Well if they didn’t want to get hypothermia in prison they shouldn’t have shoplifted from Walgreens.
That just sounds like a buttload of lawsuits for cruel and unusual punishment.
I don’t really get this Turks and Caicos story. I think it’s now 5 Americans who are facing long prison sentences for accidentally bringing loose ammo into the country.
If my light googling is accurate Americans account for about 85% of tourists visiting the islands. Seems like a classic case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. I assume most Americans agree that these sentences would be draconian and ridiculous. Not that I was planning any Caribbean vacations, but I would never consider going there if they went through with these prosecutions.
Maybe diplomatic wheels are in motion, but couldn’t the state department immediately declare a travel advisory or something that would effectively kill their entire tourism industry?
I haven’t followed closely but seems like the judges are (reasonably) saying this is how the new law is written we gotta try to enforce it but seem to understand it’s unreasonable. I think one of them they counted the time in jail initially as the sentence or something. Gotta imagine there will be heavy lobbying their legislators to change the law
Matt Levine to the rescue:
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Literally every fucking thing in our economy is just a scam. Scammer’s paradise.
In fairness a big part of this is that the story takes place in Florida where I’m not even kidding fraud is probably the #2 industry behind tourism. It’s either #1 tourism, #2 elder care/fraud/abuse, #3 straight up fraud or tourism/straight fraud/ elder care.
These are the kind of people donating all the money to Florida charities is my point. Speaking as someone who has done millions of dollars worth of freight transactions in Florida and even more millions of dollars of freight transactions everywhere else… the only place that is remotely close in terms of % of inbound contact that is pure fraud is California and the biggest ring of fraudsters targeting my industry are based out of Yerevan, Armenia + Glendale, CA. Small timers from Florida are competitive with call centers full of Armenian organized crime people is what I’m saying. It’s actually crazy.
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(I live in Glendale)
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Yeah I’m going to be honest 2024 is a bad time to be both a lefty, who in general is pretty opposed to blatant racism, and a freight broker for whom it is a matter of survival that I fully discriminate against anyone who even could be Armenian.
Absolutely wild what happens when your countries organized criminals bread and butter is the transportation network of a different country lol. At my brokerage we’ve finally gotten to the point where they mostly bounce off us like bugs on a windshield, but for a couple of years there most of my day to day life was playing defense against an absolutely staggering number of attempts that we were basically forced to just tank because that’s what you had to do to do business.
Anyway yeah after that being my life for two years I don’t have a lot of good vibes to give Armenian people. It’s a pickle for sure that I’m conflicted about. It definitely doesn’t help that supposedly normal Armenian people with no ties to anything shady have absolutely zero sympathy about any of it and if anything seem to clannishly defend the scammers. Yeah I kinda hate them a little bit now lol. I’m trying really goddamn hard not to, but holy shit guys this has been a really intense experience lol.
EDIT: And when I say this is an Armenian problem I mean the people setting up the fraudulent trucking companies in the US are Armenian 100% of the time and the people calling us to try to defraud us work in a call center in downtown Yerevan. These people are very Armenian. And these same people were in the cargo theft business before they discovered double brokering, and now that double brokering isn’t working as well as it used to they’re transitioning back into heavy cargo theft as they finally fuck over the people they’ve compromised at the bigger brokerages.
Understand that at one point 70% of my total inbound call volume was Armenian double brokers trying to scam me… and I have never actually done business with a single Armenian trucking company lol. They went from being 0% of the market to being 70% of the market and every single one a fraud in a matter of a year. There is no better security tag than ‘is Armenian’ because they have a very hard time faking out of it because that would involve involving people who aren’t members of Armenian organized crime and the specific risk the people who make the trucking companies are taking is such that as long as they don’t flip everything will be fine, but if they did it would be a serious problem.
So yeah. My damn near official on the record position as a professional is that nobody in logistics in the US should, under any circumstances, do business with anyone even vaguely Armenian. If they have an Armenian IP address that’s a hard no, if the company is registered by someone with an Armenian last name that’s a hard no, if they have a vaguely Armenian accent that’s a hard no, if they fit a certain profile that’s also a hard no although nowhere near as fatal as any of the ethnic stuff.
It’s not a fun position to have and I hate it. Also I get got by these guys once and potentially I’m in really serious trouble. The damage they can do is definitely in the low to mid six figure range. That’s why they kept trying so hard day in and day out lol. IDK wtf am I supposed to do with this.
The FL small timers are much smaller scale but there are a bunch of them and they don’t look like the Glendale guys so are actually very scary lol. The nice thing is that the small timers really don’t have the ability to monetize on the fraud like the Armenians do. They’ll get you for a 1200 dollar fuel advance and be gone never to try it again. The Armenians real strong point comes after they’ve gotten in. They’re creative.
In this respect it helps to live in Glendale, because I know a ton of awesome Armenian people. And they are not so fond of the members of their community that perpetuate the stereotype.
Many Armenians were deeply involved in the effort to put two awful bigots on our school board, so that sucked. But I also canvassed side-by-side with Armenians, and spoke to many while canvassing. Like many other communities, the worst elements are the loudest.
Citibank also discriminated against Armenians.
I’m going to be honest with my experience I fully side with Citibank here. And that’s an insane position to take. They have a really significant organized crime element. We’re talking about a multibillion dollar a year operation here being operated by a fairly small ethnic group. Given the type of criminal activity we’re talking about there were probably thousands and thousands of bank accounts being opened and closed suspiciously with all kinds of law enforcement heat following close behind all being opened and closed by people who are extremely Armenian.
Honestly man my experiences with the Armenian community have been so significantly negative that you telling me that good ones exist doesn’t play well. They can hate how they’re perceived all they want until they figure out how to get that element under some kind of control back in Armenia they’re going to have a well deserved terrible reputation.
I’d be a lot more sympathetic to the Armenians if they seemed to have any interest at all in dealing with the problem. I haven’t seen any at all. They seem to want to bitch about how they’re perceived and do nothing about it when they’re realistically the only people who can.
And let’s be clear these people’s main victims overwhelmingly are mom and pop owner operators. Not people with money they can really just lose. Every scam depends on scamming them as well and they frequently get absolutely shafted in the process.
I mean “being Armenian” and “choosing a career as a police officer” are a tad bit different in nature, I think you should rethink this one.
That’s fair and I edited my post. Doesn’t change the way I feel in the slightest though. Hugely toxic culture that seems to be totally fine with scamming and gangsterism in practice but love to whine about how that causes them to be perceived.
What probably happened is that Armenian scammers got a bunch of accounts closed and then claimed it was racism. They’re actively doing it on the freightbrokers subreddit on a regular basis now. Every other week there’s some sob story post about how some Armenian mom and pop trucking company is going under. They can never provide a legitimate anything. This is the scammers and this is how they operate. First they attack their victims as hard as they can and when you notice that all your attackers seem to be Armenian for some reason they call you a racist. Meanwhile the fucking call center is in Yerevan. I’ve captured their IP addresses hundreds of times they’re office buildings in Yerevan lol.
And I’m sure some of you are wondering what federal law enforcement is doing about this multibillion dollar bloom of organized crime activity. Basically nothing. In fact the department of transportation doing absolutely zero vetting before issuing new MC numbers is arguably the chief flaw in the system that is allowing this to happen in the first place.
Lol I cannot imagine how much fun the Glendale Armenians must have had with credit card fraud in the early days of credit cards. That would have been right up their alley. I hadn’t read that article before but now I have lololol zero sympathy. I hope it sucks.
“Regrettably, in trying to thwart a well-documented Armenian fraud ring operating in certain parts of California, a few employees took impermissible actions,” – Yeah I fucking bet. They finally did what I did and threw their hands up at the sheer volume of it and pushed the discrimination button. I feel violated by being forced to make that call.
Sorry I’ve dealt with these specific people and yeah they really don’t give you a choice once they come after you. It feels fucking awful. And no law enforcement absolutely doesn’t help at all. One of their real strengths is sticking religiously to white collar crimes where you can steal a bunch of money and do like a year if you get caught. Ideally stuff where you can get a lazy cop to shrug and say ‘it’s a civil matter’ and fuck off.
Ok this shit is hilarious.
- Leopards, face, etc
- This meeting happening in super rich Troy is also funny as shit to me.
Grenell also seemed more concerned about how Arab American leaders in Michigan could help the Trump campaign rather than how the Trump campaign could help them.
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this election is coming down to who will be a bigger bag fumbler
UK general election july 4th? speaking of bag fumblers, I expect the tories to somehow win again
This is what is just absurd about people claiming they’re going to vote for Trump because they believe Biden is mishandling Gaza. Like the guy you’re voting for won’t even attempt to reign in Israel at all. He’ll be telling them to just nuke all the Palestinians.
You can think Biden is mishandling the situation, but it’s a really shitty spot and we know with 100% certainty the other guy will be way worse.
Pretty surprised by these stats, more Americans are daily users of pot than alcohol:
I would have thought it would take a few more years (if ever) before marijuana reached a comparable level. Even in areas where recreational is legal, its availability is limited. You gotta make a special trip to a dispensary, it’s not like you can buy it in the grocery store. Also I guess I assumed it had a ways to go in terms of cultural and social acceptance, but apparently not. 