“How He Pitched It, It Didn’t Seem Bad.”

October 14, 2022 4:37 AM

Mize hurt you one at a time, pulling tools from a briefcase, cold and businesslike.

He’d gash your brow with a razor or box cutter. Scuff up the wound with sandpaper, gripe if you didn’t bleed enough. For concussions or a busted knee, he’d smack you with a liquor bottle, a brick, a frying pan. You’d chug a Red Bull to spike your blood pressure. Pop aspirin so your blood would stream faster. Spill a bottle of your urine on your pants like you’d blacked out. from Collision Course [archive]

posted by chavenet (7 comments total)

That's some pretty graphic violence to wander into here, first thing in the morning. Maybe put that below the fold? Depictions of weird intentional harm are maybe something people should opt-in to more affirmatively.
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:43 AM on October 14, 2022 [26 favorites]

When I started reading that paragraph, I briefly thought it was going to be about professional wrestling. Insurance fraud is more interesting.
posted by box at 5:18 AM on October 14, 2022 [6 favorites]

When you were suffocated by medical bills, neither earning enough to pay nor poor enough for government help.

This is always the fear scenario for me. If that's how he roped people in to participating, yeah, I can see why they went for it. I don't have a car, I am definitely too fearful of consequences and social shame to commit fraud, but wow I can see how someone would get drawn in.
posted by Frowner at 6:33 AM on October 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

This is a great post, chavenet, thank you for making it. The narcissist central villain is horrifying. Luckily for me, my dad always settled for small illegalities. He tried (and failed) to drag me and my siblings into signing official documents for used car sales as people we had never heard of. I am so glad my dad lacked the ambition, or, more likely, the focus, to corrupt as many relatives as William Mize IV.

Ryan and Kimmy found their lives increasingly constricted by Mize’s whims. “If that phone rang, if I didn’t answer it, I’d be in trouble,” Ryan says. “I was basically his minion.” Mize forbade them from posting on social media. For some stretches, he paid them to remodel and clean his house, cars, and boats three days a week and be on call a fourth. He always wanted to know where Ryan was. Once, when the couple failed to tell him about a trip they took to Disneyland, Ryan says, Mize grew so drunkenly enraged he shot a bullet into an ottoman in front of them.

Ryan grew up without his biological father and felt like Mize had rescued him as a kid. No wonder Ryan was so vulnerable. It is heartbreaking how abusers can use kindness to groom their eventual victims because the victims owe the abuser, right?

The ring was a complex study in people management, and Mize excelled at playing members against each other. Criminality intensified the typical familial swirl — love and resentment, solidarity and rivalry.

The reality was horrifying and it makes for great reporting that not everyone will want to read.
posted by Bella Donna at 7:43 AM on October 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

Would somebody be willing to do a summary? I find that I don't want to face the article.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 9:37 AM on October 14, 2022 [4 favorites]

Basically: con man (William Mize IV) makes some serious money by running an organized insurance fraud ring that specializes in staging accidents involving heavily-insured vehicles; the above-the-cut gore is part of the staging--the wounds are made to look serious, but are usually superficial (usually; concussions and other types of more serious injuries sometimes occurred). He involved his entire family in his scam and they all took plea deals, and he's apparently still on the run.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:01 AM on October 14, 2022 [5 favorites]

Spoiler alert:

There's a guy. He's kind of an asshole--narcissistic and controlling, likes guns and talk radio, thinks regular people are suckers. Had he grew up in New Jersey, he would've had a small arc in a couple Sopranos episodes. It would've ended badly.

Instead, he became really good at insurance fraud and really bad at being a human being in the world. After he'd damaged the people around him as much as he could, making several million dollars in the process, and things inevitably came crashing down, he decided to become a fugitive.

On preview, yeah, what they said :)
posted by box at 11:10 AM on October 14, 2022 [4 favorites]