
The Mysterious Heir of Extreme Travel - akakievich
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/the-mysterious-heir-of-extreme-travel-w520300
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cko
I am fascinated by the specificity of this con. Extreme travel? Plastics? I
guess it’s the specificity that makes it believable - I’ve recently met a
sociopath (if that’s the label for it) who fabricated lies with such detail
that no one doubted her. We got pretty close as “friends” and though her
affect was a bit off, and drama seemed to happen around her, no one really
suspected anything. Later on we discovered she just liked hanging out with
guys and she would basically bait them emotionally and they would either beg
her or pay her money for sex. Which to me seemed to be a very niche goal,
hanging a network of guys who were desperate to be with her.

I don’t know why it didn’t work on me, maybe in my younger years it would
have, or maybe because I had slight seniority over her at work so I never made
a “move.” She was just a highly intelligent girl who I hung out with after
work sometimes, taking long walks.

So yeah, the “day of revelations” as various corroborators got together in the
article’s story really brought back memories. I’m thankful I was lucky enough
to not get hurt.

~~~
siberianbear
A couple of years there was a discussion about the death of Pieter Hintjens
[1][2], a semi-famous computer scientist who had just passed away. I had heard
of him before his death, but didn't know very much about him. I decided to
take a look at his web site, and noticed that he had written a book about
psychopaths called "The Psychopath Code" [3]. (The PDF download is free.)

At that exact moment, I had my life wrapped up with a psychopath whose
behavior, strange stories and webs of lies were difficult to understand. I
read Pieter's book and instantly everything made sense.

Some of the things you mentioned were covered in Pieter's book and I also
noticed with the psychopath in my own life:

(A) overly dramatic behavior that is just a _hair_ off

(B) lots of manufactured drama

(C) very charismatic

(D) you can't figure it out by yourself: you can only figure it out when all
the various corroborators get together. This is because every target is
delivered a separate set of lies.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12634590](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12634590)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Hintjens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Hintjens)

[3]
[http://hintjens.com/blog:_psychopaths](http://hintjens.com/blog:_psychopaths)

~~~
Toast_25
This type of person was my first girlfriend, it was a very tough experience,
but I learned a lot from it.

------
yosito
As someone who's traveled quite a bit (26 countries, 5 continents), one of the
first things you learn is how to be skeptical of people and not get scammed. I
guess the difference between me and the extremely wealthy people who fell for
this is that my threshold for feeling angry about getting ripped off is
somewhere around $100, meaning I've had a lot more chances to develop my sense
of skepticism. I'm not excusing what this kid did. He seems like an asshole.
But honestly, it seems like the people who fell for it have had the privilege
of not having to develop their sense of street smarts and now they're paying
for it. Part of me just wants to say "Serves you right!".

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rossdavidh
The oddest thing to me about this story was the impression that, if he'd just
marked up his travel packages a lot (which it sounds like he was doing anyway)
and not in addition failed to deliver, he could actually have made even more
money (because it would have lasted longer). But then, perhaps it would have
been a lot more work.

I also had the impression that Radcliff, the "friend", might have been the
same guy using a third name.

~~~
cornholio
> I also had the impression that Radcliff, the "friend", might have been the
> same guy using a third name.

The article is all but not saying it directly. Probably a real person used to
front the business, while all actions, email etc. clearly come directly from
"Baekeland" who sits outside the public light until the business is revived.

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gcbw2
summary to save everyone the click:

Kid in his 20s (intelligent and likely suffering psychological conditions)
fools a bunch of rich people and collect money for exotic travel ($20k each,
from the article figures, which is peanuts for exotic travel. it doesn't even
cover a 1st class ticket to a mundane city) and disappears.

Then the article keeps going about how clever the disguise was, when it really
was just "i am rich and won't talk about my family"

~~~
magic_beans
The article really does ramble on and on. Just because it's a delicious,
interesting story, doesn't mean it needs 2000 words of filler...

~~~
throwawayqdhd
Same. It's interesting but the people scammed themselves say that they don't
care about the money - they're all multi-millionaires. Does't inspire pity or
anger on the readers part.

~~~
isostatic
I read the article and was on the side of the scammer. He wasn't scamming old
ladies out of their savings or anything, just a kid having a good time by
spinning a story.

The only bit that made me cock an eyebrow was when he pocketed the $10k for
the charity.

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mdb333
I traveled on the sister ship to this one couple years ealier on a similarly
exotic trip to all sorts of far flung destinations. While it was a small crowd
(~50 passengers) it was mostly all these types of hardcore dedicated
travelers, mostly eldery folks, that are keen on checking off the most remote
of destinations. Sure, a few of them were rich lambo-types but by and large
they were pretty down to earth, nature focused people with above average
means. I find it hard to believe they would fall for such swindling but it
sounds like this guy had just enough real stuff going on to convince folks he
was legit...

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bitwize
He's like the ultimate Leonardo DiCaprio character -- Jay Gatsby, Frank
Abagnale, and Jordan Belfort all in one.

~~~
xapata
I'd say those three you mentioned were each more interesting individuals.

