Speaker Introduction and Background

• Artist (poet/filmmaker) with decade+ experience in professional arts
• Became skilled at grant writing for personal funding needs
• Expanded to writing grants for others, fundraising campaigns, mutual aid efforts
• Helped move $1.3 million directly to Black Trans individuals/organizations in one year
• Consults with philanthropic organizations on supporting targeted communities
• Teaches reparations frameworks nationally
• Expertise in understanding why people give money - often great storytelling

Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos Case Study

• Founded Theranos, achieved $9 billion valuation for non-functional product
• Premise: device reading hundreds of medical tests from single blood drop
• Surrounded herself with government officials, VCs, magazine covers
• Notably did NOT surround herself with medical experts as peers
• Many close contacts quickly realized product wasn't real

Investor Rationalizations

• Don Lucas Senior investment reasoning:
  • Her great grandfather was entrepreneur
  • Hospital near family home named for great uncle
  • "Best of both worlds" - learned medicine/entrepreneurship through osmosis
• Tim Draper pushed back on family friend influence claims
  • Cited professional status, first investor in Tesla/Skype
  • Claimed ability to identify who "goes the distance"
• Results: opened 40 centers at Arizona Walgreens locations
• Endangered thousands with faulty blood tests company knew were defective

Key Lesson 1

• Wealthy people aren't better at making decisions
• They get to make more bad decisions without consequences
• Added bonus: can cause extensive harm to people under their power
• Broke folks' bad money decisions only impact themselves, not whole ecosystems

Margaret and Walter Keane Art Fraud

• 1960s case: Walter became famous for painting but didn't actually paint
• Stole all work from wife Margaret
• Beautiful pieces: children with big eyes, resonant features
• Showed at clubs, festivals, even U.N.
• Made millions, celebrity clientele including Kennedy family
• Walter convinced Margaret this was best way to get her work seen
• Difficulty for women artists to be taken seriously enabled the deception

Key Lesson 2

• In unjust society, social identities used as markers for worthiness
• Determines who deserves to be taken seriously
• Affects access to financial and other resources (money, food, housing, water)

Carlette Duffy Home Appraisal Case (Triumph Over Scam)

• Black woman in Indianapolis, 2020 home refinancing
• Two appraisal teams extensively undervalued home
• Lowest appraisal: $110,000
• Experiment: removed all family pictures, Black artwork, hair products
• White friend "Hank" stood in for next appraisal
• Home value jumped from $110,000 to $259,000
• Demonstrates scam based in redlining practices and white supremacy culture

Anna Sorokin/Anna Delvey Case Study

• Pretended to be German heiress
• Targeted NYC financial institutions and socialites
• Total cost to victims: $275,000
• Lifestyle: sprawling apartments, private jets, yacht vacations, expensive meals
• Strategy: said she was rich, looked the part
• People gave her money because she appeared wealthy
• Always promised to pay back loans/gifts in "urgent" situations
• Claimed inability to access fictional fortune

Key Lesson 3

• In unjust system, those performing wealth more likely to get funded than those in actual financial need
• Gross and unsustainable practice
• 2014 study: overconsumption and economic inequality leads to civilization collapse
• Wealth can buy PR teams for likability but doesn't create skill, capability, or resource sustainability perception
• Pervasive belief that wealthy people more deserving
• Many broke folks also believe they're less worthy than wealthy counterparts

Systemic Analysis of Money and Power

• Scam artists understand: money doesn't typically come from hard work
• Money comes to those who:
  • Hoard it
  • Are willing to exploit
  • Work hard to bury money's history
• Billions work hard daily and die broke

Financial Institution Examples

• Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase:
  • Started in transatlantic slave trade
  • Regularly deny loans to descendants of people they once owned
• Big Tech (Apple, Amazon):
  • Pay top dollar for Seattle coders
  • Pay minimal wages for device material miners
  • Pay minimal for package delivery workers
• Legal to pay disabled workers and essential workers less than minimum wage

Call to Action and Vision

• Society's money handling is "the real scam"
• Daily scams in our faces while famous scam artists get exposed
• Asked to agree not to see everyday scams
• Consider personal, interpersonal, and community scams we pretend are okay
• Setting up communities to fail by ignoring these scams
• Dream possibilities that don't exist on planet
• Envision world delegating resources from community care perspective
• Money used to prove morality, competency, wisdom - but it's just a tool we created
• We decide how to use it for collective good