Fruitcake Fraud · Rittenhouse · Açaí
The latest on four real-life cases we're tracking
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I am not mad that we have a show called “Fruitcake Fraud” to watch. The doc, which dropped on Discovery+ last night, details a 2013 scandal that rocked famous Texas sweets spot the Collin Street Bakery.
The Corsicana bakery’s been a big deal since the 1800s, and fruitcake is its stock-in-trade (guys, they even have bite-size fruitcakes that I am very interested in!) to the tune of around $30 million a year.
In 2013, though, accountant Sandy Jenkins was revealed to have embezzled around $17 million from the business, dropping it on assorted luxuries. A 2016 piece from Texas Monthly tells the tale:
Sandy considered himself a moral person. But somehow, as he sat at his desk that December day in 2004, the action he was tempted to take didn’t seem wrong. He felt he was working the equivalent of three jobs at the bakery, and was he really compensated for all of it? How long was he supposed to wait to achieve his dreams?
He decided to dip into the bakery’s petty cash. It wasn’t much money in the grand scheme of things. But it kept him on edge. Every time someone stepped into his office, he’d brace himself for the words “Sandy, do you know what happened with this money?” He never planned a response. He didn’t want to think about getting caught. But no one ever asked about it. Everybody went about their business, and soon the petty cash wasn’t enough. A few weeks later, on a whim, he drove up to the Dallas dealership and bought a gold Lexus sedan with tan leather interior. It wasn’t a huge leap; it was a used car and he traded in his old Lexus as a down payment. He still couldn’t afford the payments, but he had a plan. He had been thinking about those blank spaces on the checkbook software.
Sandy had been invisible for such a long time, he was unfamiliar with the rush of power he suddenly felt driving back to Corsicana, blasting Barbra Streisand all the way down Interstate 45 in his new Lexus. If he were the type to sing in his car, he would have been singing. Cloudy gray times, you are now a thing of the past. Sandy didn’t sing, though, at least not in real life. Still, he might have been mistaken, but weren’t people looking at him with envy? That night, when Kay came home from working at the church, he told her that the car was a gift from the Fishers, a couple he’d been helping with their accounting needs. Who knows if she believed him. Maybe she had her own daydreams.
When you read Katy Vine’s piece, you can see why there’s also plans for a Laura Dern and Will Farrell-starring adaptation of the crime story, a production that’s reportedly been delayed by the pandemic. But we’ve still got this doc from the folks behind the movie (one of whom told Fort Worth Magazine that “the first thing to really move it into the visual form, so we're excited about that and excited to continue that momentum in a scripted version later”). — EB
From fruitcake to açaí…This Washington Post report on how açaí berries — a so-called “superfood” widely found in Brazil — are largely harvested by extremely young children, the only folks light enough to climb the 60-plus foot trees without snapping them.
The most pressing issue is obviously the human rights one, but before we get to that, let’s look at the wide-ranging and fraudulent claims around açaí, first. Here’s an assortment of headlines on the debunked claims around the health benefits of consuming the berries:
Group challenges acai berry weight-loss claims [March 2009, CNN]
Acai berry scam: You'll lose money, not weight [September 2010, NBC]
This Just In: Fake News Is No Way To Sell Acai Berries [April 2011, NPR]
And from the Mayo Clinic: “research on acai berries is limited, and the claims about their health benefits haven't been proved,” so when someone tells you that they offer some sort of unusual health benefit, they are probably full of it. Despite that, per the Post:
Fueled by claims of extraordinary health benefits, slick marketing and influential promoters, açaí has in recent years become one of the trendiest foods in the world. Pitted and pulped, the fruit is the deep-purple fixture of smoothies most everywhere. It has become especially popular in the United States, the largest açaí consumer outside of Brazil, where it’s a viral star on Instagram and celebrated by health and wellness enthusiasts. Analysts predict the global market, valued at $720 million in 2019, could exceed $2 billion by 2026.
OK, fine, so ding-dongs eat these berries and think something magic is happening, what else is new? Well, child exploitation, for one:
The injuries that befall açaí pickers — known here as “peconheiros” — are routine and serious: bone fractures, accidental knife wounds, venomous snake and spider bites. Some end up paralyzed. Others are killed. Some peconheiros go out and never return — such as two boys, ages 13 and 14, lost this year in the forests of Amapá state.
…They are freelancers in an unregulated supply chain, selling to middlemen who sell to other middlemen, so far removed from the profits that many have little idea that an açaí bowl can go for $15 in Washington. No law addresses their interests or guarantees a wage that would free parents from the difficult decision of sending children up trees.
A fair-trade certification process, industry critics say, has fallen short of its promise to eradicate child labor from the business. Brazilian and U.S. authorities say they are now investigating child labor in the açaí industry.
“We can’t wait any longer,” said Rejane Alves, who heads the child labor division in Pará and Amapá states. “We need to track the supply chain, identify people, hold them responsible and protect the children.”
Terrence McCoy’s Post piece is a fantastic eye-opener that demonstrates how American gullibility when it comes to fraudulent diet and health claims is causing injuries and deaths of children elsewhere on the globe. It’s a crime tale times two, and deserves amplification and adaptation along the lines of other food fraud tales like Fast Food Nation. Here’s hoping some of those production assistants tasked with finding the next big true crime story are set to pluck that (I’m so sorry) low-hanging fruit. — EB
You’re about to see a lot more Kyle Rittenhouse on Facebook. Back in August of 2020, the social media platform removed Rittenhouse’s profiles from Instagram and Facebook (and blocked any new profile creation with that name) after he was arrested for fatally shooting two people in Kenosha, Wisconsin (and injuring a third). “We’ve designated this shooting as a mass murder and have removed the shooter’s accounts from Facebook and Instagram,” said in a statement at the time.
Searches for Rittenhouse’s name were also blocked, The Verge reported at the time, and praise for Rittenhouse was moderated as a terms-of-use violation. Such a move was “not actually new,” a Facebook spokesperson told The Verge at the time. “We block searches for a ton of stuff – for instance, child exploitation content.”
But now, Rittenhouse and his supporters are back in the game, Facebook announced Wednesday. As you of course know, Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges last month, so Facebook “rolled back the restrictions we had in place that limited search results from returning content related to key terms including Kyle Rittenhouse," spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement sent to several news outlets. “While we will still remove content that celebrates the death of the individuals killed in Kenosha, we will no longer remove content containing praise or support of Rittenhouse.”
Speaking with The Verge, (Facebook rebrand/parent company name) Meta spokesperson Sally Aldous admitted that “Given the granularity of these policies as well as the wide public interest in these events, we anticipate enforcement at scale will be especially challenging,” so we can expect headlines in coming days of homicide-celebrating Facebook behavior that the platform let by, I’d wager.
(Side note: I’ve already gotten non-Facebook network ads for t-shirts and other merch supporting/celebrating Rittenhouse’s acts over the last few days, which suggests that online ad services have also lifted bans on the subject.)
If the admitted shooter wants to return to Facebook and Insta the 18-year-old is welcome to “create new accounts or request that Meta restore the existing ones, but will be subject to their respective community standards,” NPR reports. As of send time, his accounts remain dormant. — EB
Your December bonus review is Captive. Per Netflix, the docuseries “reconstructs history's most complex, high-stakes hostage negotiations as kidnapping victims recount their terrifying ordeals.” Your votes for it mean Sarah is watching it, for a review for paid subscribers that’ll be sent late this month. Want to make sure you get it? Then…
And now, the latest on five cases we’ve been following:
Elizabeth Holmes admits she went to Rupert Murdoch to try and kill WSJ Theranos story [CNBC]
Taking the stand in her own defense, Theranos co-founder Elizabeth Holmes alleged that an abusive relationship with co-founder Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani played a part in the company’s allegedly fraudulent claims. I’m in an emotional/philosophical place to touch that today (I’m fine, the combination of an all-Thanksgiving-leftovers diet and PMS are just ravaging my emotions) but I do want to talk about how Holmes admitted that she tried to kill reporting on her company. In the same week that — as Sarah noted yesterday — we also heard that Chris Cuomo reached out to reporters to maaaaybe kill stories about his brother, it’s wild to think that the WSJ/Rupert Murdoch is in many ways coming off as more journalistically ethical than CNN! What a time to be alive.Detective: Brothers detailed how Jussie Smollett staged hoax [Associated Press]
Back when I was covering Empire for Previously.tv, I could have imagined a plotline like the one we’re actually seeing in court would have seemed too bonkers for the since-canceled evening soap. But here we are!Marilyn Manson: The Monster Hiding in Plain Sight [Rolling Stone]
This is an “investigation based on court documents and more than 55 new interviews” that reveals — unsurprisingly, as he never really seemed to try to hide it? — that the musician was violent and abusive to nearly everyone around him.1st of 4 accusers takes stand at Ghislaine Maxwell trial [AP]
The testimony is as grim as you’d expect, from a woman who says she was 14 when the abuse — often with Maxwell allegedly participating — began.
Friday on Best Evidence: Celebrity criminals and forgiveness.
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