The Real Conversation About Bob Lee and Criminality
The Real Conversation About Bob Lee and Criminality
Yes, there will be more Silicon Valley deaths...
We’re going to talk honestly and openly about Bob Lee and examine how many of the players deliberately look the other way.
Last night brought news that prolific investor Bob Lee was murdered in a stabbing.
He was killed around 2.35 AM in the Rincon Hill neighborhood, which is about a five minute walk to Chinatown. Not a lot of good stuff goes on at that time of night in downtown San Francisco and Lee really liked drugs. I’ve been around there and it’s not good at night.
Lee was also the Cash App founder and the chief product of MobileCoin.
Cash App has been linked to all kinds of money laundering, which you can peruse in the report that short seller Hindenburg released.
The Washington Post has the story:
“Former employees described how Cash App suppressed internal concerns and ignored user pleas for help as criminal activity and fraud ran rampant on its platform,” the report alleged. It also estimated, based on interviews with former employees, that 40 percent to 70 percent of accounts are “fake, involved in fraud, or were additional accounts tied to a single individual.”
Mobile Coin was backed by Binance, which is under all kinds of investigation by the U.S. and allied governments.
I’ve made some calls. A friend witnessed him doing hard drugs dozens of times.
Let’s be clear: Lee liked drugs. Lee bought drugs. Lee also liked orgies. Lee liked crypto.
Does that remind you of anyone?
In the Wirecard case we saw how many of the executives and regulators got compromised by drugs and prostitutes — and how they looked the other way on enforcement precisely because they were dirty.
These raises another question. Is the same thing happening in American fintech?
Could the Square CTO have been involved in some shady stuff? Of course he was.
And he isn’t alone. There have been all kinds of crypto people who have died under very suspicious circumstances.
There’s a temptation to blame San Francisco for these kind of problems but the problems of San Francisco is how many tech guys wanted to be residents rather than citizens.
In fact the blood is on the hands of investors like Ocko (who is deeply tied into the Chinese too). Don’t take my word for it.
Here’s Ocko again.
My family has been working with the Chinese government at a reasonably high level since the late 1970s, starting with my dad, and I kind of grew up in that environment. And at a relatively young age, as a professional [in the 1990s], I started pro bono helping my dad, who’s a Chinese legal expert, on things like constructing the laws around China’s Nasdaq equivalent, its stock markets, the joint dollar-renminbi investment legislation, advice on technology development and venture capital development.
Actually, Mark, you and the rest of Silicon Valley had the opportunity to invest in law enforcement tech and you didn’t. You invested in fake companies like Curative which got billions and didn’t even work.
That’s why Bob Lee died. Your city banned facial recognition — your firm actually saw Clearview but refused and leaked on it to BuzzFeed — and passed on genomic genealogy — which is pretty much the only way we’d be able to solve this kind of case.
You didn’t want to have the China-mob ties conversation. This is why you lost your friend and this is why you’ll lose others.
The time to help is drawing to a close.
Choose well, Silicon Valley. We’re watching and making lists.
Hello again, Charles Johnson! It is I, Ellie who is more fond of internal combustion automobile engines (for now) than lithium and other rare earth ore battery-powered electric cars.
This is a novel perspective on the cause of Bob Lee's tragic death. I say "tragic" because he died at such a young age, and due to violence. I think we are in agreement about San Francisco: Crime is so bad now that Bob Lee's death--and any others that you allude to happening in the near future--aren't likely to be investigated with the same diligence that a similar death in, say, Modesto or Omaha would. That is mostly due to the voting preferences of San Francisco residents who are U.S. citizens. (Recall that in NYC, one need not be a U.S. citizen to vote; SF is not that far gone yet.) I don't know if Peter Thiel and Brendan Eich (a kind, pleasant man; Mozilla has floundered since his banishment) are in favor of more strongly nurturing the Rule of Law in the City by The Bay.
I am familiar with Clearview technology. It has been in place (for optional use by travelers) since November 2020 in the Las Vegas, Nevada international airport. (McCallen? No, he was a Civil War general. MacArthur? No, that was Douglas in Norfolk, VA and Japan. McCarren! Yes, that's it.) I don't know what "genomic genealogy" is. Clearview is a technology that resembles those that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) utilize for authoritarian control over their people. Thus I am confused by your primary conclusion: If Silicon Valley venture capitalists were compromised by their deep ties to the CCP, then they would be MORE not LESS likely to invest in Clearview and such.
Next, I am hesitant to attribute Bob Lee's untimely death to degeneracy. He should have been safe to walk anywhere within a a 10 minute radius of Chinatown; also, he had sufficient wealth for bodyguards and friends if in doubt. You are correct about some luminaries of cryptocurrency being associated with unsavory and illegal activities, and even dyeing prematurely. Romanian Mircea Popescu comes to mind. He supposedly drowned while swimming. He wasn't even 40 years old. I mourn his passing. He was bright, as well as pleasant and sweet in all our online interactions. He taught me about directed acyclic graphs. He even told me with sincerity that I was "a nice girl" unlike most libprog American Jews, many of whom call me a fascist weasel and worse. I am an American Jew btw.
Going back to the theme of degeneracy: The despicable Scam Blankman Fraud (SBF of FTX). I do not like Sam. I do not like Sam's Stanford Law professor mom and dad. (I am a Stanford Engineering grad, and it pains me to say this.) I am outraged that Scam SBF is loose after posting merely $1 million or less despite his bail being set at $250 million. You said, "Lee liked drugs. Lee bought drugs. Lee also liked orgies. Lee liked crypto."
Yes, but that doesn't mean that Lee deserved to die. SBF liked prescription drugs and crypto too. Despite the stories of polygamy and such, I have yet to find any evidence of street drugs and orgies at SBF's Bahamas and Hong Kong hideaways. Instead, there is evidence of massive fraud, facilitated by the active involvement of two very intelligent Stanford Law professor parents, various political donors, and regulator capture.
Investing in law enforcement technologies is a technocratic approach for public safety in San Francisco and environs. I suspect that it is unnecessary and of questionable efficacy. San Francisco was a generally safe city during all the years between its last Republican mayor in the 1950s through the 1990s, maybe even 2010. There were no Chesa Boudin district attorneys then. There were other differences as well. I would look toward that first, before installing CCP type surveillance to keep order. Regardless, I found your post to be of interest, Charles. I'll be on the lookout, to determine whether your prognostications are born out.
This is in incredibly poor taste. You should be ashamed of yourself.