Ken White wants to know how they got there? That is, were the Reuters reporters lucky enough to be on a morning Manhattan ramble and got the lucky shot? Had they staked out Shkreli because they'd done investigative work and concluded that he was dirty?
Or the operation was coordinated over police-band radio.
Which nonviolent defendants without records get arrested, and which get summonsed in (or self-surrender through arrangement with their lawyers), and why?
Maybe identified narcissistic sociopaths running obvious Ponzi schemes are considered a specific flight risk.
In such a case, only an address is enough to stir a response - once there the photographers shoot whomever emerges.
Maybe the photographer was Weegee.
“Fellig earned his nickname, a phonetic rendering of Ouija, because of his frequent, seemingly prescient arrivals at scenes only minutes after crimes, fires or other emergencies were reported to authorities.”
Given the extremely low quality of the photo that seems very unlikely. A heads-up seems likely to result in better equipment being brought to bear.
I suspect a schmuck with a mobile phone got lucky (e.g. valet or doorman) then sold / gave the photo to Reuters followed by a little white lie (“Reuters witnessed…” instead of “Schmuck witnessed…”).
My new theory is that this is all a publicity stunt by the Wu Tang Clan.
RZA invents a persona called “Martin Shkreli” (which, let me remind you, is an anagram of “Hail, Mr Stinker”) and sets him up as the head of a pharmaceutical company. The Wu-Tang Clan buys the exclusive rights to sell a drug whose patent expired in 1953, then has him generate controversy by hiking the price. Gigantic success – Shkreli becomes the most hated man on the Internet almost overnight. To ensure he doesn’t fade out of the limelight, Shkreli proceeds to double down on everything. Despite some stiff competition from Donald Trump, he manages to retain his position as most loathed man on the planet.
Then he buys the mysterious new Wu-Tang album for his own exclusive listening pleasure. More hate, more hype. And then, when the moment is right, the FBI swoop, and he does the perp-walk, right under the cameras of the Reuters reporters who had, of course, been tipped off by a phone call from Ghost.
Fast forward a few days, and Wu-Tang will announce that the album is now for sale, having just had a pre-launch publicity campaign that money cannot buy. It goes multiple platinum instantly, and the Wu-Tang Clan, chuckling enigmatically, retire to roll around on huge heaps of $100 bills.
Obviously, for this to work, the Wu-Tang Clan have to be so deeply enmeshed in the workings of the American establishment that they can actually order the FBI to arrest people, even fictional characters of their own creation. And maybe that’s only the tiniest fraction of their actual power. The truth may be that the world is actually controlled not by the Illuminati, or the Bilderberg Group, or shape-shifting alien lizards from Zeta Reticuli, but by a bunch of guys from Staten Island.
And you know, on reflection, I think I’m cool with that.
Those guys couldn’t manage to get out of a wet paper bag, let alone any conspiracy.
there was a tv camera crew there as well, not just “a schmuck with a mobile phone [who] got lucky”
EDIT: never-mind, the photo I linked to is actually from later on, during his perp walk
for some reason, my outrage-meter isn’t responding.
Ignoring the theater and addressing the issue:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-rightly-most-hated-man-in-america
But I will say this: having watched this stuff for a few decades, the best way to get yourself arrested by the feds for various financial crimes is to become extremely unpopular and widely vilified. I don't mean, Shkreli didn't do it. I suspect he did. And I'm sure he deserves it since he seems to be such a conscienceless, awful person. But this is a thing with federal prosecutors.
Damn you! you beat me to the punch lol
Was gonna ask if Mr. White ever heard of a Scanner.
Little thing you listen to the police on?
Maybe even the fire dept?
Could buy “freq guides” at radio shack… Maybe even a couple crystals for said scanner…
/Bad Stewie impression
[quote=“GrymRpr, post:12, topic:70892”]
radio shack
[/quote]Are they still around?
They were back in the 60’s and 70’s that being the era I was referencing.
ie: The Freq. Guides and the buying of Crystal’s for one’s scanner.
How quaint! These days one just gets the app or checks online.
Ken White specifically mentions the possibility that the journalists were using a scanner; however, his experience with perp-walked clients (including one time when journalists were tipped off by the law but turned up late, so the cops walked the suspect back to his house and did the perp walk all over again) makes him sceptical.
Maybe this will get the NYPD investigated. All of this year’s brutality didn’t do the job, but this time it’s a rich white guy.
Considering it was the FBI that came for him, not likely.
There’s one in my hood. They don’t sell transistors any more - just cell phones.
Since when are arrests supposed to be secret? Would people prefer if he had been disappeared in the middle of the night?
