Originally published at: Claim: Theranos's Elizabeth Holmes duped Betsy DeVos out of $100m | Boing Boing
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So you’re saying she’s done at least one good thing in the world? More power to people that can dupe DeVos.
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Huh. I was always told that the super rich are, like, the best people to have all that power and money because they always invested it wisely, that’s why they’re super rich. Are you telling me that’s not necessarily the case?
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Educator impostor, educate thyself!
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I remember being shocked the first time I saw a “business plan” someone was shopping around to investors. I didn’t realize that all you really need to get millions of dollars was a bunch of bullshit guesswork in .pdf and .ppt formats and the chutzpah to tell people to their faces that they’ll get rich from it. It was another revelatory moment when a business owner told me there’s no reason to ask for what you need, you should ask for what you can get; it even makes you seem more credible to bring a huge ask. Doesn’t surprise me that common sense doesn’t scale proportionally to wealth.
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A win-win: the sociopath Holmes will likely end up behind bars (mainly becase she had the poor judgment to try defrauding wealthy and powerful people) and the sociopath DeVos will never see that money again. Added bonus: the DeVos fortune itself is built on a scam [though, thanks to the help of Gerald Ford, Amway is not defined as a pyramid scheme in the legal sense].
My favorite part of the story is that administering a blood test to one of the DeVoses was part of the presentation, but they never received the results.
So much for the old saw uttered by DeVos types that “if you’re so smart why aren’t you rich like me?”
I’ve known that since the first dotcom bubble, when I got a lot of experience in a very short time debunking such prospectuses . The only thing more shocking than these BS business plans was the fact that a lot of them eventually got funded.
Also true. It took me a little more time to realise that some investors are as stupid in this way as DeVos is.
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The Devos family fortune is dirty MLM-scheme money to begin with, so the scammers got scammed.
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How tiny is my violin!
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If only the rich eating each other gave them prions…
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Can you say Karma? I knew you could.
This one goes along with Marjoie Taylor-Green being grifted by orange julius.
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I haven’t undertaken a serious investigation of Mass-Murdering Traitor Trump’s co-conspirator Betsy DeVos. I know that she is the sister of deadly supervillain Eric Prince and worth about $5 billion, I know she inherited her money, and I know she is big into education-related con games masquerading as legitimate businesses, but that’s about it. And so while $100 million is a significant chunk of Betsy’s ill-gotten wealth (unless of course you buy the popular wealth-backed lie that a family can amass billions without criminal behavior), I don’t know if she is smart or responsible enough to care. Inheritors of fortunes rarely understand what they have.
But let’s hope it hurt like the Hell she so richly deserves.
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If we can’t eat the rich, I guess we’ll have to settle for watching them eat each other.
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From zero (creepy lady) to hero.
Yay, do it again Holmzy!
Does this mean that she will have all the cigarettes in prison?
Oh wait, DeVos, it was DeVos that she scammed?
Not cigarettes for you then Liz.
Now if Betsy was her cell-mate, then she could get some cigarettes.
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As I recall from the book Blackwater, in 1996 the Prince family sold the Prince automotive components empire to Johnson Controls for $1.35 billion, with the 3 children dividing the proceeds equally. Each child became instantly $450 million richer.
Betsy made out like a bandit by being born into the right family and by marrying well.
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My favorite part of the story is that administering a blood test to one of the DeVoses was part of the presentation, but they never received the results.
In all fairness, a properly functioning machine would also have thrown an exception. For instance, a Cellaca MX High-throughput Automated Cell Counter will report “E-345V: Red blood cell count < 0.1 trillion cells/liter. Immediate action: (1) Check unit not loaded with calibration sample. (2) Check patient topical sensitivity to garlic, hawthorn, Host, and sunlight.”
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Does it rhyme with schadenfreude?
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Well, bless both their hearts!
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Well, now I don’t feel so stupid for trading the family cow for these magic beans.
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Betsy’s dad invented Amway. So truly, justice is served.
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