Scammers are part of modern culture

It's no coincidence that the English language has dozens of words for scam and even more words for scammers. Financial scams are part of modern American culture. Scammers inspire admiration, often are presented as role models and their life is the subject of many documentaries, films and books.

A huge fraud was that of Elizabeth Holmes.  Elizabeth Holmes’s story is initially similar to that of dozens of other young billionaire entrepreneurs. She dropped out of the college she was attending and founded her own company, Theranos.

Theranos’ objective was to create a coffee-machine sized device that would be able, using a single drop of blood, to conduct a full health check of a patient in just a few minutes, something that currently requires analyses from specialized laboratories that take several days. This revolutionary technology of course never existed and Theranos was one of the greatest frauds of recent years.

However, before it was proven that this revolutionary technology was nothing but an ingenious creation of Mrs. Holmes’ imagination, Theranos attracted the interest of all the major investment firms. Theranos never published data for the vaunted technology that it had allegedly invented, it did not have a research center and it did not even have a production plant for the alleged devises, information that should have raised the suspicion of even the most inexperienced investor. Nevertheless, the charismatic Mrs. Holmes managed to convince some of the most prominent persons in the US, such as Henry Kissinger and William Perry, to participate in Theranos’ board of director and speak with admiration about her. In 2014 Theranos was valued at 10 billion dollars, while it was obvious that it was a fairytale!

Is it after all in human nature to be deceived? Is modern man searching for fairytales or, even more, does he want to be part of one?

 In any case, modern scammers are an integral part of modern culture. Maybe most of them end in prison, however it is very likely that they become the heroes of the next blockbuster movie and their life becomes a best seller.