Chatty Hollywood

A Ponzi scheme is essentially a financial operation.

In fact, many financial methods can easily become tools in the hands of scammers if they lack supervision.

You know, when things like "finance" and "stocks" first appeared in this world, they were actually not far from "cheating money".

Therefore, with the development of society, legal restrictions on financial behavior are becoming more and more strict.

After all, as someone said, the quickest way to make a person rich is often written in the Criminal Code.

However, when it comes to the United States, a country that has been controlled by Wall Street financial professionals, it is somewhat different.

Since Wall Street controls the entire country, it naturally hopes to regulate itself as little as possible, especially when they use some more dangerous methods.

Therefore, many methods that are illegal in other countries are just illegal and legal in the United States.

This difference in standards has led to the endless emergence of financial fraud cases such as Ponzi schemes in the United States.

From the huge net worth of Hollywood stars to the pension insurance of ordinary working-class people, they are all within the hunting scope of financial scammers.

This may be the price of "freedom"!

Compared with the people who are deceived, scammers are much smarter.

In order to prevent the huge sum of money in their hands from being forcibly recovered by the court if they overturn one day, they usually choose to spend the money as soon as possible.

Among them, there are two types

One nature is to spend on one's own enjoyment.

Although, if the money is turned into real estate or clothes, the court can also seal it and recover it. But at least there is nothing anyone can do about what is eaten into the stomach or sprayed out of the body.

For scammers, it’s really like “if you have money, don’t spend it, it will be lost when it expires”.

The second type is the famous money laundering.

This method is not only used by scammers, but also by various other big guys with illegal income.

Supporters of this behavior can be found on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., and in the gangster neighborhoods of Detroit.

and the first kind of pure enjoyment,

However, the method that cannot be recovered is different. The money spent for money laundering will eventually return to the hands of scammers and big bosses.

However, by then, the money had become legal income and could not be recovered even by the court.

Just like the money obtained by a scammer is certainly illegal income, but if he uses the money to buy a hamburger, the money earned by the person selling the burger is real money.

But what if the person selling the burgers then donated part of the money he earned to a charitable foundation established in the name of a relative of the scammer?

This seems to still be a legal income process, and in modern society, the possibility of implicating the Nine Clans has long been eliminated...

Of course, as the Tao is higher and the devil is higher, evolution proceeds in a relative manner.

Since gray income earners can launder money, the government and courts will naturally study tracking methods.

In fact, in modern society where all kinds of consumption and income have bills, many simple money laundering methods are no longer effective.

The police can follow the receipts and recover unreasonable income.

But in the early stage, there are bills to follow.

In many industries where small amounts of capital flow quickly and are difficult to effectively regulate, the police and courts are powerless.

After all, even if there are bills, enough accounting personnel are needed to track them.

If there are too many, there is nothing anyone can do.

Among these industries that make people helpless, the entertainment industry accounts for a large proportion.

Games, movies, and even some other Internet industries that lack supervision were once the hardest hit areas for money laundering by black gangsters.

This is true not just in the United States, but across the Pacific.

When it comes to Hollywood specifically, this situation was once very serious.

Several of the seven major Hollywood production companies have been rumored to have gang backgrounds.

In essence, this is just that they used to launder money for the gangs.

Of course, with the tightening of surveillance by the FBI and the IRS, this situation is slowly disappearing.

However, for those who are purely financial criminals, this kind of supervision is not very easy to use.

There is no other way. Who gave the American financial industry such a high status?

Before he overturned, he could even be like Soros or even Buffett, a completely legitimate rich man.

Even if the IRS has its own independent court, what can it do to others before the evidence is found?

Therefore, after financial scammers have defrauded huge sums of money, they can still come to Hollywood to try to launder money.

But in fact, there are not many such people.

There is a very strange reason for this

Scammers are afraid of being cheated.

After all, the entertainment industry is famous for its habit of turning profits into losses through accounting, and then specializing in swindling investors from outside the industry.

Powerful investors can send reliable personnel to supervise, and gangs threaten with violence, but they can make the weaklings in the entertainment industry be honest.

But what do the liars have?

Even when they are not falling apart, they are worth billions, but because they are involved in secrets, there are not that many people who can be trusted. How can they supervise the veterans in the entertainment industry?

Therefore, there are not many financial scammers who dare to invest or launder money in Hollywood.

But when Charlotte was preparing for "The Sixth Sense", she met someone

Martin Channing, a New York rich man and a Wall Street tycoon.

He has been very interested in the film industry in the past two years, so when Charlotte was preparing "The Sixth Sense", he met with Charlotte and wanted to invest.

Then Charlotte saw through his true face at a glance.

After all, as a master of deception, Charlotte is very familiar with similar scents.

In particular, the other party also hinted to Charlotte that if he accepted his investment and guaranteed profits, he could spend a large sum of money to boost the box office of "The Sixth Sense" after the movie was released.

This proposal completely made Charlotte see through him.

You know, although the film studio spends its own money to cheat the box office, it often happens.

But in essence, doing that is either to save face, or to deliberately increase the box office and serve as a publicity function to attract more viewers.

By the way, this kind of gameplay is often seen on the best-selling list of Apple games in later generations.

However, Martin Channing's box office plan, which seems to be all-inclusive regardless of cost, is obviously inconsistent with the above logic.

After all, if you charge too much, you will lose money.

Unless this guy just wants to launder money at a certain price.

Charlotte realized this possibility immediately.

In subsequent contacts, he made his judgment even clearer.

He ultimately did not accept investment from Martin Channing because he knew that once the other party's scam was exposed in the future, it would definitely affect the projects he invested in.

Even if the income from "The Sixth Sense" will not be recovered by the court, the damage to the reputation will be inevitable.

Charlotte is not a producer or a senior executive of a major studio in the pure sense. For him as a director, it is quite troublesome to have his reputation damaged.

Moreover, "The Sixth Sense" did not lack investment at the time, so Charlotte had no need to cause trouble for herself.

However, on the other hand, Charlotte has another interest in Martin Channing.