Money moves the world, but there are more important things like one’s own well-being. These three men lived on the edge, achieving their goals, but they also overindulged in their lawless habits, which ended up landing them in jail.
1. Kim Dotcom
Does Megaupload ring a bell? Surely anyone who surfed the web to watch movies about 10 years ago will be familiar with what was the world’s leading platform for illegal downloads.
At the beginning of 2012, the front pages of international newspapers and TV news broadcasted the news “The FBI closes Megaupload”.
The US State Department, together with the FBI and the New Zealand police, began an operation against the popular file sharing website. Kim Schmitz better known as Kim Dotcom and other accomplices were arrested for committing a crime against intellectual property.
Going back further
Kim did not have an easy life in his childhood, his father was an alcoholic and took his anger out on him and his mother. When he was only 11 years old, he managed to convince his mother to buy him his first computer, with which he would learn to program and enter the world of hackers.
He started hacking telephone exchanges from his home country (Germany) earning about 200,000 € at the age of 15. He was eventually caught and started investing in companies legally.
But the stability was short-lived and he was accused of insider trading, which he used for stock market movements. He was convicted and served part of his sentence in a Thai prison, where he was later transferred to his country, serving 6 months in prison.
When all the doors were closed to him, an idea came to his head and that’s when he started Megaupload, creating a “Mega” file sharing emporium. It was arguably the first cloud storage system.
Actuality
Following his capture and arrest, he is awaiting trial for extradition to the United States, but Kim remains in New Zealand, living with his wife and children, awaiting the order to remove him from the country and stand trial.
2. Frank Abagnale
In the 1960s Frank William Abagnale Jr., a 16-year-old New York City teenager who looked like an adult, falsified his birth certificate by adding 10 years to his date of birth.
After setting up a bank account, with his parents in the process of divorcing, young Frank began his venture into bank fraud by writing bad checks.
Traveling through several cities, he devised a new technique “impersonating a pilot” in those days in the United States there were two major airlines, TWA and Pan Am, and the latter was chosen by him to commit the crimes of fraud and identity theft, traveling through several countries and sneaking fake checks in the name of Pan Am.
Fran Abagnale managed to pass himself off as a pilot, doctor and lawyer. He managed to pass the state exam to practice law.
Everything was going well until the FBI began to follow his trail, the financial crimes department led by Agent Joseph Shea, who tracked him through half the country and part of Europe, was tightening its siege, being on the verge of arresting him on several occasions.
He was finally captured in France where, after serving his sentence, he was extradited to the United States and sentenced there, until the FBI offered him to work for them detecting counterfeiters and thus finish his sentence as a federal employee.
After serving his sentence, he founded a security company to prevent further bank fraud, including counterfeiting.
3. Jordan Belfort
In the 1980s a young broker aspired to rise to the top of Wall Street. When he got a job as an assistant at a well-known firm, it suddenly went bankrupt and the market collapsed.
Jordan devised a company called Stratton Oakmont, which was dedicated to placing shares of little value to the client but which gave him and his partners a large profit, leaving his clients with no profit, and thus losing what they had invested.
It was all big parties, women, drugs, high-end cars and money, a movie standard of living that was once again cut short by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
When a rumor reached the FBI’s financial crimes bureau, an agent began to investigate and it didn’t take long to see that all this apparent legality was nothing more than a sham that concealed a huge scam.
The excess with alcohol and narcotics caused him many problems on a personal level, all kinds of compromising situations and problems with the police.
He ended up being arrested and charged with various economic crimes, including securities fraud, money laundering and stock market manipulation. He was sentenced to 22 months of imprisonment and a compensation of 110.4 million dollars to his former clients.
He is currently dedicated to motivating entrepreneurs by offering advice to his followers on how to sell more effectively.