Comparison

Comparing Sammy vs Elizabeth.

Initially I treated both of these fraudsters as the same personality type: Professional Criminal. I’ve understood this type since prison taught me in 1969.

The pro criminal MUST do everything the cheating way, the dishonest way. If there’s an honest way to do a task that takes one minute and costs nothing, and a dishonest way that takes a year of hard work and costs millions, the pro criminal will take the dishonest way. The pro criminal knows that he is always in the right, and is fully confident that he can always fool every Loser.

As I followed the story of Elizabeth, especially Carreyrou’s reporting, my judgment changed. She has grandiose tendencies from growing up in a top-status highly Connected family, but she didn’t innately intend to cheat. Her project led to a real machine that really worked on small blood samples. Partly from a need to please her family backers like Kissinger and Schultz, she got carried away and pushed the project into unreal territory, which was unquestionably dishonest.

As I follow the story and trial of Sammy, my initial judgment is doubly confirmed. He’s the supreme example of the pro criminal, the Pyrite Standard.