I can think of worse crimes

Kinston, NC, doesn't get a lot of snow. But in February, they got 15", breaking a record that has stood since 1927. 

One thing about living in a place that's not a stranger to snowfall, people pretty much know how to get through it. There are snowplows. Mounds of sand and rocksalt. Although I am always surprised when there's a first-storm-of-the-season rush on hardware stores for shovels, most folks do have a shovel around. And if they're smart, a 40 pound balt of ice melt. Or at least an 8 pound shaker. 

Yes, people get into a pre-storm panic and quickly strip the grocery store shelves of bread, the coolers of milk. But those of us in Snow Country have useful skills, like knowing how to drive in the white stuff. And mostly, we know enough that, when "they" suggest that we stay home, we stay the f home. Curfews are only for insane blizzard conditions. Not your average 15" dump o' snow.

Snowy weather skills are honed over generations, and even when we haven't been having bad winters for a stretch, when they do happen race memory kicks in and we know how to cope. (We've had pretty lousy winter in these parts. Most snow in the last five years, and the coldest winter since 1977. Heating bills are sky high, but at least bitter cold helps tamp down rat reproduction. So there's that.)

But Kinston, NC - while it gets bad hurricane season rotten weather - doesn't get a lot of bad snowy weather. So the mayor of this small city (population roughly 20,000) set a curfew. Unless you were working, you were supposed to stay in. Which means that you couldn't be out and about.

Apparently, the problem for Jonathan Hackett was that he didn't have a place to stay, so he couldn't help but be out and about.

But he found his way to the Little Caesars where he used to work. They hadn't changed the key code from his time there so, push a few buttons and - voila - Hackett was in. (He claimed that the manager gave him permission to spend the night. Not clear whether that was in fact the case.)

With time on his hands, and the storm raging, Hackett did what any old pizza shop worker might do: He started making pizzas. (Give a man the ability to make a pizza, and he'll have work for life...) What do you do with a pizza? Why you can always give it away for free. Or so the message started spreading via Facebook. 

So, figuring that Little Caesars was making a goodwill gesture to the snowbound community, a few folks decided curfew-smurfew and showed up for their free pizza. 

But the enterprising Hackett decided he could make a buck. He started selling pizzas for $5 a pie, which even though Little Caesars in Kinston, NC is pretty inexpensive, was at least a slight bargain. (Some buyers said they were charged $10, which is closer to the standard price for a pizza.)

All in all, Hackett claims to have sold 10 pizzas, so he pocketed maybe $50 bucks.

He took off at some point, but when he arrived back at the shop, he encountered the manager and her family there. They had been at work, prepping the business for the next day, and decided to camp out there on a snowy night.

Everyone was asleep, when someone heard a noise. It was Hackett in the room. The [manager's] husband was awakened by a figure in the room: Hackett. That’s when the fight ensused. The husband told police that he was “about to do my thing” when Hackett swung at him and ran, so he chased Hackett down, confessing to police that he was “whooping his ass.” His son came outside, saw his dad holding Hackett, and “did what he had to do.”

The manager called the police, and told them that they’d detained a trespasser. When two officers showed up around 9:30, Hackett was being held down outside, bleeding from his face. For his part, Hackett told the police that he didn’t know why he’d been chased and beaten up. Again, even though he was a former employee, he said that the manager had given him permission to come into the Little Caesars to sleep. He did admit to selling pizzas, though. (Source: Jeremy Markovich, NC Rabbithole)

Hackett is facing a few felony charges - including B&E, larceny - and a couple of misdemeanor counts, including violating the Kinston curfew. In addition to getting his "ass whooped," Hackett could end up serving a prison sentence for his troubles. 

If this is all they have on him, I hope that Jonathan Hackett doesn't end up in the hoosegow for a couple of years. I can think of a lot worse crimes than breaking and entering a pizza shop and selling a few crappy pizzas to folks just looking for some comfort food on a snowy night. 

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Image Source: Little Caesars Peoria Facebook

One potato chip factory...

I am an absolute sucker for local products that make it big, especially food products. Some of my favorites - but of course! - are from Worcester: Near East Rice Pilaf. Polar Soda. Table Talk Pies.

I always have a couple of boxes of Near East rice/pilaf/couscous in my kichen cabinets. In my fridge, there'll always be some Polar Soda. (I especially like the diet orange and the diet cranberry. Mixed together, it's a wonderful combo.) I don't have any Table Talk Pies around, but when I go to a Woo Sox (Red Sox AAA team in Worcester) game - which I do a couple of times a season - I always get me a pie-let, even though they rarely if ever have my favorite, which is cherry.

A local food favorite that broke out of local availability into nationwide presence doesn't have to be from Worcester. I like Brigham's ice cream. And since I first had one, decades ago, Cape Code Potato Chips, has been my chip o' choice. 

As I write this post, there are no bags of Cape Codders in my kitchen, but there is an empty bag in my kitchen wastebasket. 

So I was sad to read the news that those chips, as of April, will not longer be made in Massachusetts. The OG plant in Hyannis is closing down, and 49 employees will be losing their jobs.

In a statement, the company said the Hyannis plant produces just 4 percent of the Cape Cod and Kettle brand chips, while newer plants in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Pennsylvania produce the majority. The move will end production of Cape Cod chips in Massachusetts. (Source: Boston Globe)

The company, by the way, is not Cape Cod Potato Chips. It's Campbell's, as in soups in red and white cans. They acquired Cape Cod back in 2018. I can't say I remember this acquisition, but I'm sure I was aware of it at the time. As I'm sure I would have feared that, post acquisition, chip quality would go down, and those yummy Cape Codders would no longer be so Mm! Mm! Good!

Purists may notice a difference, but I can't say that I have. Cape Cod Potato Chips remain my brand. (I favor the sea-salt originals, but also like the russets.)

Still, sorry to see the chip production leave Hyannis, even though it's unlikely that the chips in the bag I just consumed were actually made locally. I fished the bag out of the trash, but there was no indication of where the chips were produced. All I learned was that the chips were distributed by Cape Cod in Hyannis.

Probably not for long.

The Hyannis site “no longer makes economic sense for the business,” the company said. “Production will be transferred to more modern and efficient plants, enabling a more agile and flexible manufacturing network” while maintaining quality. 

Blah, blah, blah-di-blah blah.  And, for the employees who are about to be pink-slipped, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, life goes on.

Campbell’s said it will provide “impacted employees with separation benefits, job placement support and guidance on how to access state assistance programs.”

The company said it plans to connect with Cape Cod organizations that “offer culinary entrepreneur programs, workforce development, and career pathways” in the hospitality industry. It will also allow nonprofits to apply for grants from the Campbell Foundation, which targets communities where the company has operations.

Good luck to the laid-off employees. I can't quite figure out how working on a manufacturing line can translate into culinary entrepreneurship, but, then again, I am singularly lacking in careerish imagination. Good luck to them all!

And I do have to say that there was something a bit romantic about Cape Cod Potato Chips actually being made on Cape Cod as opposed to, say, Wisconsin. The sea salt from Wisconsin won't exactly be local. And while I know that Wisconsin has a titanic lake next door. And dunes. It's not the same. No one ever wrote a song about Wisconsin that holds a candle to Old Cape Cod. 

If you spend an evening, then you'll want to stay.
Watching the moonlight on Cape Cod Bay.
You're sure to fall in love with old Cape Cod.

Sentimental me. (Oh, boo-hoo.) 

Makes me want to go out and get a Party Size bag of Cape Cod Originals. (And while I'm in a pro local mood, a quart of Brigham's Mocha Almond ice cream. I'll hold off on the Table Talk Pie until I get to Worcester for a Woo Sox game.)

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Image Source: Cape Cod Chips. 

Guilty until proven innocent

Hard to believe it's been over a month now since Nancy Guthrie went missing. Hard to believe they haven't found something: Nancy (dead or alive), the kidnappers. 

I cannot begin to imagine what this poor woman is going through/went through. Nancy Guthrie is/was eight years older than I am, and she sure looks like she could be someone I know. Part of the alumni commitee I'm a member of. A fellow volunteer. A neighbor. Someone cruising the same shelves at the library looking for a bunch of good reads. A nice, pleasant "older lady" who looks like she doesn't have a mean bone in her body.

I cannot begin to imagine what her poor family is going through. There's the act of the kidnapping. But even worse is the not knowing. It's god-awful to sit through a death watch. It's god-awful to lose someone you love. But not knowing what your loved one is enduring/has endured? Not knowing if they're alive or dead? Not knowing if you'll ever know? Unimaginable.

It's also unimaginable to be an innocent bystander, someone who had less than zero to do with this heinous crime, yet find yourself a prime suspect, plastered all over social media and having civilian vigilante crime-stoppers stalking you (and your family) online and up close and personal.

As has happened to Dominic Evans, a Tucson grade-school teacher who had the ill luck to have been the drummer for Early Black, a band for which Nancy Guthrie's son in law Tommaso Cioni is the bassist. Early on, Cioni was named (by someone, somewhere) as the prime suspect in Guthrie's disappearance. ("The authorities" - and they've been none too authoritative here - have since announce that all the family members, including Cioni, have been cleared.)

Evans, who is 48, also became a prime target because of his criminal past. I.e., Internet sleuthers, in their zest to solve a crime, unearthed the fact that 27 years ago, when Evans was 21, he was arrested "for drunkenly swiping a calculator and watch while out at a bar." Crime of the century, that. 

Anyway, as things do, speculation about Evans' culpability went viral.

The accusations were levied online, but they have become a real-life nightmare for Mr. Evans and his wife. They hid in their bedroom with the lights off that night, too frightened to pick up their son from his grandmother’s house, for fear of being followed. Days later, another swarm of journalists, livestreamers and gawkers photographed the family’s home and knocked on their neighbors’ doors. (Source: NY Times)

When the speculation hit the fan, the Evans' asked their parents to keep their two youngest overnight. They told their teenage son not to come home. Evans had spoken with investigators (legit ones) and, while he hasn't yet been cleared, they haven't reached out to him in the weeks following the first interview. Looks to me like no one suspects Evans of anything. 

Yet when the doorbell camera pictures of the ski-masked man on Nancy Guthrie's doorstep were released, online "crime solvers" decided that yep, the guy was Evans. 

The lives of Evans, his wife, his children have been turned upside down. No, it's not the same degree as what the Guthrie family's experiencing, but it ain't nothing, either. 

“I feel like someone’s taken my name,” Mr. Evans said. But for what reasons? “I don’t know — monetary, clickbait, to be relevant, entertainment — but there are innocent people that get hurt.”

Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos (who, regretably, has come across as something of a Barney Fife throughout the investigation) recently said that, while no one other than Guthrie's family (inclding Tommaso Cioni) has been ruled out as a suspect, he feels bad for Dominic Evans. 

“He’s going through hell, and it is horrible,” Sheriff Nanos said. “And I don’t know what to tell him except he probably should be speaking with some attorneys and sue some of these people for libel...I wish I could jump out and defend every single one of them that’s been falsely accused,” he added.

Good luck to Evans if he does decide to sue. I'm sure the defense will be some combination of First Amendment, we were just thinking out loud, we meant no harm, we were just trying to help. Not to mention that most of the social media Sherlocks probably don't have two nickels to rub together. 

The "accusatory onslaught against" Evans has been dying down, and life is getting back to the new normal.

But the lasting effects are clear. The other day, Mr. Evans worried that a man was following him at a department store. Ms. Evans can’t help pulling out her phone and searching her husband’s name — she wants to know in advance if people might mob their neighborhood.

“None of this is real, but there’s so much of it,” Ms. Evans said of the speculation. “How can anyone decipher or catch all of it?”

Problem is, you can't.

I feel plenty bad for Nancy Guthrie, and for her family. They're going through hell. But I'm also feeling plenty bad for Dominic Evans and his family, collateral damage in the hunt for Nancy Guthrie and her abductor(s). And in the eyes and limited little minds of the nothing-better-to-do-brigade of amateur crime solvers, guilty until proven innocent.

Look, I understand just how entertaining it is to poke around the web googling "stuff." Way back in 2013, when the Boston Marathon Bombing occurred, I spent hours haunting the web. And when they released the names of the bombing brothers, I found info on Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev - where he was a student, what he was studying - before it hit any of the news sites. 

But finding "stuff" out is one thing, keyboard and phone vid rampaging around accusing innocent people of crimes they didn't commit is quite another. Get a life, folks. And if you can't get a life, why not STFU rather than keep hurting the lives of others.

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Image Source: Screen Daily

AI AI AI AI!

I'm a pretty big Ken Burns fan. I love, love, loved The Civil War, Baseball, The Vietnam War, Country Music. If I had to pick a favorite, tie goes to Baseball and The Vietnam War. I remember a lot about Baseball. Understandably, as it paid a lot of attention to the Olde Towne Team. The Vietnam War I recall in far less detail, other than that I was heartsick (and often crying) while watching it.  

Yes, there's a sameness to Burns' work, a familiar trope that unites them all. The old documents and pictures, the talking heads, the "you are there" shouts and shots, the period music. (Even if it's faux period. Seriously, who cares if The Civil War's "Ashokan Farewell" was written in 1982, not 1862?) But I love the way he so skillfully weaves everything together. And I always come away from a Ken Burns' series having learned a few things.

That said, I was a bit underwhelmed by The American Revolution, his latest. Yes, it was interesting. Yes, I loved the local history. (While out and about, I pass the site of the Boston Massacre a couple of times a week.) And yes, I learned stuff. Like just how bloody (literally) awful it all was. Still, it's not one of my favorite Ken Burns' outing. 

Yet I would watch it on endless loop before I'd sit through the entirety of Darren Aronofsy's new “On This Day… 1776,” a series of (blessedly) short videos that chronicle one event that took place during that so-critical year of the founding of the United States. 

Aronosky is a well-known director - that is, well-known other than to me (although I believe I've seen bits of Black Swan - who has chosen to do without the expense of using human actors, actual horses, period costumes, and real locations and "create" everything using AI.

I watched a couple of them. “The Flag” focuses on King George blithering and "our" George (Washington) raising the first, pre-Betsy Ross version of the American flag. “Common Sense"  features Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin who is depicted as something of a droll little Muppet. they were pretty creepy. The "characters" - if you can call them that - are affectless, hollow-eyed, affectless. The "acting" - if you can call it that - is wooden, probably because the mouths don't sync up with the dubbed voices.

You didn't need the little early-on disclaimer that states "altered or synthetic content" is being used. That's pretty obvious from the jump.

It looks like a video game. And if it's supposed to be stirring, engaging, emotionally satisfying, well, let's jus say it's not like hearing Sullivan Ballou's letter to his wife being read while "Ashokan Farewell" plays softly in the background.

Here's what Gizmodo (a tech news site) had to say:

The series uses human voice actors who belong to the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), which is clearly an attempt to tamp down on the inevitable backlash from both inside and outside Hollywood. Folks inside the movie and TV industry have fiercely pushed back against the use of AI to replace the skilled artists and actors who create the media we watch. That concern obviously comes from a place of self-interest because nobody wants to be pushed out of a job. But they also care about the quality of the work being produced. And there’s also been a revolt among the average consumer, people who’ve been inundated with the lowest-grade AI garbage imaginable. It’s really everywhere now. (Source: Gizmodo)

 Writer Matt Novak further characterized it as AI slop that "looks like dogshit."

Over time, we can expect a couple of things. The quality of AI-generated movies will no doubt improve. There'll be real actors behind some of the AIs, who may be just as happy to accept half pay to lend their name and voice without having to show up on location and do multiple takes. There'll be AIs who don't represent an actual human being at all. But they'll have backstories, social media presence, and adoring followers. 

And moviegoers will grow to accept the soulless enterprise that is AI when it enters the creative realm.

AI has its place, its uses. Trouble is, it's going to be creepily creeping in to places where we'd be better off without it.

Guess we'll have to take the advice of the Ay-Ay-Ay-Ay song and canta no llores. (Sing, don't cry.)

Meanwhile:

Gizmodo reached out to Ken Burns for comment, but didn’t immediately receive a reply 

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(Image Source: CineD)

Mar-a-Lago Face

I suppose it's one of the more benign aspects of the entirely regrettable Reign of Trump. It's not the lying, the boneheaded tariffs, the embrace of Russia and the rejection of Europe, the racism, the anti-science, the destruction of respected institutions, the violence, the white nationalism, the venality, the weaponization of the Department of Justice ("Justice"?), the villification of any and all opposition. It's not the astounding corruption. It's not the Epstein files. It's not the prevalence of the hallmarks of authoritarianism: the Cabinet meetings with their interminable asskissing - straight out of the Idi Amin playboo - the rote glorification of Trump by each Cabinet member; the insane egotistical need to have things named for him, monuments erected to him; the Putin-Saddam Hussein-Ceausescu gilding of the White House; the ludicrous pursuit of the Nobel Peace Prize; the even more ludicrous acceptance of the FIFA "Peace Prize." It's not even the day to day pettiness, insults, and stupidity that just wears you down. 

The Mar-a-Lago look for women may be relatively benign in comparison to all of the above, but it sure is a peculiar aspect of the Trump era. 

The two most prominent Mar-a-Lago faces are probably those of Kristi Noem and the now-exiled Kimberly Guilfoyle. 

(We'll ignore Melania here. While she appears to have had beaucoup d' work done - whether it's enhanced her natural beauty or made her look weirdly robotic I'll leave to others to decide - Mel hasn't embraced the full Mar-a-Lago face aesthetic, which has plumped up lips as a principal feature.)

Kristi Noem is naturally very pretty. If you look at pictures of her as governor of South Dakota - before we knew her as the puppy-killer cosplay Barbie who heads up the Department of Homeland Security - she was pleasantly attractive. Now Noem's had the puffy lip treatment, the bronzing, the cascade o'curls hairdo, etc. And she looks artificial. In a role that presumably calls for seriousness of purpose, for gravitas, she's cavorting around like one of Charlie's Angels. (If only they'd drafted Donald Trump to play Charlie, rather than promote him as some sort of business genius on The Apprentice, we could have been spared an awful lot of grief.) Weird, no? But apparently the preferred aesthetic. 

Then there's the once pretty and now hideously overdone Kimberly Guilfoyle. I suppose I should ignore her, as she's been swept aside by Don Trump, Jr. for a younger, wealthier, and more attractive socialite. But when she was on the A Team, or at least its fringes, Guilfoyle went full Mar-a-Lago face + Mar-a-Lago body: lips, hair, bronzer, boobs - and revealing, tight-fitting clothing that she cavorted around in during Trump rallies. Wonder how Kim (and her "work") are holding up in Athens, we're she's the US ambassador to Greece? Probably doing fine over there, out-divaing Maria Callas.

Guilfoyle reminded me of the Palm Beach Trump supporters who are regular presences at Mar a Lago. Lots of makeup. Long curls. Push up and push out bras. Skin tight clothing. And unwavering support for DJT. 

(It also reminds me of what the once-pretty first wife Ivana Trump looked like/dressed like in the years before her death. Colossally made up and crazy looking Interesting, while Ivanka and Tiffany Trump have both had plenty of work done, especially Ivanka, neither has opted for the full Mar-a-Lago look.)

Seriously, does anyone find this aesthetic attractive (other than Trump cultists)? Who wants to look like a Bratz doll brought to life? Some women, apparently. 

Anyway, with Trump in office, the look took off. 

But it seems that:

...as quickly as it rose, the trend may already be losing steam.

...According to recent reporting from USA TODAY, cosmetic professionals and social media watchers are beginning to see signs of fatigue. Searches and inquiries tied directly to the “Mar-a-Lago face” label have slowed, and online conversation has shifted toward newer aesthetics. Despite its ubiquitous appearance at the Trump’s New Year’s Eve party, what once felt like a dominant cultural signal now registers more as a punchline or perhaps a relic of a particularly loud political moment. (Source: Salon)

Good riddance is all I can say. 

Can't wait for the day when we no longer see Kristi Noem, sporting those pouty lips and full-of-baloney curls, wearing her "sexily" positioned baseball cap or cowboy hat, lying about innocent civilian protestors, calling them domestic terrorists. Lying about using neo-Nazi imagery, wording, and music to recruit ICE agents.

Can't wait for the day when we're no longer subjected to weekly videos of Trump dining at his club, with the other tables occupied by paying customers all kitted out in the over-the-top bling that passes for fashion at Mar-a-Lago. (What's going to be the after market for those natty Trump sequined pocketbooks?)

...What remains, though, is the lesson the trend offered while it lasted. The Mar-a-Lago face revealed how ideology can become aesthetic performance, how political identity can be signaled visually rather than verbally, and how consumer culture eagerly monetizes belonging. Cosmetic procedures, once framed primarily as personal choice, became a form of affiliation, something to display, post and brand. 

Grey hair. Thin lips. Wrinkles (and lucky me: thanks to genetics and avoiding the sun, I have precious few of them). Comfy, never in style, never out of style clothing.

Glad that my brand -  aging liberal - doesn't cost a penny.

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Image Source: MaL Women FB Anonymous Works

Image Source: Bratz Doll MGA Entertainment

"Catch me if you can"? Will do!

When I was a kid, I avidly read the book The Great Impostor, which chronicled the exploits of one Ferdinand Waldo Demara, a Massachusetts-born conman who, among other things, forged (fake) careers as a Trappist monk, Benedictine monk, engineer, teacher,  psychologist, prison warden, lawyer, and surgeon. He also founded a college that, miraculously, is still in existence. That many of his exploits involved Catholic institutions made the story all the more interesting to me. (The book formed the loose basis for a movie of the same name, with Demara played by Tony Curtis. I'm sure I saw it at some point, and may look it up one of these days.)

Fast forward to Catch Me If You Can,

a very enjoyable 2002 movie starring Leo DiCaprio as Frank Abagnale, conman extraordinaire. Like DeMara, Abagnale (supposedly) impersonated a doctor, lawyer, and airline pilot along his merry way. As an airline pilot - which is a little scarier a thought than being a lawyer, and a lot scarier a thought than being a doctor, but is REALLY SCARY, I don't think Abagnale ever actually flew a plane. He just deadheaded (cadged free flights), forged checks, and recruited (and physically examined) potential stewardesses - guess that's where being a fake doctor helped.

(Having found it difficult enough to fake my way through professions I was actually skilled at and/or educated for - like waitress and product marketer - the idea of making a career up out of whole cloth is fascinating to me.)

Frank Abagnale isn't the only one who pretended to be a pilot to fly for free. 

Federal prosecutors accused a Canadian man on [January 20, 2026] of doing just that, charging him with wire fraud for a scheme in which they say he pretended to be a pilot and a flight attendant to get hundreds of trips for free.

The man, Dallas Pokornik, used a false identification badge to defraud three airlines of travel benefits, according to an indictment filed in federal court in Hawaii. Mr. Pokornik, 33, had previously worked for a Toronto-based airline as a flight attendant between 2017 and 2019, court documents said, but not as a pilot. (Source: NY Times)

Impersonating a flight attendant for a free flight - which many airlines provide to colleagues at other airlines - is bad enough. Fraud, sure. Theft, absolutely. But pretty much no harm, no foul. And bad enough he scammed his way into free seats in the cabin. On some of his free flights - and there were many of them over the course of four years, on several different airlines - Pokornik, pretending to be a flyboy, asked for and was given a jump seat in the cockpit. Where, presumably, he could have been called on to assist if something happened to the pilot or copilot. Given that his in-flight experience was as a flight attendant, what was he going to do? Offer the other pilot a Biscoff cookie or a barf bag? 

The airlines Pokornik defrauded weren't named in the article, but "one [was] based in Honolulu, one in Chicago and one in Fort Worth." I'm a pretty good guesser, and I'm guessing Hawaiian Airlines, United, and American. I've never flown Hawaiian, but, yeah, I've been on United and American plenty of times. Wonder if Pokornik was ever in the seat next, or maybe even in the cockpit?

Pokornik is in line for a hefty fine and prison sentence. Wonder if it'll end up being worth the free flights he conned his way into?

Pokornik flew down the "catch me if you can" gauntlet, and apparently the airlines took him up on it. 

Anyway, he's grounded now.

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Image Source: Netflix

The Office Park from Hell

In 2024, Shunda Park "materialized and metastasized" almost overnight in the middle of nowhere on the Myanmar border. Unlike office parks that support companies in a wide range of businesses, Shunda - which was run by a Chinese criminal network - from the jump was built and operated for one business purpose only: running lucrative scams. 

There, over 3,500 workers representing nearly 30 countries toiled away under attaboy/attagirl signs reading “Dream chaser,” “Keep going,” “Making money matters the most.” 

Some of those workers had been scammed themselves, thinking that they were getting plum tech and marketing jobs, only to find themselves working at the office park from hell. 

Others thought they were checking out merchandise for online sales businesses. Instead, they were hustled at gunpoint across the river that demarcates the border with Myanmar...(Source: NY Times)

However the new employees managed to arrive, they were quickly onboarded to their new employment reality. 

...all had become skilled in the art of the online grift. When the scammers bilked $5,000 out of someone, they struck a Chinese gong. A $50,000 shakedown earned a celebratory pounding of a giant drum, then an offering to a Chinese deity resplendent in his golden altar. 

This was not just a Nigerian prince email scam center, but a highly sophisticated enterprise that used a complex approach to suckering in victims from around the world:

Using generative intelligence and deepfake videos, as well as fraudulent businesses, websites and financial apps, the scammers at Shunda embraced the long con and reeled in people from almost every demographic.

Then last November, the park was overtaken by the Karen National Liberation Army, one of a number of different rebel groups battling the military junta that took over Myanmar a few years back and plunged the country into a brutal civil war. 

Karen forces closed Shunda down, and most of the scammers had dispersed, but the Times jounalists were able to speak with some of the remaining scammers "both those who were trying to return home and others who wanted to find another job in the fraud business." (Hoping for another job in the fraud biz? Huh? Do what you know, I guess.)

The now unemployed scammers recounted receiving beatings, being shackled, not - no surprise there - getting paid. There were punishment chambers, torture cells:

Ivan, a Malaysian who once worked as a member of the ground staff at the Singapore airport, said he was chained in a crucifixion position and denied food for days.

“You think you know hell,” he said, “and it’s actually even worse.”

Who among us hasn't joked about work being a torture chamber, a gulag? And is there anyone who hasn't seen one of those galley slave cartoons? The beatings will continue until the morale improves. But, yikes, when it comes to torture chambers, this was the real deal. The unreal deal. 

At Shunda, there were some actual paid employees, Chinese nationals who ran the show and lived pretty well in the Shunda compound. There were restaurants. A night club. A basketball court. Nice cars. The bosses lived in "luxury" villas. But some of the Chinese workers were also conned, paid far less than they were promised.  

Despite the fact that Shunda - now destroyed in large part - is in the middle of an active war zone, with Karen forces going at it with the Myanmar military, many of the Chinese workers are reluctant to be repatriated. Their fears are reasonable enough.

 The Chinese government has periodically cracked down on the scamming industry, arresting Chinese workers who are repatriated. So tense was the situation that days before our visit, some Chinese workers had tried unsuccessfully to wrestle weapons away from the Karen soldiers, according to members of the militia and other scammers who witnessed the melee.

One might think that the destruction and occupation of Shunda would give pause to the Chinese outfits that ran them.  Maybe they should be looking to set up shop someplace that's not a civil war zone under active bombardment and featuring armed skirmishes. But no. Not far from Shunda, "scam centers [are] being built, Chinese red lanterns hanging from the eaves. 

As one of those inspirational signs from Shunda said, “Making money matters the most.” 

Guess so.

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Image Source: AP via NPR