An Alleged Fraud Uncovered by a Short Seller Ends in Gunfire | Hacker News Reader

An Alleged Fraud Uncovered by a Short Seller Ends in Gunfire

wsj.com

88 pointslxm54 comments

Here are more details from the source (Hindenburg research): https://hindenburgresearch.com/jj-purchasing/

This is the same team that brought attention to Opera's predatory lending apps: https://hindenburgresearch.com/opera-phantom-of-the-turnarou...

And the amazing Nikola downhill self-propelled electric truck

Their name is really well chosen.

> "...Individuals allegedly put in hundreds of millions of dollars for what were described as high-reward, low-risk contracts to fund loans tied to personal-injury lawsuits through two companies..."

Makes you wonder if this type of transaction is practised by billboard personal injury law firms ("ambulance chasers") across the country. With how common personal injury commercials play on the radio and television it seems there is no shortage of attorneys willing to take a personal injury claim where insurance is quick to pay out.

This is not, generally, the law firms but legal investment companies (often founded and or run by ex-attorneys). There’s two, under reported, investment strategies in law. The first is funding class action lawsuits for a cut of the return - occasionally this can be paying out the actual class before a judgement and betting on getting a higher return when the case settles or is adjudicated. The second is this one, which is paying out to people who have already won a case and need cash fast before the normal payout date. It’s essentially payday lending for smaller settlements.

The billboard guys are just, usually, getting paid their normal cut of a lawsuit.

ex-attorneys !!

Litigation financing - funding the lawsuit in exchange for a percentage of recovery - is not limited to class actions. I knew someone that was in a firm that did this. Everything I ever heard about it from him made it sound like it was run in a very similar manner to venture capital firms. I never once heard the word "loan" or any indication that the risk of losing every penny invested on a specific lawsuit was anything other than "high".

Now, these firms aren't very likely to even take a meeting from the type of law firm that advertises on billboards or TV.

Firms that handle lemon law cases in my state operate this way, too -- no fee for the client assuming the case is actually worth a damn because the law includes a provision that the automaker pays the legal fees if they win a buyback/replacement/remedy.

> Mr. Beasley said he wished the agents had killed him—he said he would rather die than go to prison

He had been shot by the FBI and had a gun in his possession. That outcome seems like something he was in control to ensure. His revealed preferences show that statement wasn't true.

It’s possibly the case that had he been killed by police his insurance plan would reward his heirs differently than if he billed himself.

I thought of this because of a weird commercial for life insurance.

According to this source, most plans have just an “exclusion period” like 2 years after opening the plan where suicide would not be covered but may result in a refund of premium payments, after that period seems like they pay out in full

https://www.coverage.com/insurance/life/the-truth-about-suic...

"Life insurance won't pay out if you commit suicide" sounds like a common misconception/noble lie worth perpetuating.

On the one hand, I'm generally in favor of trusting people to make the right decisions for themselves based on their own circumstances if they're given enough information. On the other hand, if that one piece of information means the difference between life and death... then I feel a bit more confident in asserting that everyone is probably better off with them living.

It makes more sense to raise the premiums on people prone to it or just refund the premiums, which is also based in reality. Protects the insurance pool all the same and better.

I don't think random inaccuracies about suicide repercussions are worth perpetuating, it just perpetuates the ignorance about the subject and general unwillingness to discuss the nuances of the subject

I agree with your first point, but it's orthogonal to the question if people who would commit suicide given enough money goes to their loved ones should be tricked into not committing suicide. And, as far as the utility argument is concerned, the insurance pool is best off if they're tricked into staying alive and paying into the pool.

As to your second point, I agree in general with reducing ignorance about suicide, but this one misconception feels... somehow worth the lie. I agree it's not the most objectively rational position to take, but if the money is the only thing making the difference between life and death, I feel like it's better they pretend the money isn't there, and it's easier to pretend if they don't know they're pretending.

alright, a non-negligible subset of these are suicide by cop attempts. thats just as inconsiderate of their feelings as it would be of a loved ones feelings, except now there is an additional person potentially screwed up just because the dead person believed a myth about their life insurance.

> ... an additional person potentially screwed up just because the dead person believed a myth ...

The police and the loved ones will presumably both be emotionally better off if the person believes the myth, because the myth reduces suicide rates.

We are in agreement that the myth reduces suicide rates... right? Or are we talking right past each other here?

So, looking at just the cases at the margin where the difference is believing the myth or not believing the myth, the statements would be "because a dead person didn't believe the myth" or "because the myth tricked someone into living". We're talking about increased or decreased probabilities, but pushing the probabilistic argument to the extreme, there are no dead people who believe the myth (at the margin where the myth is the deciding factor).

There are lots of good arguments against prolonging the myth, but sparing the feelings of police and loved ones falls on the side of prolonging the myth.

I don't know. If we are including suicide by cop and suicide attempts by cop, I think this isn't reducing suicide rates and isn't reducing the trauma some cops encounter (for the cops that care). I don't know how it compares to all suicides, suicide attempts, or suicides that didn't happen.

If you have those numbers, be my guest.

I'll still be for reducing ignorance either way, at best I might find it good parlor talk to repeat the concession about how the myth tricks people into living.

Now, that's the beginning of a good argument!

If I'm arguing that the noble lie is morally good (I didn't say as much, but I think it's fair to read my statements as moral agreement), presumably I'm arguing in favor of a teleological moral system. Does the utility of the reduced suicide outweigh the utility of the ignorance and mistrust created by the lie? I'd concede that a noble lie is difficult to justify in other moral systems.

If I'm going to convince you that a noble lie is morally good, I need to both convince you that (1) a teleological moral system is superior to the alternatives and (2) that the noble lie has net positive utility. The first is very difficult to argue if we disagree, so I shouldn't even start if I can't provide good evidence that the second is true in practice.

HWR_14 makes some strong arguments that the utility is a net negative.

I think I've been convinced by you and HWR_14.

It may prevent people from committing suicide, but it also may prevent people from asking for payouts when they are entitled to them. It also causes the seriously in pain to continue suffering in an attempt to find some other way to die for their families sake.

Very good points.

I think the GP is speculating that the perp was in a position to nearly force the police to mortally wound him. Given they had already shot him once, presumably waving a gun in their direction would have drawn a mortal wound.

Isn't the insurance payout the proceeds of crime?

Since shooting at the FBI(a crime) is in the causal chain of events leading to his estate receiving a payout of money, the estate should forfeit that payout.

It is a crime they may have been accused of under other circumstances, but legally (assuming life insurance eligibility is the question), it is not one they will have been convicted of (obviously).

I also strongly suspect that drunk drivers who die in a car crash have their life insurance paid out; that’s also a crime.

good point regarding drunk drivers; i had not thought of that.

It depends if his policy has a clause that terminates coverage if you're killed while committing a felony.

https://archive.ph/ASgp1

> for what were described as high-reward, low-risk contracts

A very good heuristic is that any investment described as high-reward, low-risk is a scam.

If someone knew of an easy way to make a lot of money with very little risk, why would that person share it with anyone, especially in exchange for money?

At some point you have to think the people that invest in these type of scams have to know they're scams and are just hoping to get in early enough to be closer to the top of the Pyramid.

Greed, like all negative emotions, makes you stupid. Conmen occasionally write books about what they do and they all say that greed is the hook that catches their victims.

Access to capital? This site is literally funded by doing that!

this site is literally funded by easy high reward/low risk schemes?

If I knew a way to make you 100% every year with no risk, I would try my hardest to convince you to let me do that for you for 1%. Because finding 1000 people who all agree to that makes me 10x as much money as just using my own cash. And that's assuming we're all equally rich to start. I could probably, if I prove it was true, have each of those 1000 people write me a check for a multiple of my net worth.

If you start with unreasonable assumptions you get unreasonable results. Nobody has a way to make 100% every year with no risk, particularly one that doesn't greatly diminish the rate of returns if you get 1000 large investors.

Huh. I don't have such a way. But I'm responding to someone saying it had to be a scam because no one with that system would ever share it. My point is sharing it for a percentage would be highly profitable (hell, that's the description of a mutual fund.) You cannot use the fact that people want to put other people's capital into an investment to denigrate that investment.

Again, nobody would ever share it because such a system would not hold it's original rate of return and risk once shared. Getting a bunch of money from people and getting a low risk and reward return is already doable, just put it in an index fund, the one thing unique about this is high returns AND zero risk and this goes out the window when you share it with your closest 1000 friends (i.e. it becomes public knowledge) and suddenly you find out the investment didn't have a truly infinite source of return to pull out of to keep the rate steady.

This is in addition to such a no risk system not existing in the first place. I.e. both are unreasonable assumptions and both will give you unreasonable results.

I think they mostly don't know they're scams. That's part of why such people are called "unsophisticated investors" and why they are so frequently targeted by conmen.

If a substantial fraction of the US population believes the earth is flat or that astrology works or that aliens routinely visit our planet, it's also possible that a large fraction believes zero-risk/high-reward investments are real.

Precisely.

Not to say edge cases can’t be found, but they are usually temporary.

Mormon here. Saw headline; said to myself "even odds Mormons involved". Read story, Mormons confirmed.

How did you know?

Vegas location is a big clue. Read about Howard Hughes associates and casino finance history.

all close knit communities get hit by these type of things. example Madoff and the jewish community.

every day in Las Vegas ..

Paywalled.

https://archive.ph/https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-alleged-f...

In case anyone else has a problem reaching this, I had to use Chrome, otherwise I got "Error code: SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP".

i get ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH on chrome

Same. I read Hindenburg's original ( linked in another comment) instead.

This is exactly why I manage my own (closed) fund. Too many scams out there. It goes both ways too, in big investment firms you have no idea who’s money you’re investing. It’s just a green line going up and down.

Interesting - any suggestions of pitfalls to avoid and helpful resources to start doing similar?

If investing is truly a passion of yours, I would spend some time working for an institutional investor before you get involved in the business.

Most folks are better off using a boglehead style investing strategy and not working their regular job.

Thanks!

Do you do a full master feeder structure? what jursidictions+entity types are the offshore feeders? I’ve become re-fascinated by segregated portfolio companies, since the closest US analogs dont have enough case law behind them.

I like the concept of pooling all my tax exempt entities alongside my taxable ones

Simplifies the investing and exposure, while it does have the drawback of increasing compliance costs with a couple countries and industry regulators

Curious who your fund admin is too, open to trading notes

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