna pay $400 shoes, that's fine. But I think it's more the, like, anti science that really bothers me. And I. I feel like. And I do agree with you that I think the way. I think people attack women more for this often than. I mean, not that people don't attack men who do similar things, but I think.
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B
But it is gendered. A lot of the Gwyneth Paltrow and Amanda Chantal Bacon are attacks which you wouldn't see in the same way with men. And we should probably bring in Dr. Oz here.
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A
Right?
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C
Yeah. And I think that, like, so I think, like, my point is that, yes, like, I, like, I am definitely not going to die on the hill of defending either of those women. I have, you know, spent money in their businesses and greatly enjoyed my interactions with that. But I would say to you that Dr. Oz is actually a more dangerous anti science person. Somebody who has a wider reach, is somebody who is, you know, gives you. And he actually, like, gives you advice that is masquerading as like, medical advice. Because he's. Yeah, he's an actual doctor who is in the pocket of just like, terrible science, like garbage science.
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A
Yeah, the supplement industry.
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C
And he, you know, and, you know, like, got a really big boost from being on the Oprah Winfrey Show. And people now, like all sorts of celebrities go on that platform and talk about all the acai powders that they're participating in. And like, you know, I'm like, this person has a bigger reach, is responsible for more anti science propaganda that we have and really pushes this complacency about trusting like a TV expert, you know, as opposed to getting real medical advice from the tv.
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B
I do think you're right that there's a feeling among the people who buy Sex park that probably, you know, the best case scenario is I'll have better sex. The worst case scenario is I'll have.
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C
You'll have a delicious smoothie. You know what I mean?
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B
Whereas with Dr. Oz, people are spending Money they don't have on basically this dream of getting thin. I would say that 90% of what Dr. Oz is selling is weight loss, and weight loss as an industry is just like this huge scam.
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C
Yeah. And also makes people push back against the, you know, like, the wisdom of their own medical teams. And, you know, it's crazy how fast that stuff.
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D
And I think this is the point, too, that it's not just that they're spending money on these products that aren't going to work. It also is the opportunity cost of not getting the attention and the medical assistance that they actually may need.
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A
I think, you know, you talked about how we tend to approach this as a very gendered issue. We focus a lot of our hatred on the, you know, Ms. Bacon's and the Gwyneth Paltrows of the world. I think part of that is because they target specifically the affluent Twitter demographic. Right. Like, they. They target people who are sort of in, you know, who are in the same socioeconomic segment as the. As journalists, more or less. And so Dr. Oz is a little bit down market comparatively. And so I think that might be part of it. And what it speaks to is we.
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B
Don'T see Dr. Oz in the same way that we.
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D
Even people who I think would criticize Dr. Oz will still say that they. They used, like, juicing.
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A
Yeah.
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D
Yeah.
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C
You know, or. But another. Another aspect of it is, too. Right. Is that it's, you know, and this has come up in this conversation, it's like that, you know, the. The Gwyneths and the Amanda Chantal Bacons are. They're thin and they're blonde and they. Yeah. You know, this. This thing about them capitalizing on their looks, and it's like, well, Dr. Oz, I'm confident saying that Dr. Oz has definitely had some work done on his face.
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A
Yes.
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C
He is equally as vain. He cares about what he wears in the exact same way. And for. For some reason, that's not a thing that people use to talk about him and to discredit him.
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A
So here's something that also kind of interests me about this because, yeah, they very much are targeting affluent white women particular because they're an average. They are aspirational for affluent white women. Then you have Dr. Oz, who's more middle class. And then this article in the New York Times talks about how, in a lot of ways, Alex Jones from infowars is a version of this as well, because he hasn't had work done. Hasn't. But, like, he's selling this very badly.
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C
That dude no, but he sells the exact same. Same aspirational kind of lifestyle. Tim ferriss does this for men in silicon valley as well.
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A
Exactly. And so. And alex jones does it by ranting and raving about how the government has sat the nutrients out of the soil. And that's why you have to buy his, you know, alex jones energy protein packs or whatever. And then it's. It's not that far off from toxins. It's just a different. It's a. It's a different shtick. But so you have these people who all kind of sell the same scam to different demographics. What I'm kind of curious is, is there a version of this that targets, like, minority communities? Is there a version of this that, you know, that. Is there one like, specifically like a gwyneth paltrow that goes after hispanics? Is there one?
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B
I believe it's called herbalife.
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C
Okay, well, yes, you know, I think that those. And you're right, it's like they manifest in different ways. So with minorities, like, what you will see a lot is that there are these multilevel marketing schemes that sell you either some sort of, I don't know, like a protein powder type thing or, you know, but most of the times for that demographic, they will be like squarely on wealth building products that also make no sense. It's like 100 appear like they are pyramid schemes that look and sound like pyramid schemes, but are disguised of these, like economic empowerment opportunities.
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B
Okay, let's. Let me. Let's use this as a opportunity to segue into. When these things go from taking money from rich people who can probably afford it, to taking money from poor people who really can't afford it. Herbalife has been in the financial news for many, many years now. Because it's a publicly listed company on the stock market. But imanatu, let's talk a little bit about the business itself. And you're absolutely right that it has this one, two punch, Both of which are really harmful. The one punch is these powders and potions that it sells, which are ineffective and pointless and crap. And people spend a lot of money on them. And they don't have money to spend on them. And they're targeting low, low income people who they. It's just. It's a deeply skeevy business. Then the second punch is that they're not just promising, you know, that you'll lose weight and you'll be healthier and all the rest of it. They're also promising you will make money and that you can turn around and start selling this stuff to all of your friends, and then you can become a millionaire by getting thin. And that combination just seems so evil.
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C
Yeah, I mean, it's really evil because you're. You're targeting a demographic that defe. Certainly does not have money to lose. They certainly do not have the kind of time to invest in, you know, the, The. The amount of work, the. Both the emotional labor and the actual labor of building this kind of scheme. People who are like, you know, they don't have that kind of time. But also it's really insidious because it's penetrates in these communities, like, so much faster because of that. Right. It's. If you. If you really think that you are doing this, like, you're doing this service for people who are in your family and people who are in your community and people who are your neighbors and your block, like, they will tend to trust you more, but it's in the service of something that is really evil. And, you know, and there's not. There's also, like, not a ton of financial literacy tools around this kind of stuff. It's like, people usually will not know that they're being scammed until, you know, like, until it is, like, in progress or it's really bad. There was a great this American Life episode about God. I forget what the service is called. It's like good morning something or whatever. It's another one of these, like, MLM schemes, but just the hearing people's stories about how hard they were working and how they were taking it as a personal failure that, you know, they weren't, like, moving enough memberships or they weren't converting enough people. I was so struck by that and thinking like, wow, you know, like, if this was energy that you could put into, like, getting an associate's degree or getting a college degree, like, clearly, like, all of the tools are there for you to be a successful entrepreneur, but you are doing this in the service of somebody who's trying to take advantage of you. And it's just heartbreaking.
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B
And the idea of moving into the community and sort of getting your friends to spend money on it, it turns friendship, which is like a noble and wonderful thing, into this kind of monetizable commodity, which is horrible. Although I do feel that, you know, the people who really got there first were. Well, not first, but people who really specialize in this, like the Scientologists and in general, like, religion has been doing this for centuries.
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A
No, I don't know. Was what was first? Scientology or the Avon Lady?
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C
The Avon lady. Definitely more successful. Yeah. But, you know, it's interesting too, because I think that you're seeing a resurgence of this stuff. I notice it on Facebook all the time because I went to. I went to college in Texas, and so, you know, like, I have more. I will tend to have more real America friends than some people. That's for the Trump voters who are listening, who say that we don't know how to take care of ourselves. But it, you know, it's really interesting where I'm seeing this huge. It's like when I was in college, definitely there were like one or two girls who were, like, perpetually trying to, like, get you into a Mary Kay. And Mary Kay is a legitimate business. Right. But it is you. You become a salesperson, and they always downplay the sales skills that you need to actually get, you know, to be the woman who's gonna get the pink car or whatever it is that's the apex of being the Mary Kay lady. And, you know, and even in college, like, watching those girls hustle was really hard because I'm like, well, I could go to Sephora or I could buy this, like, mascara that, like, our moms use. I don't know about that. But now you're seeing it with, like, leggings. There are bags. There's all sorts of the same stuff is cropping up, and it's really tied into.
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B
And these are. And these are your Facebook to sell this stuff to you.
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C
Yeah, well, you know, Facebook friends, not real friends, but I'm like, I'm just seeing so much more of it than I had ever noticed. And so much of it is also tied into religious communities. Like, a lot of Christian women will have the side hustle of whatever, you know, like, the thing is, like, selling the leggings or whatever, because a lot of them will tend to be stay at home moms, but still want to have, you know, like, they still want to participate in the economy. And the way that it's. The way that it's sold is also problematic. It's like you rope your, like, really good friends into this thing that you actually don't have the skill to sell. And also, you know, like, how are you going to scale leggings?
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B
So can I. I need to come in and ask, because I don't have those friends on Facebook. So I need to ask you about this. When they are on Facebook saying, you know, I have this amazing product which you guys should buy, do they pay Facebook to promote those posts? Is Facebook making money from this?
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C
Um, I Mean, I'm sure if they like buy an ad Facebook making money off of it, but a lot of this happens in like private Facebook groups.
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D
Right, right. It's interesting that you mentioned that because I'm originally from Michigan and so I still have a lot of like people I went to high school with who are on my Facebook feed and I've very much seen so much of the same thing. And again, it tends to be a lot of people who are stay at home moms. And I think this, again, it's this way of promoting this dream of being able to have some form of financial independence, but it's not real. You aren't actually giving someone the skills or the tools.
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C
Yeah. And the upstart costs are crazy. Like one of these legging companies, I like poked around the website and it's all very murky. It's like you actually, they make it so that like you have to have one on one contact with someone to get the full set of information. And like one of these startup kits was like $5,000. I'm like, that is a lot of money. And like that's a lot of money for me. And I, you know, I feel like I, I'm like, you know, like blessed to be better off than some of the people that I see selling the stuff. So it's like you put in this capital and then you, you know, and then you have to like push it on every single person that you know because your network is who you are supposed to exploit.
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A
I'm sure just the, you know, the sheer existence of social media has probably been such a boon to these companies because it creates the illusion that you can sell without necessarily going door to door. Like yeah, it's, yeah, it's like, oh look, it's just getting on Facebook and you know, sending out the alarm that your new shipment of.
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C
Yeah, but now what they do is that they slide into your DMs. And the thing about it that's funny is that there are a ton of Facebook groups around people who to be better at running their small business on social media. So, you know, like a lot of the like Instagram influencers and people who do wedding photography or everybody who is a small business owner online, there are a ton of these like kind of marketing cohorts that you can join. And the thing that I have always found so interesting is that whenever it becomes like people start talking about money and somebody who's involved in one of these, you know, like the Tupperware 2.0 party, they will always tell you upfront how much money they make. And the minute you ask for details, all of them always say, please privately message me. It's like a standard line across all. I was like, I've seen this with people who are friends. I've seen this people who are strangers on the Internet. And I was like, wow, you're transparent about the fact that you can be making money. But the minute anybody presses you about it in a place that's supposed to be a private group where we're all giving each other advice on how to, how to like, band together and become better marketers, it like, that's the thing that you take to the private forum.
- [19:06]
B
And the, and the, the influence of social media on get rich quick schemes I think has really been invisible. It's because Facebook isn't public in the way that most other things are public. It's hard to measure what's going on. But I know, like, I don't get the Tupperware 2.0 things. I do get a constant stream of sponsored posts by this guy called James Altucher who has, who has like a get rich quick scheme of like, let me tell you how to buy stock in undervalued companies or something. And it just never goes away. And I'm sure he wouldn't be doing it if he wasn't making real money at it.
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A
Yeah, no. So it goes actually to like, social media is given like this scammers. If the whole art is about segmenting and finding your ideal mark. Right. It's about finding, okay, I'm going to sell to the rich lady or I'm going to go after economically disempowered community. Like social media has made that easier. It's easier to filter out your, your. Your ideal or find your ideal audience. And so it's just kind of puts us on steroids, I guess.
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D
Right. Because it's not as though these scams are new. I mean, you've had snake oil salesmen since the beginning of time. It's essentially that just now they have a medium to target this so specifically and to essentially be the scammer themselves. Be more successful in that way.
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A
Yeah.
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C
And also you're less vigilant if, you know, it's like one thing to get an email from like, you know, the widow of the president of Cote d', Ivoire, like giving them your bank account, you know, like, so she can stash some money for her and her kids. I love those scams. Whenever they get the president's name wrong and they're like, oh, you're like, I know how to use Google too, but, you know, it's like one thing to get those and just be, you know, like, we're all educated people and we can kind of suss those out. Then when it becomes this, like, very private conversation, when your cousin or your friend or somebody that you have, like, an actual real life connection to is like, hey, can you do, you know, like, can you buy this thing? One, to help me build my business, and two, because, like, you're actually gonna need this crap. I think that, that, that is harder, you know, like, that's a harder line to draw in the sand. And. And I've seen. I have a friend who is in. She has a friend that's always selling her vitamins and like, the same kind of thing. And she keeps buying the vitamins knowing that they are garbage because she's like, this is the only way that my friend makes money. And I don't know how else to have that conversation with her. And I was like, you know, like, the people at vitamin scam headquarters, like, this is exactly what they're banking on. It doesn't. Like, it doesn't matter to them how the sale gets made. And instead you're putting your reputation and all your personal friendships on the line.
- [21:46]
B
So I want to pick up on what you were just talking about. The widow of Cote d', Ivoire, because.
- [21:52]
D
That is quite the segue.
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B
The widow of the president of Cote d'.
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A
Ivoire.
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C
You're never gonna get good Cote d' Ivoire sponsors on this field happens to.
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A
Be friends with family.
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B
It's funny you mention this, because I just got an email from the widow of the former president of Cote d' Ivoire, and she says that she has all of this money, but, okay, my favorite, these are known as 419 scams. I mean, you can tell us why they're called 419 scams.
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C
They're called 419 scams because 419 in the Nigerian penal cod is the part that deals with fraud and scamming and whatever, like, these kinds of scams.
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B
And historically, it was always coming out.
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C
Historically, it was coming out of Nigerian Internet cyber cafes.
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B
And the really fascinating thing to me about 419 scams is you're talking about how the president's name is misspelled and there's loads of misspellings, and there's lots of obvious mistakes in them. The thing I find fascinating about them is that that is entirely deliberate. And the problem, the way the scams work is you send out millions of emails and you don't want millions of responses because you can't deal with millions of responses. What you want is only the most gullible people to respond to you. And so the way that you filter for only the most gullible people is by making your email so misspelled that they will still respond, even in the face of all of the obvious warning signs.
- [23:17]
C
Yeah, I mean, so I think that, you know, at the origin of the scam, that was probably not true. It's like, literally, people were misspelling and, like, things were wrong because they did not have the full picture of, you know, like, the scope of what was going on was wrong. But I think that what is true is that most 419 scams now online are actually not perpetrated by Nigerians. It's people who want you to think. It's people who want you to think that, you know, they're. It has definitely gotten more sophisticated and more evil in that sense.
- [23:47]
A
Move beyond its punk rock roots.
- [23:50]
C
It's like in the DIY days and.
- [23:53]
A
The 409 school, the major labels got a hold of it.
- [23:55]
C
Yeah. But now, you know, it's like, you get these emails all the time, and I, like, every once in a while will, like, track my inbox for them. Because if it's a country that I recognize and the thing is wrong, I love it when they're like, Samuel Doe, the president of Togo, and I'm like, that's not true. And every once in a while, I'll respond, and I. They are really quick to respond to you. It's really astonishing where they're like, okay, like, here's the deal. But also, they're very. It's very transactional. It's like, hi, here's my bank account information. Can you drop this in here?
- [24:24]
A
How fast do they, like, do they move? Like, is there any foreplay?
- [24:29]
C
Within hours. But the thing about it that's amazing is that it's. Almost every time I've done this, I felt like the person on the other end was actually an AI. I was like, there's no way. This is a human being who is talking to me. Because they don't answer half of the questions that I have. I'll say, like, this, this. So there's something about it that sounds really automated. And I. You know, and I bet you that some entrepreneur on the other end is like, definitely is like, you know, it's like, I do this more than three times a day. We should automate this process. No?
- [24:54]
D
I imagine you think you would have chatbots doing it now.
- [24:56]
C
Yeah. I mean, at this point, but it's just like, the psychology of it is really, really, really fascinating.
- [25:01]
B
So the thing about the. The thing which scares me about the 419 scams is precisely that, because they have now reached this point of filtering for the most gullible. The effect is that we have all seen a million of these emails. We've all recognized them for what they are immediately, and we've managed to persuade ourselves that, hey, it's really easy to notice when you're being scammed. It's not. And we saw this with, like, the DNC hacks. We saw this actually. I mean, Gizmodo Special Projects desk managed to get a bunch of Trump administration people to click on a fake Google link and to give up their Google passwords.
- [25:41]
C
Yeah. I mean, that stuff is super. It's super low. You know, it's like a very low lift. Because another one of the, you know, like, not to go back to email scams perpetually, but another one that's very effective. It's the one where you get an email that's like, hey, this is Felix. I'm stuck in Paris. Can you help me do this thing?
- [25:58]
B
I've lost my wallet.
- [25:59]
C
I've seen so many of my friends, Parents, fall for that, and. Because they were really worried.
- [26:03]
B
And it does come from that email address.
- [26:05]
C
Yeah, it comes from that email address. And I think that especially older people are very vulnerable to this kind of stuff because of that. You know, the kind of, like, digital literacy that it takes to snap out of.
- [26:16]
B
Yeah.
- [26:16]
C
Like, seeing them.
- [26:17]
D
And this goes back to kind of what we were talking about with Herbalife, this idea of trying to take advantage of these personal connections. People have to try to make the scam more effective, which just makes it so profound.
- [26:27]
B
The classic way of getting access to anyone's email is to send them an email claiming to be from one of their friends and saying, here, I've just written this. Can you have a look at it? And then you click on it. And then.
- [26:40]
C
Yeah, but there's also this, like, idea that, you know, it's like, vulnerable populations and older people and whatever who fall for scams. I see journalists fall for scams all the time. Like, whatever the thing was that was circulating two weeks ago with the fake, like, Google Drive link.
- [26:54]
A
Yeah.
- [26:55]
C
I don't click on links for anything. Like, I will literally text and chat people and say, did you mean to send me this? Because I, like, I'm not out here trying to click on links. But these were all journalists I was. You know, and that's.
- [27:06]
B
Journalists are by no means amusing, but.
- [27:09]
C
I think that this is like. Like, it's. That's what the. To me, like, that's one of the core problems of all of this is that we're always trying to diagnose for, you know, like, how other people are vulnerable. And it's like, actually, like, we, you know, it's like this is the problem with, like, not having herd immunity when it comes to this stuff. Like, we're. All it takes is for one person in your network to not know how to do this, and then we're all compromised.
- [27:31]
B
Yeah.
- [27:32]
D
I mean, at every. If you work at a big corporation, they always have. The IT department will send out phishing scams, and every time a lot of people click on it.
- [27:41]
B
Oh, just like, just to make sure.
- [27:43]
A
Who'S the idiot, basically, who needs to be taught a lesson.
- [27:46]
C
Yeah, they do that also at a lot of tech companies in Silicon Valley do this where they run all sorts of security tests that you don't know about. And if you, you know, it's like, if you're the vigilant one, you're the one that forwards it to the security team. And they're like, good job. You were the only one that was paying attention. This was a problem. And so it's just. I don't know, it's super depressing because I feel like these things are becoming more and more and more personal and lower and lower, like lifts for people to execute on.
- [28:12]
A
And in the end, it's that everyone, whether or not they realize, is vulnerable. It's just a matter of whether or not someone has thought of a scam for their specific. For them. Like, it's not whether or not you can fall for a scam, it's whether someone has come up with a scam for you.
- [28:24]
B
Yeah. And it's really a question of, like, am I interesting or important enough for someone to want to hack me? Because if I am, then probably I will wind up getting hacked.
- [28:35]
C
Yeah. But I don't know. I was watching the wizard of Lies, the hbo, like, Bernie Madoff movie. I still obsessed with Bernie Madoff. I don't know how he did it, but it was great.
- [28:46]
B
He was a rare example of the play Hard to Get Scandal.
- [28:49]
C
Yeah, Play Hard to get. But that was the thing. It's like, the more I read about it, I'm like, it's been, what, like, almost a decade now? I feel like I've read everything about Bernie Madoff. I've watched, watched every movie, every And I'm like, there's nothing about this that was sophisticated. I was like, you. We're in the middle of a recession, and somebody's telling you that they could give you double returns on your money, and you're like, sure, take it. Like, you know, I'm like, maybe it's because I don't have money, but that, like, seems crazy to me.
- [29:13]
B
Although part of what Madoff was doing was he was saying 10%. He wasn't making outlandish promises. Yeah, but he was saying, I will give you 10% year in and year out. Now, any financially sophisticated person knows it's impossible to get 10% year in and year out. But it wasn't the crazy Ponzi promise of, I will double your money in six months, which is just red flag.
- [29:35]
C
No, but it was still the promise of, you know, like, we are in an economic downturn and you are special because you're in this family. It's like, what. What makes you special and what makes your money special, you know, and trusting.
- [29:46]
B
To the religious thing. Right. It was a mostly Jewish organization and.
- [29:50]
C
Reputation and not trusting people. You know, and there's also an aspect of this, too, that, you know, part of the sickness of all of this is because we are not fully transparent about all of the ways that you should be investing or the ways that, like, you can make money. Or, like, it always people who get these kind of scams, whether they are, like, really low income or they are people who are really greedy who just want to make money, it's just. It's this idea that it's a secret that you didn't know about, because there are still secrets around how to be wealthy.
- [30:17]
B
And I think that. And then it's also, people don't like talking about money. And so if Bernie Madoff comes up to you and promises you an investment, it's not something that a lot of people would have felt comfortable, like, checking with someone else, say, hey, what do you think about this? Because it's an uncomfortable conversation to have, and they might not even want to admit to their friends that they have that kind of money.
- [30:40]
A
Yeah. I think the secret part, though, coming back to it is also, that's not just the financial scams. That's also the health and wellness scams. It's the same thing, is that you're being let in on the club. There's the confidence. They're drawing you into the culture by saying, it's like, oh, you know, I'm going to tell you something that your government won't Tell you. And if you're Alex Jones or if you're Gwyneth Paltrow, you're going to do with a different, slightly different variation.
- [30:59]
C
I'm so upset that you put Gwyneth Paltrow and Alex Jones in the same sentence. Gwyneth is an artist, so is Alex. Oh, my God. He can fight about this forever. But yeah, this. I don't know. This stuff is crazy. And I mean, like earlier too, we were talking about that Fyre Festival scam, right? That actually has all of the ingredients. The most beautiful scam you'll ever see this year.
- [31:19]
A
If it had only worked.
- [31:20]
C
If it had only worked. But I think, you know, it's like the reason that that was, you know, that scam was funny to everybody, at least on the Internet.
- [31:26]
B
Just remind us what it was.
- [31:28]
C
Fyre Festival is a. Was a luxury music and lifestyle festival put together.
- [31:35]
B
Which existed only on Instagram.
- [31:36]
C
Yes. Which existed solely on Instagram, put together by Ja Rule, an artist who is only known for features on like a major pop star songs and some like 25 year, like tech scammer who had a scammy credit card. I don't even know his name. But all of like, this was fascinating to me, I think. And, you know, and everybody online, like, kind of loved it. There was this hilarious aspect of having.
- [32:00]
B
Because you had these people paying thousands of dollars to go to this music festival featuring, like, the world.
- [32:07]
C
Yeah. I was like, if in 2017, if somebody's like, pay $10,000 to live on a cabana so you can listen to Blink182 and you don't know that that's a scam. Like, like you deserve all of this.
- [32:17]
D
Even if it wasn't a scam.
- [32:20]
A
But yeah, like, so watching it devolve into Lord of the Flies as they went to this island and there was no food and no shelter. Well, there were tents that were wet from the rain.
- [32:27]
C
I know. But you know, the beautiful part of this too though is like the promotion economy of this was wild. It was like they used all of these wholeberities and like Instagram models to kind of push it. Right. And I was like, wow, Slow Mo.
- [32:41]
B
Running down the beach.
- [32:42]
C
Exactly. But I'm just, you know, it's like Kendall Jenner, Gigi Hadid. And I was like, wow. These like Instagram models as modern day sirens luring rich people to their desk in the Bahamas.
- [32:53]
D
This is amazing.
- [32:54]
A
But it's also really fascinating because, like, by fucking up so spectacularly, right. And showing like, everything worked until it didn't it actually showed you the nuts and bolts of how to put together this kind of marketing campaign and scam in the future. Like, people are going to, there are people who are going to look at this and laugh and then there's going to be a few industrious folks who look at this as a case study. Like, it'll be in like the Harvard Business School of scammers.
- [33:16]
C
But seriously. But I think that that's what the.
- [33:17]
D
End game, like, I think that the.
- [33:19]
C
End game was this. It was. Because the more you read about what happened, it is very clear, you know, like, I'm not a lawyer, but I watch a lot of svu that these people had the intent to defraud people. There is no way, 100%. It's like if you look at the, if you look at the deck, if you look at the reality on the ground, like even a year out, months out, weeks out, and the fact that they still let people get on a plane to come to this thing and then all they have is booking.
- [33:48]
B
When they were dealing with the agents, rule of the bands who are meant to be appearing months and months in advance and they were like, yeah, we'll agree to pay you this money. And then they would just not pay the money. They just never had the money. They never had the reason.
- [34:01]
A
You don't think it was just a guy like a 25 year old entrepreneur?
- [34:05]
C
No, it was like, it was literally a scam. And also, Ja rules like press release, his iOS press release. This is when celebrities just type something on the notes app and send it out. And he, yeah, like he says, like in all caps, this was not a scam. And I was like, that's exactly how I know this is the scam. First of all, I'm like, that's exactly what a scammer would say. But also, you know, I just, there is no way that they were ready. And the thing to me that is just like kind of insane is how everybody else who was part of that infrastructure just trusted them. I'm like, you're working on the crew for this thing and Weather channel says that there's a hurricane coming and you're literally living in a shanty town and you think that this is gonna happen.
- [34:42]
A
It's like Cumbrilla Haiti. Exactly.
- [34:44]
C
Like, this is crazy.
- [34:45]
B
I will tell you, like, in terms of investment advice, you know, I, I tell us. I will tell you one thing. If you are buying anything in the future, whether it is a plane ticket or a festival ticket or, or a hotel room, buy it with A credit card. If you buy it with a credit card, if you wind up. If you bought tickets to Fyre festival on your credit card and then it turned out to be a big scam, guess what? Your credit card will refund that money.
- [35:16]
C
Listen, I just got a credit card for the first time this year, and it's been very exciting because I didn't trust big credit card industry. I was one of those, like, you got to spend every. You got to spend cash for everything. And then I checked my credit score and I was like, oh, I need a credit card. I was like, there's a reason this is here, you know, But I like, again, like, that's not something that everybody knows that you can be insured under every. You know, like, certain type of things. And there's such a mystery on just how to be like a financially healthy person. Like, not even, like, wealthy. And it's ridiculous. But yeah, don't, like, trust Gigi Hadid to send you to, like, wherever to.
- [35:53]
B
Go listen to music. I'm so sad. I can't trust Gigi Hadid. I'm just gonna have to make do with trusting Amanda Chantal Bacon, inst.
- [35:59]
C
Ah, listen, just like, you know, buy crystals that Amanda Chantal Bacon recommends you so you can feel. You can feel good about, I don't know, like, your place in the universe. But, like, don't take her medical advice.
- [36:11]
B
For, like, can I sharpen my knives by keeping them under a pyramid?
- [36:15]
C
Yes, that's exactly how that works.
- [36:18]
B
Excellent. So that's it for the scams bit. But we do still have our numbers round.
- [36:24]
C
Oh, yes. You don't have a number.
- [36:26]
A
Ah, fuck, I forgot a number for this.
- [36:28]
C
Do you want my copy of the Wall Street Journal so you can pick a number?
- [36:33]
B
So, Amina, you recently switched from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal.
- [36:38]
C
Listen, it has changed my life. Shout out to Rupert Murdoch. Here's the thing. Don't buy the Wall Street Journal if you want to read, like, sound political advice or about climate or whatever. But if you want to know how rich people live, well, this is the paper for you.
- [36:56]
A
Oh, the mansion section.
- [36:57]
C
Oh, the mansions.
- [36:58]
B
Well, so what is your number?
- [37:00]
C
I mean, okay, this has nothing to do with the Wall Street Journal. Actually, my number today is 120 million.
- [37:08]
B
Is that a number of dollars?
- [37:09]
C
Yes, US dollars.
- [37:11]
B
US dollars.
- [37:11]
C
And that is the reported budget for Patty Jenkins Wonder woman movie. So $120 million for a superhero movie is actually not a lot of money.
- [37:24]
B
I was just out last night with someone who told me they spent $300 million on that thing, plus more than $300 plus.
- [37:32]
C
No, exactly. So it's like, total. Probably the budget for that movie will be around $400 million. Like 400, 450.
- [37:38]
A
Once you include marketing.
- [37:39]
C
Yeah, once you put in marketing and listen, I went to a screening where there was a lot of. Of swag. I was like, this is not sustainable, but thank you for my new hat. So I want to share this number because Patty Jenkins is. All of the headlines in the news are saying that this is the first movie helmed by a woman that, like, got $100 million budget. I think that's actually not true. I think the Kathryn Bigelow submarine movie, I think it's called Widowmaker, was, like, within that range. Yeah, but it's 2017, and it's, like, very shameful that only two women are. Have made movies in this realm. And what's really interesting about it is that people in Hollywood always tell you that they're using big data and analytics to figure out what sells movies or whatever. And one strike against Patty Jenkins was that her previous movie had only, like, she only had an $8 million budget. So what is she gonna do with $100 million? And this is all garbage. First of all, certainly, you know, like, movies like Baywatch and Suicide Squad have budgets that were bigger than this and were. And sometimes they're helmed by people who have not, like, don't have the same kind of directorial experience as this woman. And it's really interesting that, like, when, you know, like, when you take, like, kind of like, let's say you take a man who's only made a music video, and then you give him a big budget movie to make, he is, you know, like, he's a discovery, but when it's a woman, she's a risk. And then we're all trying to figure out how this is going to work. And the truth is also that, like, Hollywood just does not have good stats on how people of color or women directors actually would do directing big budgets, because they literally do not give them the opportunity to. And that's really depressing. But all of this to say that Patty Jenkins is amazing. Wonder Woman is so good. I don't even care about the problematic parts of that movie. It's amazing. And they should give her, like, more hundreds of millions of dollars to make movies, and they should definitely let more women make superhero action movies, because clearly they're great.
- [39:43]
B
Bring on Wonder Woman. Actually, they are bringing on Wonder Woman too. It's called Something Something.
- [39:50]
C
And she's probably gonna be in the Justice League movie. I don't know. I'm new to superhero movies and it's very exciting for me.
- [39:57]
B
Okay, get in deep. Anna, do you have a number?
- [40:02]
D
I do. It's 30 billion. And that's the amount that Americans usually per year spend on supplements.
- [40:09]
C
What, what kind of supplements?
- [40:12]
D
So all kinds of supplements, mostly useless. So this is the reason that I bring this up, particularly in the scams episode, because I think supplements fall into this category where, because there are some supplements that are actually useful if you have a, like a specific vitamin deficiency, Calcium. Right. But if you a, if you don't have a deficiency, then taking more of something isn't good. And often a lot of these supplements aren't regulated well. So they may not even have the acute of agreement. So I, I think this is an interesting number because it just shows you again how. So we think especially I think people who perhaps are highly educated who make a decent amount of money think, well, I'm not going to be scammed. But I think that is not the case.
- [40:54]
B
I will say that the two most important supplements are three actually.
- [41:00]
A
You're not going to say sex bark?
- [41:01]
C
No, he's going to say iodine and fluorine. Thanks government for making us take them.
- [41:08]
B
They put fluorine in the water, they put iodine in insult. And that is a huge public health win in countries around the world, including the usa. And it costs essentially nothing. It certainly costs nothing at the consumer level. My number is 3 basis points, 0.03% which is not very much. But it is the amount that S and P, the company, S and P, Dow Jones charges spy, the etf, the exchange traded fund to license its name. So when you're buying an index fund and you're saying this is really cheap, it's only seven basis points of fees. Like three of those seven basis points are just for licensing the index.
- [41:58]
A
Huh?
- [41:58]
D
Yeah. That's why now you're having certain, I believe like ETFs trying to want to set up their own own index so that they don't have to pay these.
- [42:06]
B
Licensing fees, these licensing fees.
- [42:08]
C
How do I get my money back?
- [42:10]
B
You don't get your money back. But it's a huge multi billion dollar business between S and P, Dow Jones and FTSE Group and msci. And it's really hard to get away from. And as the fees on these index funds have become lower and lower, they become a much bigger part of the fees that we pay to, to invest our money.
- [42:34]
A
My number is $15 per hour. And that's how much a startup in New York my colleague Henry Gabara wrote about called Drop Car is charging people right now to.
- [42:44]
B
To drop a car?
- [42:45]
A
No, to just drive their car around the city. So this service instead of parking in New York, because parking is so expensive, they will just bring it, give you a chauffeur, and that chauffeur will drive your car while you do whatever, and they'll drive it around and then bring it back to you. And so it is. And because they've realized that urban real estate and parking is so much more expensive than paying someone to just drive a car and keep it like moving on the road, that this is a business model that they're trying.
- [43:11]
B
And so wait, the driver gets paid $15 an hour?
- [43:14]
A
No, I think, I don't know. I don't know the specific breakdown of what the driver takes versus what the company. But the whole can the driver service is 15.
- [43:23]
B
Use the car to do sort of deliveries or you know, pick up their car.
- [43:28]
C
It can't be a drug mule while you're doing this.
- [43:31]
A
Yeah, I think that's probably not. That's probably a no go. You can't.
- [43:35]
D
It'll be like where Walmart, where they were telling people that they had to like do additional work like on their way home.
- [43:40]
C
Oh my gosh.
- [43:40]
B
So what's your job? I drive around in circles. Wow.
- [43:45]
A
But like, honestly, it would be like, is that really much worse than truck driver driving? Like, I mean, just chilling out.
- [43:52]
B
That is a service which exists famously. There's a service of big high end removal companies like house moving companies will sell their services not for people who are moving house, but people who just having a big party and they want to take all of the furniture out of their home so that people can mingle more easily in their homes. And so they'll take all of the furniture, put it into a truck, the guests will arrive, the truck will drive around in circles for six hours, and then they'll come back and put the furniture back.
- [44:24]
A
I want to go to a party that is going to be such an unholy mess. Yeah.
- [44:28]
C
Like, we took out all our furniture so we could skate in our house today. Like, why would you do that?
- [44:35]
A
Amazing.
- [44:35]
C
It's probably cheaper to just rent a space.
- [44:38]
A
It's awesome.
- [44:39]
C
At that point, maybe that's what I'll do. I'll be a consultant for people who are thinking of using these services and be like, better altogether.
- [44:45]
A
Yeah.
- [44:45]
C
Be like, hi, here's the analog way to do this. That's like less nutty. Yeah. And I'm like, don't pay me, I'll pay you. This is stupid.
- [44:55]
B
So on which note, don't get scammed by any of these people. And if you do get scammed, email us. The email address is slatemoneylate.com let us know how you got scammed and we promise not to laugh.
- [45:10]
C
That's right. Stay sexy. Don't get scammed.
- [45:13]
B
Okay, I think that's it. Thank you so much for listening to Slate Money.
- [45:16]
A
And.
- [45:17]
B
And you have a whole week to listen to I have to Ask, which is another Slate podcast which is hosted by Isaac Chodna and it comes out every Thursday and he has deep dive interviews with what it says here. Notable folks. Notable folks means Chuck Schumer, Andrew Sullivan, Ashley Parker, novelist George Saunders. You could start with Chris Hayes. I don't know. He's interviewed a bunch of people. Or Pamela Paul from the New York Times Book Review. And check out his show@slate.com ask thanks to Dan Schrader, the producer, but mostly thanks to Amina Sao, who's the best person. And you're welcome back on anytime.
- [45:59]
C
I'll be back next week to talk about another thing. Never again.
- [46:05]
B
Amina may or may not be back next week, but we certainly will be. So we will talk to you next week. Next week and on Sleep, Money.
- [46:17]
C
Living Life and Speed of Life Scam. Give me a.