Good morning,

As I’m sure you have noticed, I want Fem Friday to be a fun and a happy newsletter where you can read about women being good at things, interesting and funny as well as all combinations of the above. Of course, women can also be good at things that are not necessarily good for the world or people around them and one of those things – one of those things that I enjoy reading about a great deal – is fraud on a grand scale. Enjoy three stories of women who convinced people with money that they were the real deal (they were not the real deal)

The amount of fooling oneself that is required to pull off a successful fraud is always what really engages me about these stories, and with Theranos I’m never quite sure when either

1. Elizabeth Holmes realised she wasn’t going to revolutionise the world of blood testing and decided to carry on anyway

or

2. Elizabeth Holmes became convinced that against all odds she actually was going to revolutionse the world of blood testing.

I don’t know if Elizabeth Holmes is sure of the answers to these questions either! Anyway you can read the following article and come to your own conclusions:

“Theranos was a combination of fraud, with hubris mixed with incompetence,” Carreyrou told me in his precise, economical manner. “Some part of Sunny and Elizabeth, I believe, knew they were committing fraud. Knew that they were lying to investors, to a lot of people. But part of them also were convinced that the Theranos technology that they were working on — which they knew was still a work-in-progress — that it actually was revolutionary. That it actually was great,” he says.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/john-carreyrous-new-book-on-silicon-valley-bad-blood.html

It seems impossible that you haven’t read the story of Anna Delvey, but you know what, it’s Friday, treat yourself by reading it again. She also actually thought that she was going to set up an international Soho House style club for the art set! With… okay, on the remote offchance you haven’t read it, I’m not going to tell you the actual mechanism of her fraud, but I’ll give you a clue: it’s pretty old skool:

When the banker at City National asked to see the UBS statements, he received a list of figures from a man named Peter W. Hennecke. “Please use these for your projections for now,” Hennecke wrote in an email. “I’ll send the physical statements on Monday.”

No, Anna explained. “Peter is head of my family office.”

https://www.thecut.com/2018/05/how-anna-delvey-tricked-new-york.html

Finally, are you the spouse of a billionaire bond trader? Here’s a fun new hobby for you; project great works of art onto a canvas in your cinema room to create replicas of great works of art. PRO TIP FROM SUE GROSS, make sure it’s art you already own so you’ve got some negotiating chips if things go south with your billionaire bond trader wife or husband:

“Well, you didn’t take it and leave an empty spot on the wall, though, did you?” lawyers for Bill Gross asked.

“A replication, yes,” Sue answered.

https://nypost.com/2018/05/11/wife-hung-fake-picasso-after-taking-real-thing-amid-contentious-divorce/

Finally here’s a palete cleanser in the form of Nicki Minaj’s No Frauds, a song title which accurately describes most women:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkXjvHfP3MM

Have a super weekend,

Alex xx.