Embezzlers: good people. Until they're not.

When it comes to criminal categories, I don't find thievery particularly interesting. Cat burglar. Stick-up artist. Bank robber. Pickpocket. Somewhere along the line those cat burglars, stick-up artists, bank robbers, and pickpockets made a decision (conscious or not) to become criminals, to participate in what can be a very risky business. That homeowner whose house you just broke into may be armed. That bank guard may be trigger happy. 

Basically, I'm happy when thieves go to jail, go directly to jail. But mostly I find them a pretty boring lot. For every Willie Sutton, who may or may not have said that he robbed banks "because that's where the money is," there are probably a million garden variety dullards who decided that being a thief beats working.

Embezzlement, on the other hand, I find infinitely fascinating. 

Unlike thieves, who likely don't up close and personally know they folks they're robbing, embezzlers steal from their workplaces - their employers, their clients - so they know exactly who their victims are. It takes a special someone to rip off the outfit that pays their salary, the client who's entrusted them with their business. 

I'm of the belief - based on zero actual evidence - that most embezzlers don't set out to become embezzlers. Embezzlement is a crime of convenience, something that a person just falls into. Maybe they started out thinking they're just borrowing the money. They're short this month, there's an emergency. Sure, they've stuck their hand in the till, but in their mind, they're planning on paying it back. Until they figure out that nobody's noticed, so why not keep it up? 

Other embezzlers may be envious or resentful of their clients, especially if their clients are well to do. They want a bit of the lifestyle they're adjacent to. 

This seems to be the case of Lisa Schiff, who was a well-known adviser to high-rollers (on was Leonardo DiCaprio) looking to invest in and/or collect art. Schiff had no desire to go through life like the poor little match girl, nose pressed up to the window of the brightly lit mansion. 

She was living the glam life: a TriBeCa loft that rented for $25K a month. Buzzing around in helicopters, because who wants to wait in Manhattan traffic in a cab - or even a black car. Spree shopping in Paris for items like jeans that cost nearly $1K. Being able to keep up with her clients - flying first class, staying in luxe hotels, dressing for success - gave Schiff "more mojo and confidence." Until it didn't.

While her clients and friends saw a successful woman at the top of her career, she hid a secret. She was stealing from them. To conceal her theft, she would do things like pay one client with another’s money, or leverage their friendships to keep them believing that late payments were always almost on their way.

By the time it all came crashing down in 2023, she had stolen some $6.4 million, from at least a dozen people. (Source: NY Times)

Today Schiff is broke, bankrupt. Seven of her former clients are suing her. She's living in much more modest digs - an apartment her parents are paying the rent on. She's hoping to stay out of prison. (Last fall, she pleaded guilty to defrauding her customers. She's been sentenced to 2.5 years in prison.) At 55 - a single mother with a 12-year-old son - the life she's living is anything but charmed. 

Instead of jet-setting around and looking for and at works of art by emerging artists she deems bound for greatness, she's playing with Legos (building a replica of Hogwarts), feeling guilty about fleecing her clients, attending AA and Debtors Anonymous meetings, and worrying about what's going to happen to her kid. (The plan was that if she went to prison, her son will go live with Schiff's brother.)

But back in the day...

Schmoozing at cocktail parties and lecturing clients as an ethics authority, she seemed like the ideal art guru: getting access to hot artists before their paintings jumped in value; discreetly brokering sales with the major auction houses; and warding off predatory dealers looking to upsell and overcharge novice collectors.

Ethics authority? Hmmm.....

She was everywhere, quoted in newspaper pages and speaking at museums. But all last year, she was missing from the cocktail circuit, and absent from the auction floors, except in the fine print: Listed atop three lots in a November auction at Phillips were the words, “Property [including her own extensive art collection] to be sold to benefit the creditors of Lisa Schiff.”

After it's over and done with - prison sentence, probation, whatever - Schiff is not likely to ever be able to work as an art adviser. Most people, I believe, would give a murderer, or even a thief, a second chance before they'd hire an embezzler. She's only 55, so she's got a lot of years ahead of her. 

Ms. Schiff continues to believe that in some ways she was a good art adviser. She listed her tireless efforts to help her clients amass their collections, and claimed she often eschewed making money to steer clients toward art in which she truly believed.

Then she caught herself.

“I am the worst kind of perpetrator, because I seem so good,” Ms. Schiff said. “I’m a good person, I’m a good friend, I am loving and generous, I work hard — and I stole your money.”

Maybe this is why I'm drawn to embezzlers. Most of them probably are good people. Until they're not.

Most likely to...

There's an insatiable demand for content. There's an insatiable demand for info on celebrities. There's an awful lot of content about celebrities floating around out there. The maw of the people must be kept fed!

As it happens, growing up, I didn't know anyone who turned into a celebrity. But just think, if Michael C. had become someone that people wanted to know about, I could report that, in first grade, on the day when the boys all got their pants wet sliding in the slush, and Sister Marie Leo made them take their pants off to dry on the radiators, and had them put on girls' coats - which were longer than boys' jackets - so that they could sit there with their underpants covered while the radiators did their thing, Michael C wore my red and green plaid coat. A coat that I loved. In his underpants. Ewwww. 

This is certainly the sort of tidbit that someone obsessed with a celebrity would have loved learn. Maybe it would show up in a profile of Michael C describing how parochial school shaped his future life as a celeb. Or, if I'd become the celeb, maybe someone else in my 1st grade class - who? Paul M? Ginny B? - would have provided fodder content for a profile on me, noting that I seemed to have been more icked out than the other little girls whose coats were worn by boys that infamous day. And what was wrong with me that this little incident turned into such a trauma that, nearly 70 years later, I was still icked out by it. (Note to self: it's pretty late in the game, so it's not gonna happen, but DON'T BECOME A CELEBRITY.)

And if someone in my high school class had become a celebrity - maybe one of the other Maureens: Maureen D, Maureen O, Maureen Q - I could have sold my yearbook to Seth Poppel. 

The first floor of Poppel’s house, in Seattle, is home to some eighteen thousand yearbooks; he and his wife, Danine, advertise their holdings as “the original and largest library of high school yearbooks of the stars.” (Source: The New Yorker)

And not just the stars. Sure, they've got the yearbooks of Patti Smith and Leo DeCaprio, of Marlon Brando and Sharon Stone. But they've also got Ruth Bader Ginsburg's. Which is how I now know that Ginsburg was a high school "twirler." (Sure wish she'd twirled out of the Supreme Court at the right time.) And Harry Truman's - Independence (MO) High School, Class of 1901.

And it's not just the yearbooks of celebrities - be they stars, pols, athletes - but also the yearbooks of those who manage to grab their 15 minutes in the limelight for their infamy:

In September, it took Poppel and his son Jared only a few hours to locate Ryan Wesley Routh’s—Routh is the alleged foiled golf-course assassin of Donald Trump—and sell his adolescent portrait to the Daily Mail for about a hundred bucks. 

Seth Popell, who's now 80, has always been a collector. As a toddler in Brooklyn, he collected bottle caps. Once he could read, it was baseball cards.

Then, nearly 50 years ago, at a baseball card show, he came across a copy of Mickey Mantle's yearbook, and found that, although there were only 41 kids in The Mick's class, Mickey Mantle wasn't chosen as the "Best Athlete." Who could have been better than a future Hall of Famer? I guess he could take solace by having been voted "Most Popular."

My high school class didn't have superlatives. We were woke before there was woke, and didn't want anyone to get left out or have their feelings hurt. We also didn't list activities under the picture, as was generally done back then. Again, those of us on the yearbook staff didn't want anyone with no activities to list, or just one pathetic activity, e.g., Intramural Basketball, 1, look like a null. 

This was, of course, noblesse oblige on the part of the yearbook staff, largely composed of my friends. (I'm still friends with the editor.) We were the girls who would have had a ton of activities. As in Glee Club 1,2,3,4; Student Council 2,3,4; Student Council President, 4; Academy Star (newspaper) 1,2,3,4; features editor, 4; Everyman (yearbook) staff; National Honor Society, 3,4; Literary Society, 1,2,3,4; Latin Club 1,2...I may have been a class officer freshman year, and I played intramural basketball for a couple of years.

We did have pages at the end of the yearbook - called Everyman, a story worthy of its very own post - with chirpy little words and phrases. "Notes to Remember." Mine were Tinkerbell...lines ahead in Latin!...12-year product...merit charts..."great stuff"...SIC VITA...sincere leader. 

Most I remember. I played Tinkerbell in some class skit. My costume included black tights, saddle shoes, and bright green pettipants with silver kangaroos on them...I did my Latin translations (without a trot, so they were tortured and nonsensical) but I liked to get those lines translated well in advance)...By the end of my senior year, I was a 12-year product of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. Four years later, I was a 16-year product...I have no idea what merit charts means, although I believe that when I was on Student Council we were instrumental in getting rid of demerit charts. (Demerits were "awarded" for things like talking between classes. If you "earned" enough of them, you had to stay after school.)..."great stuff" and SIC VITA were words I used ALL the time...sincere leader. Well, yes. Yes I was.

Above is my yearbook picture. If you're wondering what those artful lines are, I just blocked off my part of the page so you wouldn't run into Mary Jane R's section above me, and Joan S's space beneath mine.

Back to the Popells. 

Over the years, the yearbook info business grew. Even pre-Internet, magazines wanted celeb content. Then the Planet Hollywood restaurant chain decided to feature celebs' yearbook photos on their placemats. Gold for the Popells' business! And there was enough business that the Popells' son Jared could join it, and by the mid-1990's, things were booming enough that Seth Popell could quit his day job. 

The Popells finds their yearbooks - the latest demand is for Trump cabinet picks (those ought to be good: White Nationalist Club, 1,2,3,4) - through Internet search and through a freelance network they've built up that scouts antique stores and other sources of old junk.

It may not be the business that's Most Likely to Succeed, but it's got to be in contention for Most Niche.

Me? I've picked up a few old yearbooks that have nothing to do with celebs, and I find them fascinating. Maybe I'll dig up a few more. And who knows? I might run into someone interesting.

Guess there's no such thing as a free cruise

To begin with, I have no - make that less than no - desire to get on a cruise. Among other things, I'd be nervous about floating on the ocean blue in a giant Petri dish. All that covid! All that norovirus! Blech. If I'm going to spend all my time at sea sitting around my cabin wearing a mask and occsaionally gulping a breath of fresh air through my porthole, I might as well stay home.

No, I don't think I'd go on a cruise, even if one were offered to me for free. 

As happened to Minnesotan Mike Cameron, who, while at a casino, won a free Caribbean cruise on Norwegian. Oh, lucky day! Whose dream wouldn't it be to escape a Minnesota winter for a week in sun and warmth?

Alas, Cameron's luck soon ran out. 

He came down with the flu and went to the ship's medical center for treatment. He recovered in three days, only to be stuck with a bill for $47K that he may well never recover from. 

“I was just flabbergasted by the whole thing. I guess I am just used to the medical system in the United States. I can’t believe it happened,” he said.

The bill came as a shock as crew members assured him not to worry as he received treatment. (Source: NY Post)

Cameron had taken out traveler's ensurance, which should have covered the bill. Little did he know that $20K worth of coverage wouldn't have covered even half of the bill. Nor would his personal health incurance. 

To pay the bill - I was going to say "cover the costs," but $47K worth of charges in no way reflects the true costs of Cameron's treatment; he had the flu, not a lung transplant - "the cruise line maxed out two credit cards Cameron had on file and he still owes $21,000, he added."

“The traveler’s insurance doesn’t want to pay it until we run it by our health insurance. The health insurance doesn’t want to pay it because it’s abroad,” [Cameron's girlfriend Tamra] Masterman explained.

Norwegian sent Cameron a letter that stated "that its pricing was 'closely comparable to other cruise lines and is what we believe to be fair and reasonable.'"

'Closely comparable,' maybe. 'Fair and reasonable? NFW. Even if Norwegian claims that its ships all have "a state-of-the-art onboard medical center, staffed with highly qualified physicians and nurses, to provide care for both guests and crew while at sea.” 

No wonder I have no desire to go on a cruise.

Even if Pierce Brosnan or George Clooney crooned "won't you let me take you on a sea cruise" in my ear, my answer would be no, no, 47 thousand times no.