Fraudsters transformed into celebrities in the 2010s through media coverage of their crimes

Evidence

This dynamic played out repeatedly in the 2010s. Bernie Madoff’s decades-long Ponzi scheme, which collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis, was immortalized by Robert De Niro in HBO’s The Wizard of Lies. In 2013, disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong chose Oprah for his doping confession, which spawned a wave of documentaries. Aspiring millennial fraudster Billy McFarland first launched a luxury credit card club, Magnises, before organizing the ill-fated Fyre Festival. Using top models like Emily Ratajkowski and Bella Hadid to promote the event, McFarland promised attendees a luxury experience. They arrived to find it more like a refugee camp. The festival’s collapse became the subject of two popular documentaries: Fyre Fraud and Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 575

Categorization

• SEED: The fraudster-as-celebrity pattern could anchor an essay on how the omnivore monoculture turned con artists into content — everyone consuming everyone’s downfall equally.
• XREF: connects to: Eyewitness viral stars are accidental celebrities manufactured by television news networks — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame…, 150; Conspiracy entrepreneurs manufacture charges for money, celebrity, and influence. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 134