A weekend topic starting with Esquire. "What’s going on underneath the hood of the self-driving car industry? According to Joanne McNeil, the tech critic behind a thrilling new industry satire, the harsh reality is a whole lot of 'bizarre and usually non-functional technologies that don’t deliver on their promises.' The author makes her blistering fiction debut with Wrong Way, a closely observed novel about how individual lives are shattered by Big Tech’s hollow promises. Teresa’s life changes forever when she’s hired for a mysterious new role at AllOver, a tech behemoth billing itself as 'an experience company.' The sizable paycheck is seductive, as is the bombastic sales pitch from AllOver: 'You are getting paid to learn a trade that, to the rest of the world, hasn’t been invented yet. You’re a VIP with a backstage pass to a new career.' There’s just one problem. AllOver’s new rideshare service boasts driverless cars (called 'CRs'), but the reality is more sinister—instead, contractors like Teresa operate the vehicles while hiding inside a secret compartment."

"Q: One of my favorite things about Wrong Way are the moments where you slip into the absurd, bombastic rhetoric of Big Tech. I had to laugh when you had the CEO of AllOver saying, 'I put forth to the public this, an omni-solution, the CR. A green car, a privacy machine, an end to misinformation, a pledge for justice, rights, and a world in which everyone is your neighbor, your friend, your brother.' How did you find and inhabit that voice? A: Silicon Valley billionaires talk about a world beyond capitalism—that's because if their politics is limited to slogans as opposed to actual actions, they can say anything. There's a murkiness of their own intentions and their eagerness to please the public at any cost. I noticed that this could even include Silicon Valley billionaires who say things that could even sound like Democratic Socialists of America slogans."

The Globe and Mail. "As a recovering startup founder who is engaged in healing and self-exploration since giving up on my business, I am fascinated by the long line of hotshot entrepreneurs falling from grace. WeWork, the co-working space, sought bankruptcy protection on Monday, after a rise and fall marred by founder Adam Neumann’s erratic behaviour and an investigation by the New York State Attorney-General. Then there’s Sam Bankman-Fried and his FTX cryptocurrency exchange: He was found guilty of fraud and other crimes last week."

"Earlier this year, med-tech Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes began serving her 11-year sentence for fraud – appeal pending – and Charlie Javice, the founder of student-loan startup Frank, has been charged These cases are not simply a few bad apples who were once hailed as wunderkind. Rather, they are illustrative of systemic issues in startup culture taken to the extreme."

"The motto, 'Fake it ‘til you make it,' was not for me, even though I continued to believe in the idea of my business. But perhaps you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the catchphrase is a common practice among founders. I met one who was proud to share that early in his business he sent empty machines to a client so he could both meet his delivery date and buy a few more days to finish the product. This is the trap that caught Ms. Javice and Ms. Holmes."

"Whatever their intentions or awareness of the line between commitment to their mission and fraud, all are now living with the severe consequences of faking it until they made it. Commitment to mission sounds harmless, but it, combined with the commonly held view by startup founders that they are 'making the world a better place,' is dangerous. You may have noticed that many famous founders have messianic tendencies."

From Skift. "Cabana, a startup platform for booking camper vans as vacation rentals, is seeking buyers to avoid shutting down. Cabana started by owning the vans — and still owns several dozen — but has been transitioning to a model where Cabana rents vans on behalf of owners. Cabana’s long-term goal has been to manage bookings marketing and offer the back-office software to van owners. Users can book trips in Seattle and Minneapolis – it has cut its three other locations, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Austin."

"The first option was to look for another round of venture capital, but that did not work out. Cabana has previously raised a total of $16 million, including a $10 million series A round in 2021. 'Without an acquirer, we’re not in a position where we can continue operations,' said Cabana CEO Scott Kubly. 'The venture markets are really, really tight right now, particularly for companies that are at our stage.'"

From KPNX TV. "Two Arizona residents have been indicted in federal court for allegedly scamming hundreds of people in a cryptocurrency scheme. Luis Ortega, 42, of Litchfield Park, and Jeremie Sowerby, 45, of Fountain Hills are accused tricking people to invest in 'risk-free' opportunities that promised to yield lavish gifts and profits, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office of Arizona. The fraudulent investment opportunities involved purported Bitcoin mining machines located abroad and in Arizona, as well as a real estate company where investors could buy custom-built container houses by using a 'Millenium' cryptocurrency. Prosecutors said the entire scheme was based on lies and millions of dollars was lost."

The Providence Journal in Rhode Island. "Ernest P. Ricci, who lied and schemed and taunted federal investigators in obscenity-laced emails that they were too witless to catch on to his bankruptcy scam, on Wednesday changed his plea to guilty. Ricci, a self-employed contractor from North Kingstown who tried numerous criminal ways, the government contended, to hide property in his bankruptcy and illegally obtained money through pandemic relief funds, waffled at first. Ricci, who flipped houses with his wife, Brenda, faced charges of bankruptcy fraud, suborning perjury, obstruction of bankruptcy proceedings, wire fraud and money laundering."

"Ricci admitted that in October 2017, prior to filing a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy petition in an attempt to protect a $1.5-million home in Florida used as a vacation home and rental property – and on which he had failed to make any mortgage payments for about five years – he transferred all his business assets in Premier Home Restoration LLC (Premier) to his wife. But on Wednesday, Ricci admitted that he in fact continued to control Premier and run its day-to-day operations, and that he made use of income from the company to maintain his lifestyle. He disclosed none of it to the bankruptcy court."

"In April 2020, as investigators began their probe into his bankruptcy claim, he wrote an email to them that said 'I’m sure you realize now I’ve been three steps ahead of you Bozos all the way and that’s because I’m smarter than all of you combined.' Weeks later, when a federal bankruptcy trustee pressed Ricci to turn over financial records from the couple’s business, Premier Home Restoration, Ricci distinctly announced his non-cooperation: 'Here’s my response. GO [expletive] YOURSELF Charlie. How’s that?' 'The party’s over [expletive],' his email continued, court documents show. 'Move on and admit you [expletive] with the wrong guy. ITS OVER!!! Lololol Ernie Ricci.' FBI agents arrested the Ricci pair in March 2023."

WREG in Tennessee. "Millennia, a real estate company that owns five properties in Memphis and 200 across the country, is being accused of knowingly letting residents live in 'unsafe conditions.' The company based in Cleveland, Ohio, is in the real estate, development, management and affordable housing business. In the fall of 2022, a judge issued a Temporary Restraining Order that prevented Millennia from moving tenants back into what lawyers called 'uninhabitable' units. Families had been temporarily evacuated and relocated after a gas leak caused a mother and child to die. A charred, gaping hole was left on the side of Shorter College Gardens Apartments in North Little Rock, Arkansas after a fire last October. Three people were killed."

"Attorney Terris C. Harris filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of six Shorter College families, and other Millennia residents living in similar conditions. The WREG Investigators asked Harris, 'You’re saying they absolutely knew that they could have done better and should have done better?' He replied, “That’s exactly what I’m saying. When we talk to different residents who don’t know one another from completely different states, and they are saying the exact same thing, of course it’s a pattern.' Harris says that isn’t acceptable for a company that boasts about its ability to rehabilitate and preserve affordable housing and is taking your money to do so. 'They say they get low-income tax housing credits for, we know they get HUD payments every month for them, but it doesn’t appear that they are putting that money back into the properties in which they own and develop,' said Harris."

From ABC 10. "A man convicted of 100 felony counts earlier this year for defrauding homeowners in 11 California counties will spend the next 25 years in prison. Robert Sedlar was sentenced this week to 25 years and four months in prison after a five-week trial ended with his conviction in May. He was convicted of charges ranging from conspiracy to filing false documents, grand theft, elder abuse and prohibited acts by a foreclosure consultant. Every single person who sought their help lost their homes and the scheme resulted in a total loss of more than $7 million. The AG’s office says the victims were in San Diego, San Mateo, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Joaquin, Placer, Solano, Mendocino, San Francisco, El Dorado and Sacramento counties. Two other employees of Grand View pleaded guilty to their charges."

The Nation. "Back in 1787, during the reign of Russian Empress Catherine the Great, a military commander by the name of Grigory Potemkin was looking for a way to impress the Empress during her tour of Crimea. He set up a series of follies: fake villages, cobbled together at speed, complete with fake residents—happy, healthy, politically enthusiastic peasants. The only problem was, they didn’t actually live in those fake villages, and indeed likely weren’t even from the region that Catherine was touring through. Those Potemkin Villages have, over the centuries, come to stand for myriad such disingenuous interventions in the public realm."

"Clearly, in the run-up to the summit meeting in San Francisco this week both sides wanted to impress. America wanted to present the most spruced-up vision of San Francisco it could muster, to impress on China and the other APEC participants the glories of the American urban experience. In the days leading up to the summit, huge homeless encampments, open air drug markets, and trading grounds for stolen goods were swept away from the United Nations Plaza. In their place sprang up a skate park, dance performances, and other emblems of an affluent, calm, successful society. After all, it really wouldn’t do for the overseas leaders to see how degraded so much of the American urban infrastructure and social safety net has become in recent decades. It is hardly an endorsement of America’s claim to ongoing greatness to have a major international summit taking place surrounded by cardboard shacks, tents, needles in the gutters, and hundreds of destitute residents outside. If the rapid renovation of the United Nations Plaza isn’t a Potemkin Village, I don’t know what is."

"Nearly one percent of San Francisco’s population is homeless on any given day, according to the city’s Controller’s Office, placing it just behind Los Angeles and Oakland in the cities with the worst homelessness rates in the nation. The epicenter of the Silicon Valley boom, it has one of the highest concentrations of wealthy elites of any city on earth. Yet over the past decade it has shamefully failed to address the overlapping crises of spiraling mental health problems, soaring drug addiction, and unaffordability-of-housing—oftentimes falling back on its reputation as a liberal haven not to carry out more effective interventions, but to do nothing."

"Being pro-homeless has come to mean, in San Francisco at any rate, not really helping the poor, the addicted, and the mentally ill find better, more supportive, living situations, but instead simply turning a blind eye to the growing squalor. As a result, in many neighborhoods, people congregate in growing shantytowns that look more like images from cities in the poorest countries on earth rather than other major cities in other powerful, wealthy democracies."

From News.com.au. "'It was always my dream to live in paradise, in Bali or another gorgeous island,' Victoria Holmes, a hypnotherapist told news.com.au. So a few months before the pandemic, I packed up my apartment and moved to Bali.' But Holmes didn’t want to live alone as she had in London. She dreamt of joining a community of 'like-minded' people. Holmes thought her prayers had been answered when she came across a brochure for a property development called Golden City while at Clear Cafe in Ubud, the spiritual capital of Bali. 'It just resonated with me. Everything I ever wanted was right in front of me,' she recalls. 'Knowing how high land prices are in Europe, I thought it was a bargain and invested.'"

"Golden City sounded like a dream for anyone looking for a change of pace from city life. 'Imagine a world without borders,' reads the brochure. 'A place where everyone is part of an evolved common purpose. A bridge between the modern world and a community-based lifestyle rooted in the heart of a seaside sanctuary.' More than an alternative to the rat race, the project also offered a remarkable return on investment. 'Golden City stands out in its vision to provide world-class, state-of-the-art, luxurious experiences that are highly affordable and at the same time profitable,' reads the latest brochure dated 2023."

"Plots are listed at $US8000 to $US30,000 per 100 square metres on a leasehold agreement. Golden City literature suggests investors can expect annual rental yields of 20 per cent to 25 per cent and asset appreciation of 300 per cent in as little as four years. Around 130 investors have already joined Golden City. But ground has not yet been broken because, as lawyers have discovered, the developers don’t own the land. Now, 62 angry investors have joined a $US5 million ($7.8 million AUD) class-action lawsuit against the founders of Golden City: Yansen Barry, the Indonesian director of Bumi Kristal Sumbawa, a company formed to sell property in Sumbawa; and Brett Sorenson, the face of the project, an expat American who goes by the name Brett Black and co-owns Clear Cafe Ubud."

"Many of Golden City’s investors were experienced investors. Some had already lived in Indonesia for years while others had already invested in property abroad. A small number were even Indonesian citizens. And they invested up to $US500,000. 'Why didn’t I get a notary?' Holmes says. 'Because I was mesmerised with the community. The whole picture was just so hypnotising, living in a utopia with people who are into the same things – nature, health and beautiful human relations … It was built on trust. I thought of them as my second family.'"

"Stories of small-time investors losing their pants in the Orient are as old as … well, as stories about the Orient. Some ended up living the dream. But scores get shafted every year as a result of a loose regulatory environment and a ‘gone tropo’ mentality where foreigners don’t read the fine print or trust the wrong people. Facebook pages for expats in Bali are riddled with such hard luck stories. The director of a large architectural firm in Bali, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says '60 or 70 per cent' of foreigners who invest in property in Bali lose their money to builders, landlords or business partners. Sometimes they’re even blackmailed by neighbours who place pigs or roosters on their side of the fence and demanding a King’s ransom to remove them."

"In Ubud, some locals have made small fortunes by pointing powerful mirrors to blind and startle guests at luxury hotels. Then they demand money from the hotel for them to be removed. 'The police say people have the right to do what they want on their land,' said the general manager of an internationally branded hotel, who wanted to remain anonymous. 'Nine times out of 10, the blackmail works. It did with us.'"

"Today, Bali and its surrounding islands are in the throes of a construction boom of the likes never seen before. Fuelled by the return of mass tourism after the pandemic, $US450 million in foreign direct investment flooded into Bali alone in 2022, according to research firm Statista. But buyer beware. In the case of Golden City, the warning signs were there from the start. Even before turning the first page, any notary worth their salt would have noted the contracts were written in English instead of Bahasa Indonesia and therefore null and void, says Ni Luh Arie Ratna Sukasari, a partner with Malekat Hukum, the Balinese law firm leading the class action."

"The biggest loser at Golden City is American software engineer Christopher Smith, founder of several tech companies and Chief Financial Officer at Airchat, a voice-first social networking app. He invested $US500,000 in the Golden City project. 'Brett said all the right things,' he recalls of the day he first spoke to Sorenson. 'His criticism of America was accurate and insightful and we shared the belief we had to get out. So why not buy land on a tropical island and do our own thing? He’s a skilful communicator. He spoke with tremendous confidence but just the right amount of self-reflection built in so as not to come across as arrogant … I thought this guy is a doer.' Smith is sanguine. 'Emotionally I’ve let it go and I don’t expect to get my money back even if our lawyers win,' he says. 'My primary motivation is stopping more people getting ripped off by Brett.'"

"A former investment banker who lives in San Francisco, Mimi Aye is also at a loss to explain why she did not hire a notary before investing in the project. Aye, whose health is rapidly failing, doesn’t care about the money either. She just wants justice – or revenge – it’s impossible to tell. 'One of the friends who introduced me to Brett, she invested $US46,000, all the money she had at the time,' she says. 'She’s the real reason I joined the class action. Because Brett targets idealistic spiritual people like us.'"