Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.
Orson Scott

Comment preview: Read up on Shana Madoff (Bernie's niece) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shana_Madoff Shana Madoff, sometimes referred to as Shana Madoff Skoller Swanson, (born December 8, 1967) is an American attorney. She is a daughter of Peter Madoff, and a niece of Berna ....


Comment preview: Over the Summer, I spent a week in a house on Palm Beach Island. Palm Beach is a prestigious island that a lot of rich snobby people live on. Anyways, we had some friends come over to hang out. They passed our house by accident and had to turn around. T ....


Comment preview: This is nothing. Read Harry Markopolis' book, "They Wouldn't Listen". In it, he figured out Bernie Madoff was a fraud after looking at his numbers for five minutes. He submitted proof **FIVE SEPARATE TIMES!** Not only did they ignore the very detailed info ....


Comment preview: Wanted to respond to say I am a felon and an accountant. I'm not going to go into the specifics but I was charged with something rather obscure that no one really knows what it is--conducting a criminal enterprise. I was a 32 year old CFO, typical soccer m ....


Comment preview: The quick answer: federal laws and the Bank Secrecy Act. From the article: >The New York Times reported Sunday that the government will shortly announce the latest in a long list of sweetheart settlements with Wall Street banks involved in criminal wron ....


Comment preview: I know this is the football sub, but this just needs to be mentioned for its hilarity and mind-blowingness: >BASEBALL - When the [New York] Mets signed Bonilla to a five-year, $29 million deal in 1991, they made him the richest player in baseball. His t ....


Comment preview: Well, here is a key difference: Bernie Madoff was arrested in the U.S. by U.S. authorities, operating at the behest of other U.S. authorities. Kim Dotcom was arested in New Zealand by New Zealand s Armed Offenders Squad acting pursuant to a request made ....


Comment preview: Actually, the movie is based on a book. And the book had a sequel. It's been a long time so I don't remember exactly what order it happens in, but in it, Forest: -Plays in the NFL, and accidentally invents free agency -Gets in a Job with coca-cola and in ....


Comment preview: Lemme first start with the advice, because that part is easy and the other part might seem self-indulgent; - Stop fucking married men. - You got played. - You'll have to get over him on your own, because (like most players), he's done with you and doesn't ....


Comment preview: There are, generally speaking, two different uses of the term "pyramid scheme". Some people use pyramid scheme to refer to a scam where you are taking money from new customers/suckers to pay old customers/suckers. You have promised an increased return on i ....


Comment preview: I don't think the mines have literally run dry, though it's possible. I think it's actually a more sophisticated problem than that, best summed up by Matthew Yglesias here: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/04/17/goldbugs_in_westeros_house_tyrell_i ....


Comment preview: While this is a step in the right direction, I am just going to say that if you've ever been in jail/prison you know that most sentences are ridiculously long. Go spend a few days in county jail with the weight of everything you did crushing you, knowing y ....


Comment preview: This is an interesting thing about the world that escapes many technical people: how you present yourself is far more important than your credentials. How you make others feel about your abilities really far outweighs what you know them to be. An example: ....


Comment preview: 1. You're only 40. This is not a fatal error made on the eve of retirement. You'll be okay. 2. Unfortunately mining stocks run on long cycles and it may be years before you start seeing them come back up. Or, if the world economy should start booming ....


Comment preview: Maybe this is popular, idk: Steel should have nothing more to do with the counter strike community whatsoever. I was actually pissed when he was allowed to cast recently (but glad he was pulled eventually). Steel's very presence undermines the validity and ....


Comment preview: Well at first I was going to provide at a pat answer, but then you got me thinking. Don't you know I have to be at a dinner soon! So this is word vomit and you're my victim. But technically you literally asked for it. So here goes: First, there are those w ....


Comment preview: I agree with the others, that looks stolen to me. Anyone who knows what Emrakul is and is worth is going to at least know what the rest of the cards are, especially the Zendikar block ones, which alone are worth more than $100. I could easily see someone w ....


Comment preview: Yes, but have this crazy ass "collective guilt" thing going on. It's like getting royally pissed at all McDonalds because one McDonald's failed a health inspection. Yeah, it's a problem. It's a real serious problem that put people at risk. It's being dealt ....


Comment preview: Indeed he was made successful by the terrible mismanagement of the response. There is some terrible critical thinking in the comments here. People are right to attempt understanding, yet wrong to take someone who was openly manipulative and authoritarian a ....


Comment preview: Worked for an international Christian charity in a third-world country, and now I work for a Fortune 500 company. Pretty much all that money raised goes to the upper management. The CEOs of charities live as lavishly and expensively as the CEOs of the ster ....


Comment preview: I've generally been a SCG apologist. [Convenience is sometimes worth paying more for](http://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/1rjr17/cease_and_desist_letter_from_scg/cdoiqzt), and a lot of the complaints about them are frankly stupid: by definition one c ....


Comment preview: > Bill Gates was a very sleazy businessman Oh, you mean the time he defrauded investors? Or knowingly sold defective products that killed? Or sold a car with a rolled back odometer? Your definition of "sleazy" is very different than mine. Bernie Mado ....


Comment preview: Kickstarter has become the best loan service ever. You can start a project, promise a product, let the cash roll right in. Payback on your own terms. Or at all. Take as long as you like. Fabricate stupid excuses. Blame a chap who lives in another country t ....


Comment preview: While I admire your effort, this looks more like the realm of "asshole prank" than "funny prank". This is going to be a bitch for whoever has to clean it up, who I'm guessing is not going to be you. Generally, the quality of prank is measured by the degree ....


Comment preview: This is the big joke. The Republicans talk constantly with great certainty what evils the Democrats will inflict on the economy, and how much better the GOP policies will be. Yet the actual observed economy doesn't support, and usually contradicts, what th ....