As UD pointed out here, more than a few megamansion owners are crooks. And sometimes the megamansion itself can be their undoing.

“Hedrick is a convicted felon and a complete, utter, and total disgrace to the medical profession. I call upon Indiana’s medical licensing board to immediately revoke his license to practice medicine,” said Hoffman.“

Harsh words. But at least he takes a nice preppy mug shot.

One of UD‘s wealthier friends sups with the opioid-famous Sacklers when he’s in Gstaad; the friend reports that these are really terrific dinners, without any undue pressure from the hosts to try OxyContin.

The good news is that in the foreseeable future my friend can continue to sup in the Alps with the Sacklers; but today’s Supreme Court rejection of the nice deal the family worked out with the trillion or so people whose family members fatally overdosed in order to finance Sackler dinners in Gstaad means that eventually the dinners might be imperiled.

Certainly we’ve learned, after many years, that med schools, engineering departments, and above all bigtime sports programs, are fraud central; but, more recently, IT managers are, fraudwise, really sitting pretty.

Yale thought it was being clever when it imposed a $10,000 upper limit on med school computer-related purchases signed off by only one person, but Finance Director Jamie Petrone-Codrington was all over that one. With patient stealth, for more than ten years, she racked up charges, gave the equipment to someone who fenced it, and stole 30 million dollars.

Where the fuck were Yale’s auditors? Damned if I know.

Same deal, more or less, at today’s hapless ripped off institution. “After receiving approval to purchase hundreds of items of IT equipment by falsely claiming the equipment would be used or installed at university locations,” Webster University’s IT director “sold that equipment to a third-party.”

… UD‘s coverage of illegal drug distribution featured a crusty old pill mill proprietor named Buster, and his best bud/pharmacy owner Lloyd, way down in Russellville Alabam. Out front of Buster’s place (What a Wonderful World Pain Clinic) long lines of pale pierced men hid their faces in oversize sweatshirts and funny thing is all the cars in the parking lot had Ohio license plates. Local Doc Ching-Ting Peng, just over from Taiwan, spoke no English, and had the sorest wrist in Russellville from signing a million empty prescription slips a day.

It was a rickety kind of bidness, sure, but didn’t nobody bother nobody and it was full of real interesting characters and everybody all over Akron got their very own fatal overdose. In the unlikely event the shit hit the fan and the boys got shut down, they moved to Phenixville and renamed the place Praise the Lord Pain Emporium.

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Course now it’s all slick city folk who figured out how to put it all online and advertise all over social media and make – I mean, let’s say Buster and Lloyd and Ching-Ting divided like 300 thou a year among themselves – the folks at Done digital health pulled in hundreds of millions before the Justice Department finally noticed. You buy a membership in the thing and they’ll sell you all the Adderall you want forever, no questions asked. ‘According to the complaint, one Done member described the company as a “straight up pill mill.”’

Until now, narco-billionaires seeking to avoid capture by the authorities through living in gated/patrolled high-rises have always risked exposure when leaving their cars, giving the keys to the parking valet, and then walking, in complete view of other people, into the building, into the elevator, and down the hallway of their floor, where they risk running into neighbors.

Beyond the obvious fact that narco-billionaires are unlikely to be pleased that strangers (even building staff) are getting inside their cars, where they can look around and find god knows what, there’s the larger point of all the exposure involved in walking into the building.

Bentley Residences has solved every one of these problems, allowing international criminals to enter all the way into their apartments without ever getting out of their car. Owners drive into sophisticated car elevators that lift them directly into their apartment, where they leave the car in a glass-enclosed garage which allows them to look at it while eating dinner (see images in this article).

Hawley Book ‘Manhood’

Set for Release Next Year

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From his publisher:

‘Runs about 350 pages.

Initial press run of 10,000 paperback copies.

Expected to be a runaway hit.’

And Teva Pharmaceuticals – the remarkably corrupt megacorp we’ve followed on this blog for years – does have one dumpster fire of debt. It’s way up there in the billions.

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But what’s this? Teva stock “is on fire today.”

See, they just settled – again, for several billions – the latest of … billions? … of criminal cases against them, these involving the company having been a big ol’ drug dealer during the heyday of opioid addiction (I guess we’re still in the heyday). Now that Teva has paid its way out of its most recent vileness, the company looks much more stable, and investors can heave a sigh of relief, all the while preparing to withdraw their winnings before the next gigantic criminal scheme takes Teva down for good.

An observer is stunned at evidence that profoundly influential studies of depression and Alzheimer’s may have been shown to be bogus.

But he’s wrong about the “producing no results.” The serotonin thing has resulted in tens of millions of Americans being put on powerful, very hard to withdraw from, meds – meds which probably are not responsible for whatever alleviation of their condition these people may be experiencing.

[Chef Daniel] Humm made headlines in May 2021 when he announced his famed eatery would be going entirely plant-based — but keeping its meals’ $335 prix-fixe price tag for 12 courses.

However, there was some controversy when it was revealed in late 2021 that there was a “secret meat room” at the restaurant for the super-rich — a private dining room targeted to big ticket corporate events with a meat-heavy menu that includes foie gras, beef tenderloin, roasted chicken and pork. 

‘[T]he Kremlin threatened retaliation … for the “economic war” it accused the U.S. of waging.‘

The Kremlin spent the last 20 years trying to modernize its military. Much of that budget was stolen and spent on mega-yachts in Cyprus.

Our friends and neighbors in DC sometimes ask us why we don’t subscribe to the Washington Post — why we subscribe instead to the New York Times.

In part it’s about the incomparable Sunday NYT crossword puzzle.

But for both Les UDs, it’s also because there’s only one newspaper where paragraphs like the one in this post’s title – a single paragraph from a long article which sensitively and minutely explores a tragic chapter in the life of a high-profile New Yorker – are routine.

The tragic toll of a life of crime.