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Earthlink Founder Gets 14 Years In Jail
from the throw-the-book-at-him dept
It's been nearly two years since the story of how an Earthlink founder, Reed Slatkin, proceeded to con people out of $600 million in a giant pyramid scheme. He told the investors (mostly Scientologists, of which he was a longtime member) that he was investing the money wisely, when really he was just using the latest investments to pay off earlier investors. Now, despite the government asking for the lower end of the jail time range following the guilty plea, the judge has sentenced him to the maximum 14 years in jail. Again, I raise the same question I raised at the time: why is it that people would give this guy so much money without doing the slightest due diligence into what he was doing with it? I also wonder what compels someone who had a huge legitimate business success to then go out and build a multi-million dollar fraud?
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proofing
Hey Mike, check out www.readplease.com They have a text-to-speech app that's great for proofing copy before it goes out. Enjoy.
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Maybe it was easy because they were all Scientologist robots? Hey, if you accept "BattleField Earth as religious canon...
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I'm glad to see someone actually bilk Scientologist out of a mere fraction of the $$$ they have bilked out of their followers.
Scientology is for kooks, fanatics & idiots - why would anyone be surprised they were fleeced in the first place ?
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But in the end, it probably wasn't Scientology itself that got bilked. It was probably the same (reasonably innocent) people who were screwed by both.
It's faith that usually ends up being the problem. It may or may not be OK to be uncritically faithful to your creator, but it definitely is not OK when you're dealing with people. Even if they swear up and down they believe, too.
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