Fraudulent Inspiration

A shooting star may inspire you to ‘aim for the stars’, but don’t follow the shooting star too closely, for it will have a quick and undignified end.

It seems my biggest successes in life are prompted by visions of dazzling spectacles that I later find to have been misleading or entirely false.

For instance, I was inspired to run my first full marathon when a friend told me that she and her best friend had ran the Seattle Marathon the previous year, in 2001. If they could do it – I reasoned – then I could too.

I set out to match their feat. I ran twice a day through August (and lost some 20 lbs. that month alone – ask my mother if you don’t believe me). I joined the Bellevue High School Cross Country team, and, from the beginning of September through late November, ran three to six miles with them every day. I bettered my 5k time each week all the way down to 18 and a half minutes, which is a fantastic time for a first-year runner. My mile time improved as well. I ran one in 5:07 and finished in the top 8 runners on our team, beating a few friends of mine who’d had the advantage of running Cross Country for three years before me.

I ended up running the marathon in four hours and four minutes; hardly enviable for marathoners but, because I met my goal, it was a monumental success.

After I’d ran it, I found out that the girls who’d inspired me to do so had not, in fact, ever ran a marathon. I’d been lied to.

I was inspired to start ScarletStorm many years ago by a story of a young man that my sister told me about, Zach Michaelson. She told me that he and his father had started a hedge fund, and, after a short period of success, went on to sell it to the British bank Barclays. He did this all at the tender age of 23. I’ve recently found Mr. Michaelson to be a fraud (courtesy the New York Post, New York Magazine, and DealBreaker, among others). He lied about having a doctorate, invented a superfluous job title, and is quite possibly the biggest d*****bag I’ve ever had the misfortune of meeting. When I unexpectedly met him at a party in Manhattan a few months back, he had the gall to berate me for not having any business cards on my person (I’d just returned from three weeks vacationing on the French Riviera and in St. Barths, which is not exactly conducive to bringing a box of business cards). He then condescendingly asked me if I even had a business card, and then proceeded to scribble his own email address on a weathered scrap of paper. You’ve sure got a nice business card yourself, Zack.

Another person who has inspired me, Mario Gabelli, is looking more and more like a con man. I just read this article on CNN Money that paints the uber-visible money manager as a shady man to do business with. He’s been sued by former business partners for stiffing them in an IPO and then offering to buy out their equity stake at pennies on the dollar. Then, he created shell companies headed by clients and close acquaintances that were used to buy wireless spectrum licenses from the FCC at discounted rates – licenses that were meant to go to mom-and-pop telecoms headed up by minorities or women.

Perhaps Mr. Gabelli is just a businessman trying to make a buck any way he can. Or perhaps he’s just another one of my inspirations who has turned out to be a fraud.

Here’s to being inspired.

CNN Money – Scandal Tears At Gabelli Legacy