SMIRK
Black Sheep
Fighting "The Man" With Fraud
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Fighting "The Man" With Fraud

Disillusionment, not greed, motivates the latest generations of white-collar criminals.

Welcome to Black Sheep, a spin-off publication of my serialized memoir. SMIRK. While SMIRK was a deep dive into my unusual personal and professional relationship with one unique white-collar fraudster— Martin Shkreli — Black Sheep takes a broader view and tells the stories of a wider range of business crimes and failures.

This publication will examine cultural themes and motives that contribute to lying, cheating, stealing, and related self-inflicted disasters; the impacts of those events; and the characters who play starring roles in these dramas. I find these tales both cautionary and fascinating; I hope you will, too.

Remember Zulily?

Possibly not. The briefly inescapable e-commerce site, advertising “flash” deals in pop-up ads, blossomed in the 2010s into a $2.6 billion business. Then, just like one of its ephemeral sales, it started to fade. By the end of 2023, the site was defunct.

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