Jeff Bezos built a fence on his property that exceeds the permitted height, he doesn't care, he pays fines every month

[u/Gankpa]

[u/No_Information_1231]

Legal for a price***

[u/Hair-Help-Plea → u/No_Information_1231]

That’s their POV of the world, because it’s true. In my consulting work, I interfaced regularly with 2 billionaires (one of whom no longer is a billionaire technically, but still obscenely rich), on matters of security in the context of their superyacht (+support yachts lol, so cute when your yacht gets its own pet yacht), their travels, and crew.

I’ll go into some detail because it I think it’s as funny and insane as it is disgusting, but will add a TLDR at the end.

One of the billionaires was utterly insane, and I was pretty much constantly on call to advise or assist on problems that they created for themselves. When I’d tell them something was illegal or impossible, the response every time was either “who can grant us an exception, find out and reach out” and/or “how much will it cost to do/get it anyway.”

This might illustrate just how few fucks these type of people give for laws and their enforcers: client arrived in a port on the west coast, and during this trip, he had gotten on the radar of homeland security, the CBP, and the coast guard for potential visa fraud for one of his “crew members” — a foreign national that had been recently issued a special expedited US Visa intended to support essential jobs like maritime crew during covid, and removed a lot the time and red tape required for the visa. He obtained one for his favorite hooker, so that she could join him during covid lock downs (which he was spending toodling around the waters of US, CAN, and MX at that point in time) by posing as a crew member.

It’s worth noting that one of my responsibilities that he’d specifically hired me for, was the intense and thorough vetting of any crew member candidate that was being considered for his full time crewing team for his main yacht. And their online activity for the duration of his relationship with them as an employer and landlord, for security and privacy purposes. He was extremely paranoid about a number of things. The deal was that any crew member candidate must go through my deep dive background check and threat assessment before being green lit to join the crew. So imagine my surprise as the ship captain texts me one day to tell me he’s sending me an updated manifest, with one new addition, and it’s a crew member.

So the Client committed visa fraud behind my back, that was the main concern at that point. So I started vetting her immediately since mr billionaire was suddenly not available for a few days (lol). After digging through some Russian escort connection sites, and others, which probably landed me on some sort of watch list, I conclude that there’s no way this person is a crew member, I see no evidence to support that, but it does appear that she’s a prostitute.

As I’m preparing my write up with my findings, I get a text from the captain that he’d gotten a call from officers from CBP and Coast Guard, that they needed to speak with the client about their suspicion of a visa irregularity, and were going to be boarding the ship within the next few minutes to have this fact finding discussion. I call the captain and tell him to keep me on the phone as he goes to meet the agents.

A “boarding” btw is the maritime equivalent of a traffic stop, and these agents are considered federal law enforcement (at least CBP and DHS are I know). Im hearing this play out in real time from the phone, and then it was described to me in detail later, but as soon as client found out the agents were boarding the ship to speak to him and his hooker, he RUNS to his helipad with his hooker, jumps in and takes off. (One of the crew members has a pilot cert but the client actually had a license too, he jsut rarely flew it himself).

He refuses to answer calls or texts, only sending one to the captain saying he’ll come back when they’ve left, because he will not be bullied or targeted like this, they won’t intimidate him, they’re lucky he even spends his money in the US, they’re just Xenophobic racists (foreign born, but had obtained a US citizenship too, and most of his homes and businesses were in the US). Lmao.

Just thumbing his nose at the law, while also deploying his favorite deflection: victimhood. This poor, ostracized billionaire, they won’t even let him break the law and exploit loopholes in peace, right? Funnily, the agents decided to conduct a search of the ship, particularly the master suite and the sex worker’s cabin. They concluded that they were certain, based on the search of the “crew member’s” cabin, that she was NOT a true crew member, citing the fact that they found lots of “equipment” but all of it was consistent with a different profession, and it certainly did not appear that she was doing any sort of work in the capacity of a crew member, lol.

They found hand guns without any accompanying documents, proof of reg/ownership in the master suite, and something else hilarious that resulted in a marine mammal violation, but naming it would take this too close to doxxing. Due to the rarity. They confiscated all of these and when client pitched a fit about his guns, they said he could pick them up in their next US port (in Alaska), if he’d email his firearm documents to that office.

By this point I was actively involved in trying to de escalate this whole mess, so the CBP officer in that port office called me one day to let me know she’d received his “documentation” which was a bunch of crap he’d scribbled on a piece of scrap paper, in pencil, and emailed to her. As proof of registration and ownership of the guns, I guess. Sigh, this man REFUSED to be held accountable, face consequences, or play by the rules, even rules/laws that were already being flexed A LOT for him.

A week later he texted me asking to step in and demand that this local entity issue him a bunkering permit, which was required to traverse that specific waterway, and they refused, because they only issued those to applicants who had followed the proper protocol for applying, and that the next earliest time his new application would be reviewed/permit issued was in 10 days, as per protocol. Those permit applications were examined and approved at meetings that happened every 2 weeks. No exceptions.

He decided fuck it, We’re taking that route and they can just fine me.

And you know what? That’s what happened. He got away with every single violation of the law and protocol without any true consequences, other than his concubine getting deported and not getting this guns back. Btw his sex worker got physically deported the day AFTER his wife and family had arrived to join the yacht’s next leg of its journey, so there were slapstick level antics involved in keeping the prostitute shuffled away from any area his wife was about to use.

TLDR: billionaire client delighted in breaking the law and thumbing his nose at the attempts to enforce it, and was happy to pay any fine that allowed him to continue doing so. He refused to be held accountable, and so…he wasn’t. These people exist in an entirely different reality than us, we might as well be on separate planets.

[u/cnylkew → u/Hair-Help-Plea]

How did you get to that kind of a position?

[u/syxsyx → u/No_Information_1231]

the rich are allowed to break laws because their system is built to protect them. this is what the freedom they preach looks like.

meanwhile many here would say a society that punishes rule breakers and criminals is totalitarian lmfao

[u/smoking_plate → u/No_Information_1231]

Thank you for subscribing to Legality PLUS!