https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/two-women-file-sexual-abuse-...
Birds of a feather flock together.
That and a $1 million donation. He bought his pardon fair and square.
but isnt it weird how these women filed a complaint together 20 years later, after he became a billionaire?
I just read the article and by his cousins own testimony, they were BOTH minors, and he heinously sexually assaulted her by groping her breasts after she consented to... take off her own shirt down to a bra, during a "massage"... but the shirts off massage turned into a sexual assault when he touched her breasts/removed her bra?
He denies all of it, and it happened 20 years ago, and maybe he is a fraud, and maybe he is a creep, but there is no way to prove any of it.
Them filing complaint when they are in better position in life, when politics slightly change so there is an illusion someone will care etc makes perfect sense.
And yes, consenting to massage is not the same as consenting to sexual assault or anything else sexual. Among other reasons, that is why married people can get massage without it being cheating.
No. Not in the slightest.
From work I once did, essentially IT support for a Royal Commission inquiry into sexual abuse and assault, it's extremely common for all manner of sexual assault victims to remain silent for many years.
Regardless of the wealth of the alleged perpetrator(s).
Eg: ~ 50 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Cable#Sexual_abuse_claim...
also, say, Rolf Harris, Sir James Wilson Vincent Savile, and numerous other rock spiders.
Why? I struggle to understand the incentives + motivations here.
"He's got the hustle to do what it takes to succeed and is unencumbered by a moral compass. Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet."
"Pssh that's nothing compared to the fraud I committed to get here. Fake it till you make it baby!"
"It takes balls to defraud powerful people and then do it again. I respect the machismo."
Take your pick.
In return, he got to trade on their reputation which allowed him to rope in more respectable partners and appear more legitimateto potential customers. It’s a vicious cycle.
See also:
"the powers that be could nail anyone they scrutinized for what they got him for, the conviction means nothing".
I believe the word he was looking for is "chutzpah", and no, it isn't a virtue, and no, it cannot be respected.
Trash.
But that is neither here nor there. What is important is the now, and in the now you are in the presence of someone who is Good At Making Money. And you too, by joining forces, will be Making Lots Of Money with this charismatic person, who can clearly achieve great things and will be clearly avoiding any past missteps that may have caused their downfall right before reaching greatness (but weren’t their fault anyway).
Think of the future, not the past!
The truly amazing thing, especially the second time around, are the supposedly sophisticated investors who fall for it. "Oh, he's learned his lesson -- he won't do it again!".
The fraud might have a low close rate but the top of the funnel is huge. The unknown upstart can't even get meetings.
Still don’t get it.
[0] It might have been this one, but I can't find it in the transcript https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/fraud-as-infr...
Venture guys aren't as smart or analytical as their propaganda would lead one to believe. A lot of them are just people who got lucky once.
Even with SBF I'm 50/50 on that.
SBF, similarly, happened to have FTX invest in Anthropic early, and while we don't know how that's gonna play out now that they're at odds with the DoW, the value of Anthropic has already increased enough that it would have made whole all the money he was wasting/embezzling, so there's going to be a path for people to claim that he's directionally worth investing more money in, if he's out anytime soon.
Putting two and two together it seems to me that this business is a front for money laundering or something.
My guess is that they're good talkers. They make it sounds like they learned their lesson or were framed but regardless if you hire them they'll make you rich!
This article is not praising trevor milton tho.
The rich VCs and billionaires and aspirational billionaires only care about doing what they want to do and don't care what the peons like us think or care about.
And/or they're part of the Trump rich people's club. They all tend to stick together and help each other.
If you've ever worked with narcissists and sociopaths, you'll soon enough discover that they will do anything to get what they want. And they are professionals at playing people.
They know what to say, how to present themselves, how to make their story, and what strings to pull on the people they try to convince.
Some investors are also willing to suspend their disbelief - thinking that if they are the first to ditch to bag, there's money to be made...as long as they're not the ones holding the bag.
1. his $1.8M donation to Trump shows other felons and fraudsters that paying Trump will pay back in dividends (Trump profits)
2. By pardoning thousands of frauds, con artists and outright violent nazis (Jan 6), Trump builds himself an army of loyalists who owe him their lives
3. By putting pardoned frauds, con artists and violent nazis in charge of government functions, Trump replaces the entire US government with one that will do his personal bidding
textbook autocrat stuff
But having founders that raise lots of money also have a value in itself even if the business fails in the long run.
It's just hard to imagine that anybody would give a f about this fraudster. Only explanation is he must know some dirt on someone.
It's clear now. Modern society runs on blackmail. There's a blackmail hierarchy all the way to the top.
I bet there are many people out there just making a living from just knowing dirt about people.
> Milton and his wife had also donated at least $3.2 million to Trump’s 2024 election and to political groups and people in Trump’s orbit, including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Trump when pardoning Trevor Milton said that he didn't know the guy, but heard that he said nice things about him.
And Milton made a $1m donation.
Therefore, I wish only the best of luck to never-committed-a-crime Trevor Milton and to the infallibility of our dear leader in his wise and judicious use of the power he has been given by God and the Constitution.
But of course they'll leverage their connections and get high paying jobs like in this case.
Like it won't be just "vertically integrating pallet construction", it'll be "a heartwarming revolution in the construction of pallets, now with AI and blockchain".
Kind of like how TFA mentions that Milton's new SyberJet will "pioneer AI flight".
And to be clear he's not been convicted of fraud, he walked away from the cash bonfire with over a billion dollars.
I wouldn't trust her to make my coffee.
Best justice money can buy.
> He’s now raising funds for a new jet he claims will transform flying
With his history building the "truck that can roll unpowered down a hill" I shudder to think just how his jet would transform flying.
I don't know Trevor Milton. I have never met him. Maybe he isn't a compulsive liar but just got in over his head and was trying to make it work. But I know I would never invest in something he is doing.
He obviously thinks you should learn from your mistakes and that you must be an avid and quick learner.
But learning skills is not what introspection / dwelling is.
It's spending times on thoughts like "what should I be doing with my life". "I can't believe how much of a victim of the system I am".
And he specifically contrasted it against doing stuff.
Writing code >>> walks in the woods.
Obviously reflection is necessary to recognize mistakes of the past. What Andreessen was talking about that you should spent majority of your time acting not reflecting. Not that you should spent 0 time reflecting.
Theyre not exactly wrong
I have followed Trevor for many years. And I think anybody who has done the same will tell you, lying is very very central to his inner core. He lies even when he has zero need to. He just cannot help himself. It satisfies some inner need.
The social taboos of cultures around the world are fighting a ceaseless battle to reign in these endemic outliers.
Oh cool, can't wait for the vibe-coded autopilot to CFIT into the Rockies or dump itself into the ocean that it thought was totally a runway while a completely untrained, inexperienced hot shot with $10 million to blow flies this generation's V-tailed doctor killer[1] to their final destination.
Airplanes have had autopilot (the genuine kind, not Musk's snake oil) for ages now. Commercial airlines have been using autoland on well-equipped airports for decades. Garmin's fully autonomous emergency autoland has already saved a few Cessna owners' lives. With the ongoing adoption of CPDLC the ATC-to-pilot link is also actively being automated and standardized.
There are no big technical hurdles left to solve! The main thing preventing fully-automated flight from taking off is the industry and regulators (rightfully) being incredibly conservative, and preferring paying pilots over the horrible PR fallout of an incident aboard an automated flight killing hundreds of people. Artificial intelligence isn't going to be of any help here!
The Garmin Autonomí autoland system is an amazing technical achievement but it's intended as a last-ditch way to save the passengers when a Part 91 single pilot is incapacitated. It would never be approved for routine non-emergency use and can't even take VHF radio instructions from controllers.
So... basically, an even more digital cockpit with more touchscreens and less verbatim information presentation on the screens. Why give you multiple engine gauges for N1, N2, temps, etc, when we can just give you one dumb "Thrust" gauge? Why make programming the autopilot a fifteen day course on the ground when you can just have a LLM figure out what your flight plan should be and punch it all in automatically?
It's like how Cirrus positions themselves to be the family SUV of the skies with their products and falls back on "just pull the chute / push the Autoland button, bro".
Not like a truck where people quickly wonder why they haven't seen it in motion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_sucker_born_every_...
https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1YRlL9...
Why would anyone give him money? Really. I'm blown away.
To make him sound credibly he agree to really shitty deals (for him) with credible companies. So he could say 'we are in business with X'. Of course GM was the biggest fish they got in that regard, of course the GM CEO at the time was on crusade to claim they were doing 'EV' so I think even they knew it was mostly scam, but it got them into the media.
He should be in prison.
Wild!
“I walk into meetings now, and I’ll get high-fives from the most wealthy people in the world,” he said. “They’re like, ‘Welcome to the club. You can withstand the fire. We can trust you now.’”
The WSJ interviewed him and is reporting information about his past. I think the article portrays him as extremely shady and untrustworthy. Not sure what you could be seeing here to demean the WSJ.
Myself, I think people are mature enough to be able to read past a headline and come away from this with a clear eyed view of this fraudster.
