3/31/2007

"Only In America"
Casey Serin Begs for Online Dollars

Like most of my days, I spent this past week heavily involved in cleaning up a major mess for a client. By the time Friday night rolled around and I was, once again, too exhausted to engage in any type of merry-making, so I caught up on my blog reading.

ExUrbanNation has become a regular staple, thanks to both its author's topics and the highly intelligent community amassed there. When I saw something about Casey Serin having a hard deadline from Cash Call, I wandered over there to see what the hubbub was all about.

Casey Serin was begging for "donations" from his readers to supply him with the $220 he needed to meet the Cash Call deadline by Saturday afternoon. I was shocked by the hubris. After over a year of unemployment, committing multiple felonies for monetary gain, refusing to heed any type of advice that he get a job and dig himself out of the hole he is in, he was begging.

Frankly, I was repulsed. Casey Serin has had months to find some sort of employment in order to meet the multiple hundreds of thousands of bills he has due. And yet he sat on his ass blogging, and at the 11th hour, reached out to people that he's spent the past six months whining are "hating on" him to pull his blue balls out of the fire.

While Casey Serin has been petulantly responding to his readers for the past three months that "I AM working," the reality of his situation is that he and his wife had a combined total of $40 to their names last night, were two months' past due on rent to his sister-in-law Yulia, and had about 18 hours to stop Cash Call from repossessing their belongings.

Once again, Casey Serin is not quite the big boy he is continually trying to make himself out to be.

But what amazed me even more is that people actually did reach into their hard-earned finances and sent him money. Within two hours, the total of Casey Serin's "donations" had exceeded a thousand dollars.

At that point, I lost much of the little respect I had left for society, justice, and humanity. After a ninety-hour week of "fixing" some pretty fucked-up scenarios for a client, I just wanted to put my head down on the desk and go to sleep for a very, very long time.

I mean, is this what the "American Way" has become? What happened to hard work, frugality, decency? Casey Serin was within inches of feeling even the slightest sense of consequence for the lifestyle that he has chosen for himself--a lifestyle that, primarily without his and Galina's families' support, would certainly mean homelessness and hunger. (Although, let's be honest...it's pretty fucking hard to starve to death in America.)

Apparently somewhere in the values shift of a once-great nation, we now reward frauds and felons. It goes to my theory of why white-collar criminals historically receive relatively light sentences: Because the vast majority of the jury pool can put themselves in the defendant's shoes and visualize themselves doing the exact same thing. So we apparently don't really value hard work anymore. We value getting rich quick, and sadly, most of us seem to have a price.

I was somewhat relieved to learn that a huge chunk of Casey Serin's $1,000+ in donations proved to be fraudulent. But the "donations" still enabled him to cover his nut to Cash Call and yet again avoid any type of consequence.

I don't clearly understand why rational, intelligent human beings would be willing to take money out of their own pockets and play some sort of codependant role to this little rat bastard. People who have been urging, screaming at Casey Serin to get a job for months opened their wallets and saved his ass.

I kept wondering last night if every-fucking-one online was drunk. That may be the case, as many of last night's participants express regret for assisting Casey Serin in the clear light of day.

But what fooled anyone about this supposedly 'new and improved' Casey Serin last night? Why did anyone think that someone who has exhibited a pattern of fraudulent behavior, theft, and general stupidity had somehow learned the error of his ways over a petty $220? Really, it pales in comparison to the approximately $2.5 million he has amassed through his fraud and credit lines.

If anything, what most of these people have done, under the guise of "helping" Casey Serin, is reinforce his worldview that "it's all good." That he really doesn't have to work, that magical fucking fairies will somehow deliver him money, and that he is better than people who really do work for a living.


18 comments:

Aspeth said...

Hi John...Sure, but how did a bunch of people somehow think that Casey Serin had an epiphany about his situation because he was being pressured to pay a measly $200 bill? If anything, they've just taught him a new con method....and isn't that just what the world needs?

Schnapps said...

Its vaguely reminiscent of "Save Karyn" - but at least she donated all the extra money to charity.

Casey's not going to change. I doubt he'll change even if/when authorities come down on him. Maybe if his wife leaves him (maybe) and turns state's evidence (maybe).

There's only one thing that Casey has learned: talk is cheap, and if you have a blog with people who are willing to pay to get you to do things, and you're willing to sacrifice your own dignity, there's no need to shut up and dance.

Dimes said...

No need to give money directly to this con artist, I'm sure we'll all be "bailing out Casey" in some form or other over the next few years, either with higher mortgage rates, higher taxes, or a combination of the two.

Gypsy Pete said...

Hi Aspeth,

Yeah look the cold hard light of day has certainly caused some regrets, (not on my part - I didn't donate but I did climb off the haterz wagon for awhile). It was - as John says - quite entertaining however.

Anonymous said...

Well, like I wrote on Gaysey's blog... when CashCall gets antsy at the end of this deferral period, this donations stunt isn't going to work again unless he seriously humiliates both himself and Galina. I'm talking pics Galina in a two-piece bikini for $50, Casey shaving his head into a mohawk for $50, an "indecent proposal" deal with Galina for $300, etc. :-)

All of this may be irrelevant anyway -- Homey's latest post subtly implied that the end is near for Con-Man Casey.

Aspeth said...

@ Schnapps...I think the 'save Karyn' comparison is dead-on. Maybe they can get together, Casey can get 50 or 60 mortgages to buy, say, an island, and Karyn can use her credit cards to make it pretty.

@ Dimes...Fully fucking agree. I'm with the folks who say a jail term isn't nearly enough. Casey Serin needs to be held accountable for "every dirty penny" that he owes. Which, of course, doesn't address the ripple effect of his actions.

@ PMSPMS...I understand that most people *want* Casey to 'get it' and rehabilitate himself. I just stopped believing in that possibility in Feb after yet another series of happy-go-lucky fuckups.

@ Benoit...Yep. Casey Serin has been free to walk the streets for far too long, IMHO. God only knows what the fuck new cons he's been attempting but under-reporting on his blog since he knows the spotlight is on him. Casey Serin is a menace to society.

Anonymous said...

And it gets better.
Today he posted that on Friday he bought over 4k worth of penny stocks. "why not?" he chortled.

Readers that bought him groceries and ponied up for his cashcall bill are understandably pissed.

Unless it is an April Fool's Joke. And if it is, it is a shitty one.

T said...

Hey, you. :) I had a glimmer of hope that Casey might have had an epiphany. But not because he was being pressured to pay a measly $200 bill but rather due to the fact that we will reward that kind of behavior: doing a task for a certain amount of money in order to pay down his debt. It's like when you tell your toddler, "Yay! You went peepee on the big boys' potty!"

Casey and I spoke briefly on the telephone prior to the interview. His demeanor was vastly different. He agreed to not make excuses and argue through the interview but to help his "haters", the ones who found it in their hearts to give him money, have an opportunity to get to know him better.

The interview went south. I was stunned. I realized he didn't appreciate shit. That's not the tone of someone who wants to reconnect with his audience. I tried humanizing the "haters" to bring him back into focus but he was more interested in spiting me over the last interview than doing what we discussed prior to the interview.

I could have held the money back. I could have told him to STFU and let me do the interviewing but I decided not to be a cunt. I was like, here... I'm done. Take your money.

After the interview, Casey called me to let me know he'd posted it on IAFF and in my opinion he wanted to feel me out to see if I was angry with him. Again, his tone was very different from the interview. Is he a seasoned con man? Nope. Not by a long shot. A seasoned con man would not be dancing for dollars on his blog to pay Cashcall. Hell, a seasoned con man wouldn't bother BORROWING money from Cashcall.

No, Casey is just like a dope fiend. He wouldn't even be saavy enough to be a dope DEALER because he'd get high on his own supply and then HIS dealer would break his kneecaps.

I would have been his biggest fan had he turned a corner. But now it'll just be too little too late.

Anonymous said...

Hey T:
I have to give you credit. You have gone above and beyond in dealing with this sociopath, trying to get him to see that his usual repertoire just isn't cutting it.
And, you paid up your bill.
Something Casey still hasn't learned.
I used to read his comments for the humor but lately I have been paying attention to you and some others' posts. You say just about everything I'd like to convey to our little miscreant.
Yay for you!

T said...

Thanks, Kathy. It was a moment of truth for me, for sure. Do I belittle him just for the fucking fun of it? Will that make me somehow superior to him? Hell, I'm already superior to him in that I'm not 2.2M in debt. I'd hoped we could all evolve a bit and turn this trainwreck into more of a human interest story but that's just not gonna happen.

I feel sorry for Casey. I truly do. The kid's some piece of work.

Aspeth said...

@ Anon 3:06...I haven't been over there, but yeah, I heard about that. If he claims it's a joke, I won't believe it. Because I believe that the real Casey Serin did somehow find a way to blow four grand on shit-ass penny stocks and then paid one fucking bill through his readers. That's the person I believe Casey Serin is.

Aspeth said...

Hi T. I know...your intentions were of the highest order. I don't feel like you should have to defend yourself for a second.

The only problem I had with the whole save-casey-a-thon is that the nuances in those lessons are too vague for a tree stump like him.

I've seen you trying to do the positive reinforcement thing with him all along. But I think he's well old enough to abandon the carrot and pick up the stick.

I think the lesson of being 'saved' by his critics is over his head; the fact that we live up to our obligations was over his head; the fact that his hubris and lethargy has him performing like a retired circus elephant...over his head.

I do think Casey Serin is a con artist. Like everything else he does, he's complete crap at it. Maybe I should refer to him as a "con finger painter" in that sense.

Aspeth said...

@ Kathy..."Sociopath" is truly a correct application here.

T said...

LOL @ con finger painter! That sums it all up right there.

On a different note, have you seen the movie Blood Diamond yet? I watched it this morning with my boys and I gotta tell you, it may have been better than The Departed which won the Academy Award. I was really impressed with Leo DiCaprio in this role. Check it out if you haven't already.

Aspeth said...

Hi T...I haven't gotten a chance to see that. It's definitely on my backlog list of movies to watch. If you liked the topic, you might also enjoy this novel, "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver. It's been on my all-time favorites list for a few years now.

Schnapps said...

Blood Diamond was good. I enjoyed it - very political and timely.

I shall have to get my hands on the Poisonwood Bible now for for my May Book Binge.

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