Curated playlist

21st-century American criminals

Donald TrumpDonald Trump was a millionaire in inflation-adjusted terms by age eight.
Ghislaine MaxwellOn the 29th of December 2021, a federal jury in New York convicted Ghislaine Maxwell of sex trafficking of a minor. Maxwell, a British former socialite, had moved for decades through the social circles of London and Manhattan. Her friends…
Sean CombsSean Combs founded Bad Boy Records, which launched the Notorious B.I.G. He was later sentenced to four years in prison.
Phil SpectorPhil Spector's first number one song came from his father's gravestone.
Caroline EllisonOn the 9th of November 2022, Caroline Ellison, chief executive of the trading firm Alameda Research, joined a video meeting with her employees. According to anonymous sources cited by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, she…
Harvey WeinsteinHarvey Weinstein was thanked by name in 34 Academy Award acceptance speeches. That is as many times as God was thanked, and only Steven Spielberg, with 43 mentions, was thanked more often. The tally comes from an analysis of speeches made…
Warren JeffsWarren Jeffs was in the red 2007 Cadillac Escalade that highway trooper Eddie Dutchover stopped on Interstate 15 in Clark County, Nevada. It was around 9 p.m. on the 28th of August 2006. The reason for the stop was minor. The temporary…
Sam Bankman-FriedSam Bankman-Fried played League of Legends while pitching investors. Sequoia later put in more than $200 million.
John Allen MuhammadJohn Allen Muhammad was pronounced dead at 9:11 p.m. on the 10th of November 2009. The place was the Greensville Correctional Center, near Jarratt, Virginia. Seven years earlier, in 2002, shootings attributed to him and a young partner…
Robert HanssenRobert Philip Hanssen, a veteran FBI agent, drove to Foxstone Park on the 18th of February 2001. The park sits near his home in the Washington suburb of Vienna, Virginia. He was there to leave a package of classified material at a dead…
Larry NassarLarry Nassar, whose full name is Lawrence Gerard Nassar, was born on the 16th of August 1963 and trained as an osteopathic physician. For decades, parents and athletes trusted him with the care of young bodies. In 2016, after an…
Henry HillIn 1955, an eleven-year-old boy named Henry Hill crossed the street from his Brooklyn home and wandered into a dispatch cabstand, hoping for a part-time job after school. The men who gathered there were local mobsters, and Hill had admired…
Keith RaniereKeith Raniere was addressed by his followers as Vanguard, and for twenty years he led a company in Albany, New York, called NXIVM. The company sold personal development seminars. From 1998 to 2018 it drew 700 members at its height, among…
R. KellyBeneath the Chicago "L" tracks, at the Jackson stop on the Red Line in the Loop, a young school dropout named Robert Kelly sang for passing commuters. Decades later, as R. Kelly, he had sold more than 75 million albums and singles…
Elizabeth HolmesElizabeth Holmes was twenty-nine years past her first day at Stanford when Forbes named her the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in the United States. That was in 2015. The magazine based its judgment on a valuation of…
Suge KnightSuge Knight posted Tupac Shakur's $1.4 million bail in 1995. In return, the rapper signed with Death Row Records.
Steve BannonSteve Bannon still earns money every time Seinfeld airs. His bank took a stake in five shows instead of a fee.
Bernie MadoffBernie Madoff told his own sons in December 2008 that the fund he ran was "just one big lie." Bernard Lawrence Madoff was an American financier, born in 1938, who had once served as chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange. He admitted to…
Chelsea ManningChelsea Manning is an American activist and whistleblower who, as a young Army intelligence analyst in Iraq, copied nearly 750,000 classified or sensitive military and diplomatic documents and passed them to WikiLeaks. To carry the files…
Whitey BulgerOn the 22nd of June 2011, agents in Santa Monica, California, used a ruse to lure an 81-year-old man out of his apartment. They arrested him without incident. He was James Joseph "Whitey" Bulger Jr., who had once led the Winter Hill Gang,…
Sammy GravanoSammy Gravano, known to the world as Sammy the Bull, once faced up to 20 years in prison and received a sentence that amounted to less than one year. In 1994 a federal judge gave him five years, but he had already served four. The judge…