The Mysterious Heir of Extreme Travel | Hacker News Reader

The Mysterious Heir of Extreme Travel

rollingstone.com

66 pointsakakievich21 comments

I am fascinated by the specificity of this con. Extreme travel? Plastics? I guess it’s the specificity that makes it believable - I’ve recently met a sociopath (if that’s the label for it) who fabricated lies with such detail that no one doubted her. We got pretty close as “friends” and though her affect was a bit off, and drama seemed to happen around her, no one really suspected anything. Later on we discovered she just liked hanging out with guys and she would basically bait them emotionally and they would either beg her or pay her money for sex. Which to me seemed to be a very niche goal, hanging a network of guys who were desperate to be with her.

I don’t know why it didn’t work on me, maybe in my younger years it would have, or maybe because I had slight seniority over her at work so I never made a “move.” She was just a highly intelligent girl who I hung out with after work sometimes, taking long walks.

So yeah, the “day of revelations” as various corroborators got together in the article’s story really brought back memories. I’m thankful I was lucky enough to not get hurt.

The particular family name he chose was carefully selected to ward off suspicion as well. Very interesting.

In your story, the lies were the emotional bait, correct?

They were both emotional bait and also lies that painted a false story of her being a college student. I guess she was 20 and Indian and intelligent so it would be strange if she wasn’t in college, but she’d make up very specific lies, unprovoked, about people in her nonexistent classes, stuff her professor told her, exam dates, etc. I wouldn’t even ask her about anything college.

The emotional bait was like suggestive, like she’d tell me most guy friends would have hit on her by now, and she’d also dress up extra nice when we met up and all made up. We’d be walking along a beach and she’d have heels on. This behavior confused me as I told her early and up front to “let’s just be friends”. It might have confused her too.

After I found out about her lies this all made more sense.

IIRC there was a Guardian article a while back about people using Instagram to pretend to be rich and then use that to perpetuate MLM schemes, but this Vanity Fair piece from last month covers something closer to this con, though in that case the woman started with check kiting and moved on to scamming acquaintances. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16838046

That was a fun read. Many parallels. Head-scratching behavior and a bizarre adherence to the lie even after confrontation.

> Which to me seemed to be a very niche goal, hanging a network of guys who were desperate to be with her.

It's fairly common. People with narcissistic or borderline personality disorder have a very fragile sense of self, and have an excessive need to be wanted by others. The network of guys is probably a kind of self-medication. Needless to say, these disorders generally have detrimental effects on the people around them.

Weird part about it too is that if they get the "wow" response they want from baiting, impressing, over doating, or whatever; they tend to be disgusted at the person responds as intended. If someone feels creeped out or get's what is happening and pulls away (especially if explictly/dramatically), they get very interested and focus on the mystery of the thing they can't have.

I've been around more than a few narcissists, psychopaths, and BPD people in my life. In general I'm sympathetic, but I'm also a magnet because I was raised by one. Took me a long time (and therapy) to realize that when I meet someone and 10 minutes later I think we are going to be best friends that it was a programmed ride.

Almost all of them that I've met are very high IQ individuals. They can exude a sort of confidence, especially psychopaths because of the lack of a strong emotional tether. At the core is an insecurity about how smart they know they are, a compulsive desire to maintain dominance of attention, and a sort of boredom about how dumb everyone is. The boredom about how dumb people are also isn't in the least true, but it's a feeling with built in confirmation bias. Smart people move away from them quickly and they don't see the emotional heisman move people do to avoid them. They don't realize that a lot of people that stick with them know who they are and what they are doing, but love them anyways too.

Personality disorders are complicated as hell. Some of the most interesting people I've ever met are afflicted. Many of them I would love to randomly share a cab with again, but don't want them to know where I live or work. They ARE treatable though if someone wants to do the work! It's important to know that if you have one close to you. That and also strong boundaries are your friend.

A couple of years there was a discussion about the death of Pieter Hintjens [1][2], a semi-famous computer scientist who had just passed away. I had heard of him before his death, but didn't know very much about him. I decided to take a look at his web site, and noticed that he had written a book about psychopaths called "The Psychopath Code" [3]. (The PDF download is free.)

At that exact moment, I had my life wrapped up with a psychopath whose behavior, strange stories and webs of lies were difficult to understand. I read Pieter's book and instantly everything made sense.

Some of the things you mentioned were covered in Pieter's book and I also noticed with the psychopath in my own life:

(A) overly dramatic behavior that is just a hair off

(B) lots of manufactured drama

(D) you can't figure it out by yourself: you can only figure it out when all the various corroborators get together. This is because every target is delivered a separate set of lies.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12634590

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Hintjens

[3] http://hintjens.com/blog:_psychopaths

This type of person was my first girlfriend, it was a very tough experience, but I learned a lot from it.

As someone who's traveled quite a bit (26 countries, 5 continents), one of the first things you learn is how to be skeptical of people and not get scammed. I guess the difference between me and the extremely wealthy people who fell for this is that my threshold for feeling angry about getting ripped off is somewhere around $100, meaning I've had a lot more chances to develop my sense of skepticism. I'm not excusing what this kid did. He seems like an asshole. But honestly, it seems like the people who fell for it have had the privilege of not having to develop their sense of street smarts and now they're paying for it. Part of me just wants to say "Serves you right!".

The oddest thing to me about this story was the impression that, if he'd just marked up his travel packages a lot (which it sounds like he was doing anyway) and not in addition failed to deliver, he could actually have made even more money (because it would have lasted longer). But then, perhaps it would have been a lot more work.

I also had the impression that Radcliff, the "friend", might have been the same guy using a third name.

> I also had the impression that Radcliff, the "friend", might have been the same guy using a third name.

The article is all but not saying it directly. Probably a real person used to front the business, while all actions, email etc. clearly come directly from "Baekeland" who sits outside the public light until the business is revived.

summary to save everyone the click:

Kid in his 20s (intelligent and likely suffering psychological conditions) fools a bunch of rich people and collect money for exotic travel ($20k each, from the article figures, which is peanuts for exotic travel. it doesn't even cover a 1st class ticket to a mundane city) and disappears.

Then the article keeps going about how clever the disguise was, when it really was just "i am rich and won't talk about my family"

The article really does ramble on and on. Just because it's a delicious, interesting story, doesn't mean it needs 2000 words of filler...

Same. It's interesting but the people scammed themselves say that they don't care about the money - they're all multi-millionaires. Does't inspire pity or anger on the readers part.

I read the article and was on the side of the scammer. He wasn't scamming old ladies out of their savings or anything, just a kid having a good time by spinning a story.

The only bit that made me cock an eyebrow was when he pocketed the $10k for the charity.

I traveled on the sister ship to this one couple years ealier on a similarly exotic trip to all sorts of far flung destinations. While it was a small crowd (~50 passengers) it was mostly all these types of hardcore dedicated travelers, mostly eldery folks, that are keen on checking off the most remote of destinations. Sure, a few of them were rich lambo-types but by and large they were pretty down to earth, nature focused people with above average means. I find it hard to believe they would fall for such swindling but it sounds like this guy had just enough real stuff going on to convince folks he was legit...

He's like the ultimate Leonardo DiCaprio character -- Jay Gatsby, Frank Abagnale, and Jordan Belfort all in one.

Exactly what I was thinking.

I'd say those three you mentioned were each more interesting individuals.

Plus Danny Archer

Reply on news.ycombinator.com