Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that Staten Island Congressman Michael Grimm, a former F.B.I. agent, raised over $500,000 in campaign money with the help of a man now under investigation—by the F.B.I.—for embezzlement. The man, Ofer Biton, was a close associate of an Orthodox rabbi in New York City, outside of Mr. Grimm’s district. The story reports that Biton and Grimm went door to door, soliciting money from the rabbi’s congregants, often in cash and sometimes in amounts greater than allowed under campaign law:
One follower of the rabbi said in an interview that Mr. Grimm pressed him for $20,000. The follower said Mr. Grimm instructed him to meet him “near the F.B.I. building,” in Lower Manhattan, in summer 2010 to give the money. The follower said he handed over $5,000 in cash in an envelope to Mr. Grimm in Mr. Grimm’s car.
Within a week, the follower said, he gave Mr. Grimm a $5,000 check from a friend. Mr. Grimm then repeatedly called the follower and demanded another $10,000, the follower said.
“Every day, he used to call me, over and over,” the follower said.
The follower said he ignored the calls and did not give again.
A second follower recalled that Mr. Grimm came to his office in Manhattan to solicit a legal contribution. As he was handing over the check, the second follower said, Mr. Grimm confided in him that there were ways of working around the campaign rules.
The story is well-reported (and includes a strange link to Lebron James), and worth reading in full. But the part that rang most familiar to me was Grimm’s response:
“Any suggestion that I was involved in any activities that may run afoul of the campaign finance laws is categorically false and belied by my life of public service protecting and enforcing the laws of this country,” Mr. Grimm said in the statement on Friday.
In 2011, I reported on Grimm’s career “enforcing the laws of this country,” including allegations—substantiated by witnesses including a former N.Y.P.D. officer, but denied by Grimm—that Grimm had misused his authority at a nightclub. My story was largely about Grimm’s work with a dubious F.B.I. informant and con-man known as Josef von Habsburg. When I tried to question Grimm on both matters in his Washington office, he ended our interview by saying, “you don’t rate to come here and question me.” He declined to provide myself or the New Yorker’s fact-checking department any evidence to support his denials. When the story came out, he claimed the article was a Democratic Party plot.
In light of the most recent allegations against Grimm, I’m reposting my New Yorker piece.
Posted at 10:54 am | Comments Off | Filed under Recent stories |
Monday, June 27, 2011
I guess information really does live forever on the Web! Well, then it’s probably prudent for me to provide some sort of update, just in case someone happens upon this via AltaVista or HotBot and is concerned that I’ve done nothing for the last 10 months but perfect my frozen dark and stormy recipe. Which I have.
But I’ve done other things, of arguably lesser import but requiring greater effort. Most time consumingly: In January, I repurposed my old URL for this very site in the service of a new digital longform journalism venture, The Atavist. It turned out that some people liked the thing, and we decided to keep on doing it. I also wrote a story for The Atavist, the true story of a strange and elaborate cash heist in Stockholm.
Meanwhile, a couple of my ridiculously long-term efforts finally landed in actual, old-fashioned print pages. In February, National Geographic published a story about animal domestication that I’d been at for two years, and for which I traveled to Siberia to check out one of the world’s most intriguing scientific experiments: the fox-farm domestication project. A couple months later I finished up an 14-month-in-the-making, 9,000-word story for The New Yorker about the FBI, confidential informants, a pretend prince, and a Congressman. It came out in May (and is not yet online except for subscribers). The story was based on thousands of pages of documents and over 100 interviews. The Congressman didn’t care for it. But his critiques were a bit off. We also published a kind of alternate ending, far more mysterious than the print version, online.
And now we’re up to date. I’d apologizing for not posting more, in the tradition of such posts, but I never posted much so it wouldn’t seem sincere.
Posted at 1:33 am | Comments Off | Filed under Misc, Site business |
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
I’m not usually one to engage with the social media dispute-of-the-day (nor to blog about anything at all, for that matter). But I’m riveted against my will to the teapot storm initiated by Malcolm Gladwell’s recent New Yorker piece on social media and activism. I’m a pretty committed Gladwell fan, and as his is an exercise in hype deflation — if social media is good at anything, it is good at generating an endless supply of hype and pseudo-academic triumphalism — I’m naturally predisposed to like the piece. Some folks, however, have offered smart and substantial quibbles with it, most notably Alexis Madrigal (and his commenters) and Jonah Lehrer.
But here’s one statement that I unequivocally agree with, from Gladwell’s live chat today:
[Comment From from indiafrom india:] Angus Johnston in the Huff. Post says you don’t understand social networks. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/angus-johnston/what-malcolm-gladwell-doe_b_741916.html If you had a chance to read the article, what is your take on his perspective?
Malcolm Gladwell: I think what he means is that I don’t agree with him. Incomprehension is simply what a narcissist calls disagreement.
Posted at 5:29 pm | 5 Comments | Filed under Random |
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
UPDATE: All these changes have taken place, so really if you are here now this post makes absolutely no sense anymore.
After some months of neglect, this weed-filled patch of Web real estate is about to undergo a significant overhaul. There are a lot of ins and outs to these changes, a lot of what-have-yous, but the gist is this:
- Later this summer, a new publication will be taking up residence at The Atavist. It will bring you original long-form journalism, written by a variety of fine authors. More details on this will be forthcoming soon.
- Meanwhile, this blog and the other bits and links related to me, Evan Ratliff — who can utilize the third person with impunity now that he has done it dozens of times in print — will continue to be archived at the site for a while, just not on the front page.
- The Evan Ratliff-related content on the site has also moved permanently to a new home: www.cazart.net. You will find that it looks very much the same, only there instead of here (if you are already there, this may not make as much sense). The email you find to your right will, with any luck, all remain operable.
I hope you’ll find yourself returning to check out the new Atavist before too long.
Posted at 4:21 pm | Comments Off | Filed under Site business |
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
My entire Wired story is now available in the December issue, on newsstands now, or online here (the same spot that held the Vanish blog throughout the contest). It includes an interactive map that shows my route with some of the locations of the people who hunted me, and way more pictures of me than should ever have appeared in public. Between that and my extensive use of the third person in writing about myself, I think I’ve set some sort of magazine record for self-indulgence.
Those looking for yet still more info can find some of the hunters stories in their own words, photos of my disguise changes from day to day, and the behind-the-scenes of Wired’s challenges and clues.
Sometime next week, we’ll also set up a live chat of some sort to answer any remaining questions that anybody has. We’ll put out word on the Twitter #vanish stream, of course, with details.
Posted at 10:39 am | 12 Comments | Filed under Vanish, Wired |
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
In advance of my upcoming piece in Wired recapping my effort to Vanish, I can be found hawking it in multiple mediums this week. First, tonight, live on CNN’s Campbell Brown Show at 8:30 pm. [UPDATE: It's not terribly easy to find, but the video from this is available at the site. (You'll have to click the "On TV" button and then go to the Campbell Brown show.)]
Then, this Saturday, on Weekend All Things Considered, in a piece by reporter Alex Cohen. [UPDATE: Here's the link to the piece.]
I’ll post clips if and when I get my hands on them. In the meantime, here’s a recap of some of the other stories about the whole thing, from during and after:
Posted at 4:56 pm | 3 Comments | Filed under Articles, Media appearances, Vanish, Wired |
Monday, September 14, 2009
Twenty-five days. That’s how long I lasted on the lam. Most people arriving at this site will already know the basics: Last month, after writing a story for Wired about people who faked their own deaths, disappearing from their lives to start again, I set out to do something similar myself. I would drop out of my own life for a month, and act like I was starting a new one. Wired, meanwhile, would offer a $5000 bounty for anyone who tracked me down. We set a few basic parameters and then, journalistically speaking, we turned out all the lights and plunged headlong into the darkness. You can read a summary of what happened here.
I’ll be describing those 25 days in great detail in the December issue. There were almost daily surprises, both in what I found myself doing, and what I saw (and, of course, failed to see) the “hunters” doing to find me.
But for now I wanted to offer an extended thanks. First, to my friends and family, some of whom were made unwitting participants in this privacy-obliterating endeavor, and all of whom—especially my wonderful girlfriend (whose name the dedicated hunters know already)—were incredibly understanding and played along. Also to Nick Thompson, who sacrificed an insane amount of hours from other work and from promoting his own book (“The Hawk and The Dove,” which is getting a fantastic response, and which everyone should check out), to serve as the lead investigator. Without Nick, the whole thing would have failed in a multitude of ways. As well everyone at Wired and Lone Shark Games (particularly Teeuwyn Woodruff and Mike Selinker), both for enabling it and putting in many of their own hours. And finally to all the folks who hunted me—and aided me—for contributing their obsession and ingenuity, and especially for (with a few pretty harmless exceptions) honoring the rules about harassing my family. Many have emailed—and I want to hear from anyone who followed it: eratliff@atavist.net—to let me know they were glad I was caught. I don’t blame them. And although I was disappointed, I’m pretty pleased that at least it was by a clever bunch like Jeff Reifman and the guys at Naked Pizza.
I’d also like to offer an apology, to people I encountered along the way and deceived about my identity. It was one of the worst parts of the whole experience. I’ve been contacting them individually to explain whenever possible (a strange journalistic endeavor, that), and they’ve so far been gracious and forgiving, taking the whole thing in the spirit of fun it was intended. But many I won’t be able to find, and to them I am sorry. I won’t write about anyone by name who hasn’t given me explicit approval to do so.
To critics who griped that it wasn’t “real” enough; that it was either too easy to find me or (as people argued right up until I was caught) too difficult; that a “true” man-on-the-run would or wouldn’t have done this or that; I can only say: You nailed it! I wasn’t, in fact, a “real” fugitive. Very well observed, and I fully support your conviction that you would have done it better. But in our case, we were trying to remain, as much as possible, both authentic and engaging, two goals that were often in conflict. In compressing my time on the lam into 30 days, with the general public as the investigators, we didn’t exactly have a model to follow. You may also find that many of the things people found most “unreal,” like me using my ATM and credit cards at times, were not at all what they seemed.
Finally, to accusations of carrying out a “stunt,” I plead guilty to all but the pejorative assumption—given that category would include the journalistic “stunts” behind “Hell’s Angels,” “The Paper Lion” (and other Plimpton adventures), “Into Thin Air,” and “Nickled and Dimed,” among other pieces of narrative nonfiction that I greatly admire. We attempted what we thought was a unique, albeit self-indulgent and inevitably flawed, reporting venture. We’re hoping readers will find the results as fascinating as we did. But you can check out the December article and decide for yourselves.
Posted at 4:32 pm | 10 Comments | Filed under Articles, Crime, Disclosures, Recent stories, Vanish, Wired |
Sunday, August 16, 2009
What does it take to up and disappear these days? Not to head off the grid for a few days, mind you, but to actually vanish from your life? That question is the subject of a two-part feature I’ve been working on for Wired over the past few months, the first piece of which is in the September print issue, and out online now. It tells the story of an Arkansas man named Matthew Alan Sheppard who faked his death last year and took off on the run, and the cops who pieced together his plan and tried to track him down alive. The story is also a broader look at the evolving cat-and-mouse game between investigators and the intentional missing — be they fugitives from the law, insurance scammers, or people under pressure who just walk out the door one morning and never come back. The short answer is: going on the lam is not like it used to be.
The trouble with stories of people caught faking deaths, or just lighting out on the run, however, is that in hindsight they always seem to fall victim to a singular dumb error. (Or, in the case of plane-jumper Marcus Shrenker, probably the recent fake-death attempt people are most familiar with, a tidy collection of dumb errors). “If I had just…” is the refrain of the caught fugitive, while stories of successful lives on the lam — for obvious reasons — never get told. Even the Matthew Alan Sheppards of the world can’t tell us what I think we really want to know: so how hard is it really, to disappear?
So I decided to try it.
For part two of the story, I’m going on the lam for 30 days. The magazine has put a $5000 bounty on my head for anyone who finds me. The contest has a variety of rules, for both me and my presumptive pursuers, to try and make it a reasonable simulation of a real life on the run. The most important of which, for me, is this incentive: if I am found before September 15, most of that $5k comes out of my story fee.
You can find the details, and follow or participate in the speculation, at www.wired.com/vanish. They’ll have any info on my bank account usage, cell phone, email, and the like, along with disturbingly large professional photos of me taken from every angle (which are also in the magazine). The man running that site, my editor Nick Thompson, wants me found, and he doesn’t have a clue where I’m going. So anything that comes from him is trustworthy. Anything that purports to come from me, well, I’ll leave that up to you to decide.
I’m not dropping out, though, heading for a cabin or living in a cave. So security permitting, I’ll be posting more thoughts and leftovers from the first piece here over the month — or however long I make it. But if you are reading this, it means I’m already gone.
Posted at 5:23 am | 10 Comments | Filed under Crime, Wired |
Monday, July 6, 2009
Somewhat belated in this round of story hyping, but my latest for Wired is out in the July issue. Headlined “Origin of Species: How a T. Rex Femur Sparked a Scientific Smackdown,” it concerns a research dispute that grew out of the discovery of T. Rex protein fragments, announced in Science in 2007. The takeaway from that claim, as it was elegantly put in one headline at the time, summed up as: “Study Tyrannosaurus Rex Basically a Big Chicken.” (Not to be confused with the Big Chicken). Several researchers, however, found fault in the initial study.
I won’t spoil the ending, but I daresay it’s the most exciting mass spectrometry protein detection story you’ll read this month….and maybe even all year. But it’s also about dinosaurs! And more than that, about how science operates and scientific disputes — even entertainingly acrimonious ones — get resolved.
For anyone who has already read it, here’s a response from U. Maryland professor Steven Salzberg–whom I interviewed for the piece–on the story and the latest T. Rex research.
Posted at 7:31 pm | 1 Comment | Filed under Recent stories |
Monday, June 1, 2009
My story from this week’s New York magazine, in which Mr. Lewis helms the squad in a tense late-inning affair, and I draw the ire of parents in the Berkeley-Albany Softball League for nine and ten-year-olds.
Posted at 12:36 pm | Comments Off | Filed under Recent stories |
