[ilamont]

This line, a comment from one of the riders on his women's team, says a lot:

> he needed to be adored and respected

He does have some sort of narcissistic personality disorder going on, aided and abetted by the ease of publishing or telling lies that few people will ever check.

Makes me wonder about the breathless bios and claims in VC and CEO bios, or hinted at in interviews. Military service, elite university backgrounds, and sole founder status seem to pop up a lot.

[mikeodds]

The military ones would usually get away with it if they didn’t wear fake medals from every conflict and operation from WW2 onwards and always declare they were such and such SF unit.

[iab]

Why is that though? I used to watch Don shipleys YouTube channel about stolen valor quite religiously, seems like looking up dates of service/enlistment shouldn’t be that challenging

[trustBUTverify]

One thing that helped him was he was perpetrating this last round of frauds in the US and was an Australian citizen. It just makes it a little more difficult for those of us in the US to fact check somethings. He crafted his story with just enough confusing details and remote locations that finding the truth wasn’t super easy, but it was still doable.