Deutsche Bank whistleblower found dead in LA's Lincoln Park
heysocal.com
heysocal.com
Stay away from sources of fentanyl folks
Anybody 45 and under randomly dying these days is most likely from exposure to fentanyl. Doesnt matter what other stuff theyre up to, how much you respect them or if would find it “disrespectful” to say they used certain drugs. Most people arent intentionally using it.
https://www.abc12.com/news/fentanyl-number-one-cause-of-deat...
Anyway just a PSA. Curious about the toxicology report just like everyone else in the article said, but understanding how it occurs lets you read between the … lines... even when the report comes out.
People are doing lines at parties, and more commonly getting in trouble when they use their supply at home by themselves
These services rely on compulsive addicts to walk in, which is often people living on the street searching for the next hit
There are also personal use test kits to help with this
But at this point I’m thinking everyone should have a stash of narcan for resuscitation. Seems like an invisible distant and absurd thing but people are dying, number one killer 18-45 in US… and prevalance and education of narcan helps prevent the death. No different than defibrillators everywhere and fire extuingishers everywhere.
It's at least worth considering reading this as "I don't want to be found dead in a park".
This might be applicable in some places (particularly in the USA) where the opioid crisis is in full swing, but it’s a very rare event outside those locations.
In all seriousness, it is interesting to think about the idea that the supply chain pollution is primarily affecting US, sounds like we can still go wild in Europe.
A solution.
Maybe we should say North America has the problem? Not sure
Harder manageable, or harder to manage? I'm not sure if there should be a difference in how I interpret those, but there is.
Basically you can’t safely use the word in the vernacular and expect to have a productive discussion, which is unfortunate. Because we all know what was meant.
The report alone wouldn't be sufficient proof either. You can murder someone with fentanyl.
Or nothing at all.
Or there was foul play.
Or there was foul play without the use of drugs.
Or fentanyl use was intentional.
Hoping to rule somethings out!
Yes, cocaine users are sometimes receiving heroin
Yes, sometimes whatever they receive contain fentanyl
Yes, heroin users are also now commonly getting unintentional and intentional doses of fentanyl
Yes, fentanyl is being added to other drugs as well
Its a mess. I think its time to move on from abstinence only education to treating this like an ongoing bioterrorism attack and taking federal control of the supply chain.
I do agree that it seems suspiciously like a deliberate attack, reminiscent of the opium wars.
Let the CIA do it, again?
Of course for that you need public health care, too. What a shame that the richest country in the world (at least, for millionaires -- the 95% here are no better off than other places, less so than many) can't afford what every other country with paved roads has.
Uhhhh, there is a reason why people from other places want a greencard, even if just to work at minimum wage. The 95% in the US surely are better off than the majority of people in the world?
Hint: the overwhelming majority of people in the world hardly ever think about America at all, and then usually only when it is forced on them. You mostly only hear about the few who do, and imagine they are typical.
While I would say the average American is in a similar position to the average European (some things better, some things worse), I think if my options were to switch lives with a random American or a random Kenyan, I’d pick American.
I agree most people don’t care. I didn’t really want to leave the U.K. — where most of my friends were and still are — when the political situation made me feel it was no longer tenable to stay.
The US uniquely has the resources to implement 21st century advances, and just doesn't. This changes when acknowledging what other developed nations have and ignoring the developing ones, let China focus on them thats working out pretty well for them.
But most of the world isn’t Europe either, so no, not in this case.
> The US uniquely has the resources to implement 21st century advances, and just doesn't.
It’s imperfect, and we all are. There’s stuff China does very well, and stuff it does badly[0]. There’s stuff the U.K. does well, and stuff it does badly. Israel[0], Ireland, Iceland[0], everyone.
But the USA and the bits of Europe I’ve seen, they’re mostly (excluding Budapest, IMO) similar for quality of life — you just get to choose between a playground lacking a swing and a playground lacking a roundabout, when half the planet has the metaphorical equivalent of a tyre on a rope over a ditch and nothing else.
Can the USA be better? I certainly think so. But it’s neither so good that the world looks at it in awe, nor so bad as to need to hide in shame.
[0] not visited, but from the outside don’t think it would suit me to live in any of them
Vancouver is doing it
Its just a very very nonconsensus view right now, very fringe
Which country produces the largest share of fentanyl and the chemical precursors for fentanyl? Which country is one of the primary adversaries and rivals of the United States? Which country has first hand historical knowledge of how the illegal trafficking of narcotics can be used as a weapon to undermine and weaken a country?
To reduce cost, every product is cut with fentanly.
The problem is it's very easy to put more than you actually need. We are talking about mistake of mg or less costing lives here.
Fentanyl has become a relatively cheap way of upping the strength of whatever opiate you're selling. It used to be that no one knew how to illegally make fentanyl. Those dogs are long gone.
But there's another aspect to this: if someone overdoses (even dies) from something you as a drug dealer have sold then (as dark as it sounds) that's actually good marketing. That means you have the good stuff. It's shown to increase demand.
The moral of the story is don't get addicted to opiates.
"National data show that a relatively low percentage of the cocaine tested by law enforcement contains fentanyl, although the mixture has become more common. Less than 1% of the cocaine samples tested by the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2016 contained synthetic opioids, according to figures provided to NPR; in 2020, it was up to 3.3%."
3.3% is a lot higher than I expected, though I wonder if there is a selection bias going on there.
That's not how addiction works.
As an aside, the US has a cultural problem with painkillers it seems. Like the expectation seems to be that painkillers completely remove pain but that's not how it works. Or at least if it does you're overusing painkillers. Painkillers are largely to make pain bearable and manageable not remove it completely.
This attitude seems to be a factor in the overprescription of opiates. I think I read once that if you're still taking painkillers 2 weeks after whatever incident led you to be taking them, there's a 50% chance you'll be taking them in a year.
I've had knee surgery and basically just got given oxycodone and valium. I took them for 2 days and then just used Tylenol (you don't take ibuprofen after surgery apparently).
That's really what I mean by "don't get addicted to opiates". Treat them as dangerous because they are.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine.
^ Imagine needing more and more of that stuff to get your usual high. You’re dead.
My understanding is the bagging facility being un-tidy and fentanyl contamination being easy.
Two weeks ago I would have say « that a urban legend »
that guy in the park surely had other goals in his live most of the time than dying in a park.
i hope he can rest in piece.
[0]: https://www.health.ny.gov/publications/12028.pdf [1]: https://nida.nih.gov/publications/drugfacts/naloxone
Everyone else is just covering their own ass
Don't worry, markets solve everything :)
Eg: There was a similar HN post when the same man went missing (almost exactly one year ago to the date):
Deutsche Bank Whistleblower Vanishes
"We'll get you when you think you've gotten away. You'll never be safe."
We all know what happened. Its sad hes dead obviously. But the feds should've protected their assets better.
Worth a watch [0], it's not his first (or his father's) run-in with these matters.
There is a reason why the witness protection program allows people to change identity for life and not just for the time they're relevant.
I don't know anything about this case and it doesn't seem plausible that anyone had him killed. But the release of panama papers did also lead to the sudden death of a few people.
As a Swiss I have never heard about this but it does sound very interesting. Do you have any sources for this?
https://taxjustice.net/2017/06/02/whistleblower-ruedi-elmer-...
There was also the case of Eckart Seith. He was very recently acquitted probably because the issue gained too much attention to cover it up. He was accused of economic espionage and other crimes. The prosecutor very clearly was partial and only after 5 attempts he was dismissed.
This isn't restricted to Switzerland at all of course, similar problems are as prevalent in other countries if you look closer.
As glad as I am to be born and living in Switzerland, it makes me sad to see how much BS my country does in the background, be it banking, resource industry like Glencore, food industry like Nestle etc. And due to our small size it seems like not many scandals leak or come to light, not even internally.
Of course Credit Suisse and UBS get slapped with fines almost every year it seems, but that feels more like a show than anything more.
Any entity having something that could actually be exchanged for 3 trillion dollars is obviously impossible, so I see no reason to put any stock in the tweet.
Any unethical organization wants to make one thing clear to potential whislteblowers: actually going through with it will mean you will be hounded for your entire life in various ways, legal or illegal.
If it were enough to lay low for one year after leaking sensitive documents, and then all would be forgiven, many more people would leak things. Powerful organizations of any kind (corporations, unions, state agencies) don't want to allow that.
Note: I am not claiming this MUST have been foul play. I'm just claiming it can't be dismissed a priori with such arguments.
They are trying to make an example out of Snowden to deter someone doing something similar in the future.
Because the goal is not to per se bury the story, but to intimidate others whom might want to leak
You don't murder these whom are on the spotlight, you murder them after they have left the spotlight and their deaths would be less covered by mainstream media outlets
Sounds pretty par for the course these days.
This stuff is almost mythical at this point. The only place i ever come across it is in news articles from the US.
The fuck you boys doing over there?
Just like Iran-Contra was about selling missiles to Iran to, er ... arm Contras! In fact there was never a speck of evidence where any of the missile money went. But CIA officers retire oddly comfortably, as a rule.
They also imported ton after ton of cocaine to sell into LA to get black kids addicted. My brother used to see them unloading, off on the other side of the airport.
John Oliver on the topic
The logic basically seems to be Trump uses DB, DB does business in Russia, therefore ...
Unless some dubious Russians guaranteed the loans to Trump then what is the problem?
woaaaaahhhhh an investing syndicate filled a large loan facilitated by a broker, shut down anyone looking at who the investors were
the word choice of "evidence" is so strange to me. I don't really care, I sell trinkets and ad space to all parties and their fans, I just think what people decide to be polarizing is so comical
As for Trump receiving Russian money for run-of-the-mill apartment sales, isn't this a giant reach? The customers for those products are traditionally wealthy foreigners. Why is it fundamentally different if he sells an apartment decades ago to a wealthy Russian versus a wealthy Luxembourgian banker?
It's such a huge leap. Russians purchased apartments therefore he's backed by the Kremlin decades later? That's extraordinarily hard to believe, considering Trump was a major underdog when he announced and only became a frontrunner after Clinton's "pied piper strategy" elevated him deliberately. [1] Was HRC a Russian asset by providing priceless media attention to the underdog?
[1] https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaig...
> “Without this deferral, the hotel may have needed to pay tens of millions of additional dollars to Deutsche Bank at a time when it was already facing steep losses,” the report stated, adding: “Mr Trump did not publicly disclose this significant benefit from a foreign bank while he was president.”
The President is not supposed to accept large undisclosed gifts from foreign companies, it looks like bribery.
Nobody has managed to directly connect Trump to money laundering. Trump collaborators, though? Paul Manafort, his campaign director, was convicted of money laundering and illegal payments from the Russian-sponsored Yanukovych government of Ukraine.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1254006990440763393.html
Obviously the thought that David Enrich from the NYT destroyed his life....
Found dead exactly 2 years after those last tweets.
I noted in the previous thread: Here’s a previous article David (the subject of the tweets) wrote about Val for the NYT. [0] After reading it, my take is that the comments were hostile, but I don’t suspect any foul play between the two. Just two men who, despite not necessarily respecting the other, worked together to further their own agendas.
An excerpt: “... the Broeksmit family have warned me that Mr. Broeksmit is not to be trusted, and, well, they might have a point. His drug use has sent him reeling between manias and stupors. He has a maddening habit of leaping to outrageous conclusions and then bending facts to fit far-fetched theories. He fantasizes about seeing his story told by Hollywood, and I sometimes wonder whether he’s manipulating me to achieve that ambition. He can be impatient, erratic and abusive. A few days ago, irate that he was not named in a blurb for my book on Amazon, among other perceived slights, he sent me a string of texts claiming that he’d taken out a brokerage account in my name and traded on secret information I’d supposedly fed him. (This is not true.) A little later, he left me a voice mail message saying it was all a joke. Why do I put up with this? Because his trove of corporate emails, financial materials, boardroom presentations and legal reports is credible — even if he is not. “
Probably more relevant that his father was a Deutsch Bank exec who committed suicide, and he seemed to be shopping the leaks around for some time. Or that he was an apparent opioid user.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/business/val-broeksmit-de...
A murderer might choose a meaningful date to send a message. Conversely, a suicidal person might take their life on a date that’s meaningful to them. Or, it could be coincidence. Hard to tell for sure.