A modest fraud

June 10, 2022 8:39 AM

Things get weird when the $300 million “Titanic Experience” collides with a fake UN department and a possible crypto scam. ... Squires says, on his Linkedin profile and his website, that he’s a strategic advisor for the United Nations Department of Sports, Music, and the Arts. Here’s the thing: There is no United Nations Department of Sports, Music, and the Arts. Adventures in investigation from Kaija Jussinoja and Matt Stickland writing in The Coast.
posted by Bella Donna (44 comments total)

Oops, link needs to go here. Can a mod fix it to this, please: https://www.thecoast.ca/halifax/a-titanic-fraud/Content?oid=28793463. Thanks!
posted by Bella Donna at 8:40 AM on June 10, 2022

So glad the scammers are deskilling faster than the journalists.

Matt spent 10 years in the Navy where he deployed to Libya with HMCS Charlottetown and then became a submariner until ‘retiring’ in 2018. In 2019 he completed his Bachelor of Journalism from the University of King’s College. Matt is an almost award winning opinion writer.

lol
posted by infinitewindow at 9:11 AM on June 10, 2022 [4 favorites]

After a visit to the building and an awkward conversation with a few interns

Blessed are the interns, for they deal with all kinds of bullshit.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 9:22 AM on June 10, 2022 [7 favorites]

Stories like this make me realize, just how much the world runs on the implicit trust that most of us have an internal moral compass that means we're not actively scamming the pile of society.
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:28 AM on June 10, 2022 [16 favorites]

Rule 1 of United Nations Department of Sports, Music, and the Arts:

You do not talk about United Nations Department of Sports, Music, and the Arts.
posted by y2karl at 10:31 AM on June 10, 2022 [6 favorites]

More and more I realize how many scams depend on the sheer ludicrousness of what they purport to offer.
posted by Countess Elena at 10:32 AM on June 10, 2022 [4 favorites]

Yeah, seriously. In movies and TV they show scams as these super-sophisticated, exquisitely complex plots, but you read about real-life scams and it's always like, "This shoe box can teleport people to the Moon, give me $5 billion." "Wow, here you go!"
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:58 AM on June 10, 2022 [17 favorites]

"This shoe box can teleport people to the Moon, give me $5 billion."


Shoe moon you saw me standing alone
Without a cent in my account
Without a mark of my own
Shoe moon, you knew just what I was there for
You heard me saying a prayer for
Someone I really could do for

And then there suddenly appeared before me
The only one my scams will hold
I heard somebody whisper "Please defraud me"
And when I looked, the moon had turned to gold!
posted by lalochezia at 11:04 AM on June 10, 2022 [23 favorites]

Blessed are the interns, for they deal with all kinds of bullshit.

This one must have been especially fun.

Hey Jenn, there's some guy up front asking if we're making the Titanic.
No, that was my first thought too. But no, they mean the actual ship.
Well sure, of course it sank. I think he means like a replica. I mean, I'm just an intern, but we're not really making an ocean liner... are we?
So what do I tell this guy?
posted by Naberius at 11:27 AM on June 10, 2022 [5 favorites]

Hahahahahahahahahaha!

But seriously, there is so much corruption in the Halifax/Nova Scotia development industry (I should probably qualify that with an “in my opinion it appears to me that”), and the supposedly professional and reputable main newspaper for the city/province just reports on it all completely uncritically. Which are two separate though inter-related large, serious problems. So on the one hand it’s not surprising that the Chronicle Herald completely missed all the red flags despite interviewing the con artist three times and having representatives from the firm that the photo was just outright stolen from trying to directly contact them about it. On the other hand, it is pretty inexcusable journalism. Good on the writers from The Coast for doing the (what sounds like really basic, minimal amount of) work to follow up on the red flag issues and uncover the scam.
posted by eviemath at 11:41 AM on June 10, 2022 [8 favorites]

Probably worth pointing out that the totally legitimate undsma.org domain was first registered on the 3rd of February, 2022. So, this totally legitimate UN department has been totally legitimately operating for less than 6 months, apparently. And, the totally legitimate UNDSMA website was created using the Wix.com Website builder and is hosted on Wix's IP addresses, as all totally legitimate UN websites are.
posted by hanov3r at 11:49 AM on June 10, 2022 [11 favorites]

Rule 1 of United Nations Department of Sports, Music, and the Arts:

You do not talk about United Nations Department of Sports, Music, and the Arts.

No, you don't...you dance and frolic about them!
posted by rhizome at 11:54 AM on June 10, 2022 [5 favorites]

But seriously, there is so much corruption in the Halifax/Nova Scotia development industry (I should probably qualify that with an “in my opinion it appears to me that”), and the supposedly professional and reputable main newspaper for the city/province just reports on it all completely uncritically.

I think that's a safe assumption for the development industry just about everywhere. Everywhere I turn here in Pasadena it seems that there's something hinky about anything that's going up. (Plus a lot of opposition noise from NIMBYish people who want to cling to Pasadena's "small town" vibes.) It's a real whiplash scenario
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:58 AM on June 10, 2022 [3 favorites]

Clark Squires & Assoc's products page is interesting.

Includes:
"A family of enzyme supplements designed to assist the body in maximum digestion of nutrients, production of energy, and immune system support"

"DGH Magic Glove – Water Based 4 Hour Sanitizer Protection"

...and more
posted by cosmac at 12:02 PM on June 10, 2022 [3 favorites]

.... created using the Wix.com Website builder and is hosted on Wix's IP addresses, as all totally legitimate UN websites are.

A friend of mine has a bunch of Google alerts set up for common Wordpress and similar exploit strings. Things like "show me when an ...af.mil web site has Nigerian princes offering to help you recover your Instagram account" alerts.

They have a couple of times hit me up for assistance in trying to find the right contact person to try to fix exploited sites, especially since sometimes those are sites which are phishing using amazingly legitimate looking URLs.

And, yeah, if I found something like "security.army.mil" to be hosted on a Wix site, let alone some UN related subcommittee, I wouldn't even blink. You would not believe the sketchy shit running world governments and organizations.
posted by straw at 12:08 PM on June 10, 2022 [6 favorites]

if I found something like "security.army.mil" to be hosted on a Wix site, let alone some UN related subcommittee, I wouldn't even blink.

I mean, sure, if they were subdomains of known good stuff (like your example), I probably wouldn't be surprised. But a completely new domain with no provenance and connection to a known valid UN domain? That's the sketchy end of Totally Legitimate.
posted by hanov3r at 12:17 PM on June 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

I can’t comment on Pasadena, but having lived a variety of places including New Jersey, the lack of appreciable separation between government (provincial and local levels) and developers in Halifax is notable. The dynamics of the financialization of the real estate industry in Canada are different than in the US as well, with that having a much larger impact on the Halifax rental and home ownership markets than in any part of the US that I’m familiar with. (Big US cities have different problems in their rental and real estate markets.)
posted by eviemath at 12:18 PM on June 10, 2022 [4 favorites]

Stories like this make me realize, just how much the world runs on the implicit trust that most of us have an internal moral compass that means we're not actively scamming the pile of society.

In my experience about 90% of us are in this together while the other 10% see everything as an “opportunity”.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:37 PM on June 10, 2022 [15 favorites]

Penta5 – Hydrogen Infused Water

Uhh... huh?
Is that a thing?
posted by Hairy Lobster at 12:46 PM on June 10, 2022

Yeah, it burns because of all the extra hydrogen. That’s the water that was used in that water engine that GM bought the patents on and has stashed in a vault somewhere.

Totally legit.
posted by Naberius at 1:27 PM on June 10, 2022 [4 favorites]

From the article (emph. added):

There is a website at the address UNDSMA.org. It looks like it might be a legitimate website, albeit one with not a lot of content. And UNDSMA’s social media channels all have between zero and one followers each. There are a few initiatives on the website, including a “PEACE Crypto Xperience.”

Stop the clock, I've seen enough. It's 100% a scam.
posted by mhum at 1:32 PM on June 10, 2022 [5 favorites]

Big Developers, Big Money, Big Problems for Halifax (2020)

Here's how the system works now: There are no limits. None. On who can donate and few on how much.

Contrasting to federal, provincial and any reasonable democratic government you can point to, municipal campaign financing is a freak show of conflicted interest, bold faced denial and what, in a less polite community, would be called rampant corruption.

The full scope of the problem has been well known for years but it was pressed home hard AFTER the 2012 election when it was revealed (after the fact) that the development community got together and actively bought themselves a very nice and by all accounts competent mayor. The media described Mr. Savage's $350k campaign cash as "unprecedented". CBC detailed the amounts and in an investigative foray they also talked to outside experts.

posted by eviemath at 1:39 PM on June 10, 2022 [2 favorites]

(Savage replaced previous Halifax mayor Peter Kelly, who left amid some questions about his actions as mayor, that apparently continued in his new roles after he moved to Charlottetown, PEI.)
posted by eviemath at 1:42 PM on June 10, 2022 [2 favorites]

I did not have the energy to do any exploring myself. Thanks to the commenters who dug up additional details on the scam, they are delicious.

Honestly, I think business reporting is often a scam itself and has been, perhaps, from the beginning. Most often it is cheerleading rather than actual reporting. Grrrrrrr.
posted by Bella Donna at 1:43 PM on June 10, 2022 [2 favorites]

A (very) brief overview of the history of corruption in Nova Scotia politics that might give a useful jumping off point for further info searches. (P3 refers to Public-Private Partnerships, which were a big cash cow for local developers with the government taking on associated risks. I’ll try to find a link on that as well.) Part of the problem seems to be small town politics (in particular, cronyism) mixed with medium-sized-city level money.
posted by eviemath at 1:49 PM on June 10, 2022 [2 favorites]

In movies and TV they show scams as these super-sophisticated, exquisitely complex plots, but you read about real-life scams and it's always like, "This shoe box can teleport people to the Moon, give me $5 billion." "Wow, here you go!"

Web3 is going just great has joined my daily feed, and that's very much for the course. (The latest thing: someone has reinvented paper cash. No, really.) I mean, life is imitating a Rick and Morty B-plot.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:34 PM on June 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

A bribery scandal in 2006

There have been all sorts of shady exceptions and cut-outs and delays related to Halifax’s Centre Plan - see item 2 for one such example.

Enforcement of the relevant/nominal rules is often minimal.

Elsewhere in the province, a developer with far right ties has been trying to maybe establish a community/scam foreign investors in Cape Breton; the Liberal government that just lost power in the last provincial election made a shady deals to de-list and sell protected land at Owl’s Head to a golf course developer (now quashed by the new provincial government, at least); like the Owl’s Head and other projects, concerns were raised about the environmental assessment for a proposed spaceport in Canso being inadequate and rushed.

And I can’t find a source at the moment, but there is significant overlap between the smallish number of families who have controlled most of the development companies in Halifax for a couple decades and the municipal and provincial government, with each family having a member or two in government. On the one hand, the very recent influx of giant REITs buying up rental properties in Halifax and around the province has changed that up a little bit, but at least from a tenants’ rights perspective (the end of this whole business that I’m most familiar with), they have the exact same interests so this hasn’t changed anything beyond making it harder for folks to figure out who their landlord actually is. Not coincidentally, Nova Scotia has quite possibly the most anemic tenant protections among all provinces in Canada.
posted by eviemath at 3:04 PM on June 10, 2022 [3 favorites]

Side note: another random scam artist from the Halifax developer scene also made the news this past year.
posted by eviemath at 3:06 PM on June 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

(Some reporting about the current housing crisis is collected in the Halifax Examiner’s Priced Out series.)
posted by eviemath at 3:08 PM on June 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

Great comments eviemath! Def recommend Halifax Examiner and the Coast because the other issue with NS is the limited media to cover anything. CH used to be one of the best local newspapers and, after some pressures and changes including a strike and mass layoff, now it’s just coasting on its name and people forgetting to cancel their subscriptions.
posted by hydrobatidae at 3:37 PM on June 10, 2022 [2 favorites]

So okay, we're all having our fun. I'm having my fun. But can someone explain what makes this a scam as opposed to, I don't know, an obscure practical joke?

Phase 1: Announce plans to build a grandiose hotel and entertainment complex that looks like the Titanic.

Phase 2: ???

Phase 3: Profit
posted by Naberius at 4:16 PM on June 10, 2022

It’s the profit part that makes it a scam rather than a joke.
posted by eviemath at 4:21 PM on June 10, 2022 [2 favorites]

Yeah, but what's phase 2? Because hell, I can announce plans to do something huge and grandiose that's entirely beyond my capabilities. But I don't get paid for it. That phase 2 is the tricky part.
posted by Naberius at 4:23 PM on June 10, 2022

phase 2 is the tricky part.

It always is
posted by chavenet at 4:34 PM on June 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

Public-Private Partnerships, which were a big cash cow for local developers with the government taking on associated risks

Those are such enraging obvious eventual giveaways, and so bewilderingly convincing to voters who are on the hook with me. And indeed the local newspaper is capable of complaining about the costs of the last one while "boostering" for the next one.
posted by clew at 4:43 PM on June 10, 2022 [3 favorites]

We figured out phase 2 in an askme about undergarment recycling.
It's usually something criminal, probably a scam.
posted by fiercekitten at 4:45 PM on June 10, 2022 [3 favorites]

It's crazy to me that you'd go to this trouble with such an obviously wrong name. What's another United Nations Department? It's not a term they even use in that manner. Maybe it's like one of those nigerian prince emails where the typos are part of the mark filter.
posted by feloniousmonk at 4:46 PM on June 10, 2022

Phase Two? NFTs of course!
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 5:07 PM on June 10, 2022

Yeah, but what's phase 2? Because hell, I can announce plans to do something huge and grandiose that's entirely beyond my capabilities. But I don't get paid for it. That phase 2 is the tricky part.

I will again shill for Dan Davies' great book, Lying for Money.

Broadly speaking, if people think you are a legitimate business you can make money illegitimately. Especially in high trust countries like Canada. For example, long firm scams involve doing a little bit of legitimate business, then taking out loans, shipments of goods you'll pay for in 30 days, pre-orders, and all the other things legitimate businesses are also doing before you close up shop and leave with the money and goods you collected in that period.

I can't remember the exact rules of taxonomy of fraud types, but this probably isn't strictly speaking a long firm. It's the same idea--get your name out there, get some good press, accept either deposits or partnerships or investment or loans, and leave shop. That's most likely, but maybe you use your reputation to get in on other deals or speaking fees or something. If you're on your next deal, "former CEO of Titanic Experience" and a few news articles isn't so bad and people will assume this isn't your first rodeo--as long as none of the articles are as well reported as the one in the Coast Daily, at least. Most aren't.

It's hard to tell a scam from just a failure; both collect money and then lose money. I think they have the goods on these guys--faking storefront and an entire UN department is a bit of a tell. Maybe they can try saying it was just a joke since they were exposed pretty early, but don't think it's going to fly.
posted by mark k at 5:26 PM on June 10, 2022 [5 favorites]

The older I get, the more I realize that 90 percent of everything is some form of con
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:48 PM on June 10, 2022 [6 favorites]

Ya'll might just as well be discussing New Zealand, I've been reading through seeing so many instances which sound like what I see often.
posted by unearthed at 2:43 AM on June 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

obvious eventual giveaways, and so bewilderingly convincing to voters

OMG, yes. I remember reading this from my first job out of college. Olympics villages, TOD developments, sports/entertainment facilities, waterfront X...the list goes on and the tax break/grant acronym library is huge at this point.

If this is such a good idea, then go with God, Mr Fancy Hat REIT person.

hard to tell a scam from just a failure

Along with us all having short memories, I'm reminded of a rather sticky problem with fixing public policy. We don't know the difference
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 10:57 AM on June 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

That's the sketchy end of Totally Legitimate.

But you've got things like unog.org out there as a legitimate and long-standing domain name. And while I haven't had to deal with the UN, I have had US government IT experiences...

if someone tells me it's a new organization and they've been working to get proper organizational hosting, domain, links for the last 16 months with no end in sight? That's 100% plausible.
posted by wotsac at 8:30 PM on June 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

Here's how the system works now: There are no limits. None. On who can donate and few on how much.

Halifax City Council addressed this in 2018 with campaign contributions not allowed from "corporations, trade unions, non-profit groups, associations, and partnerships" (only individuals can donate, and only up to $1,000 for councilors and $2,500 for mayor), which meant that in 2021, Mayor Savage raised only $104,635. Apparently three candidates broke the rules (only one of whom was elected, David Hendsbee).
posted by joannemerriam at 7:01 AM on June 14, 2022 [2 favorites]