Latest news with #Vice
Daily Mail
5 days ago
- Daily Mail
Honey-trapper who made thousands seducing wealthy men so she could swindle them in two-year crime spree reveals why she did it - and says her victims were 'gullible'
A woman who swindled tens of thousands of dollars out of men before being outed as a fugitive has opened up about her story, revealing the methods and motivations behind her crime. Kari Ferrell, 37, who was interviewed for the What It Was Like podcast, became known as the 'Hipster Grifter' after being exposed for writing bad cheques and 'conning trust fund babies across Manhattan'. Among her untruths, she also claimed to be suffering from terminal cancer, and she lied to some of her marks about being pregnant and needing an abortion. She even lied on her resume to land herself a job at Vice magazine. Kari, who now lives in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbourhood of New York, with her husband of 13 years, Elliot Ensor, and their rescue dog Gertie, was born in South Korea in 1987. She was adopted by an American family, who moved to Salt Lake City in Utah - which she described on the podcast as 'Mormon Mecca' - when she was two-years-old. Writing in her memoirs You'll Never Believe Me: A Life of Lies, Second Tries, and Things I Should Only Tell My Therapist, which was published earlier this year, she said that the Mormon church gave her a 'masterclass in the art of manipulation'. 'I saw just how gullible people are, and how they will believe anything and everything,' she added. According to Kari, as one of just two Asian people in her school, she struggled with finding a sense of identity, and 'would bounce from friend group to friend group [...] just constantly trying to be the person that I thought everyone else needed'. During her adolescence, she started shoplifting, with her social circle starting the 'scumbag Olympics ', where they would set out to steal certain items. The 'winner' of the competition would then be given all of the things that had been purloined by the group. Kari's crimes escalated when she started to swindle friends out of money, carrying out her first con - stealing $500 from her trusting boyfriend - when she was 18, and still living in Utah, before then using the same ruse with other friends. She explained that she would tell people she was having issues with her bank, and couldn't take money out of the cash machine, but was able to write cheques. Kari would write a cheque, and ask someone to cash it, saying she would not only pay them back, but would give them an additional $100 and take them for dinner. 'It began with people who actually wanted to help me, because they actually cared about me, because they were my actual friends,' she said on the podcast. 'They were the people who never considered that I would ever be lying to them when I'm you know spouting this ridiculous story about my bank.' According to Kari, she 'ran [herself] out of Utah', after word spread that she was conning people, and no one wanted anything to do with her. She estimates that in Utah, she swindled 'five to six' people out of around $2,000. However, before getting out of town, she was arrested, and behind bars for 'a very brief stint', but after posting bail, she skipped town, moving to New York City to 'become who [she] had always wanted to be'. 'This was not a scammer, not a criminal - [rather] just a person who gets to express themselves and immerse themselves in culture,' she said. Kari didn't plan to write more bad cheques, however, getting a job and earning money was more difficult than she had anticipated, and she soon found herself needing money, which made her fall back into her bad ways. Explaining how she carried out a con, she revealed that she would go out to a bar, then choose a mark, and write a note she would slide over to that person. The note would say 'something silly', like 'I want you to give me a massage - from the inside'. Some of her marks would be one night stands, others, she would develop an ongoing relationship with, stealing items from them when she went to their homes, including an iPod, which had been gifted as a graduation present, loose cash that was lying around, and an expensive camera. She said: 'What I remember was how I was like, "wow, this person has so many things that they never asked me about any of the stuff that I've taken". 'It was never like, "oh, I lost my iPod. But I do remember it being here, and I remember you being here that same time".' Kari said she still wonders whether this is because they trusted her, or because 'they just had so many things they just didn't care, or they didn't think about it or they could just buy another one'. As a result, she revealed, she started thinking of herself as 'a kind of f***** up vigilante type', and 'Robin Hood-esque' - a character her fans would later ascribe to her after her story went public. In 2009, after falsifying her CV, Kari - who says she probably scammed 'at least 20, if not more' men - landed a job at Vice magazine as an admin assistant. 'I finally got my dream job, which was at Vice magazine,' she told the podcast. 'And Vice for me, represented everything that I thought was cool, but that I wanted to be, which was edgy, risk taking, a little off colour, all of that stuff.' She added that finally having a proper job meant she wouldn't have to continue with 'all the shady s***' she had been doing. However, it was during her employment at Vice that her precarious existence started to unravel. Having skipped Utah while on bail, Kari had a number of warrants out for her arrest, as well as court dates she had missed - meaning she was on a 'most wanted' list, something she was unaware of. 'It was kind of like little old me, this 20-year-old who had written bad cheques -but not to an enormous degree - was on a most wanted list next to murderers, next to people who had legitimate proper Ponzi schemes,' she said. 'That was very confusing for me.' When someone at Vice Googled Kari, they discovered she was wanted. Rather than quietly let her go, they 'unceremoniously' fired her by publishing a post which went viral. Titled Department of Oopsies! - We Hired a Grifter, the piece said: 'When the time comes for you to take on a new administrative assistant, try plugging your prospective employee's name into this new internet dealie called Google to make sure she doesn't have any less-than-desirable traits, like, say, five outstanding warrants for fraud in Utah where she also faked numerous abortions and was run out of town after earning a colorful nickname such as 'The Filth".' The story spread beyond Vice, and was picked up by other news outlets, with one branding Kari the 'Hipster Grifter'. According to Kari, she 'enjoyed that [she] was stirring s*** up', adding that to her, her victims 'very much represented, to me, the kind of people that I grew up with - all of these white guys who were objectifying and fetishing me'. She added that while this didn't justify her conning them, there were occasions on which she hadn't planned to swindle someone, but then had done after they made 'triggering' comments, like 'I've never had an Asian girl before'. After the story broke, a man she had met several days before at the launch of the DVD set for Flight of the Conchords, text her and offered to help, saying she could lay low by staying at his place. He promised he wouldn't give her up to the authorities, then sent a car, so she could travel to his home. However, she explained: 'When I get there, immediately he answers the door, pulls me in, and starts kissing me. And I'm like, "whoa, whoa, whoa, we never talked about this, we never agreed to this, this is not something that I'm wanting to do, I'm going to get out of here". 'And it was essentially a situation where it was like, "well, you're already here, you're in my place, I'm offering these things, and what's going to stop me from calling the authorities on you now?".' Kari added that she was thinking 'this guy has a lot of stuff, like, there's me thinking, "okay, if I'm going to do this, I obviously have to make this worth my while".' She revealed that the man she was staying with had 'a thing for infamous people', and wanted her to provide some unusual services for him - like reading articles about herself while he pleasured himself. Setting a two-article limit, she agreed to it. According to Kari, when reading the articles, she became indignant about factual errors in them. Going to bed in what was a second bedroom/office space, she thought to herself: 'What am I doing? I'd rather go live in a roach-infested apartment rather than here with this weirdo.' While there, she decided to make the most of it, and scoured the room for items to steal - including a paperweight, thumb drive, and book of cheques. Refusing to name the man, she revealed that he is now a 'person of note' - a business man who has disrupted an industry, and whose name is known in the US. At this point, she realised 'something has to give', as her limited options were limited to living in a roach-infested apartment, or in this spare room - 'neither of which were the most palatable'. 'I did want to take care of it,' she told the podcast. 'I wanted it to be over. Basically, I took a bus to Philadelphia and was met by several police officers who arrested me, and so I was in a Philadelphia detention centre for about 30 days until the State of Utah sent two detectives to handcuff me and put me on a plane to fly me back to Utah.' She says that in total, she spent around a year incarcerated, and now feels she is totally reformed. Kari explained: 'I truly believe that I will never go back. I will never be incarcerated again. But the parts of me that are reformed are not [reformed] because I went to jail. 'It's 1,000 per cent because of the people I met there, and all of these amazing women who I saw, who have just been completely knocked down and are there's no way for them to get back up. 'There's no way to, you know "pull yourselves up by your bootstraps" if you don't even have boots to begin with.' Going on to describe the stress of living with her lies and manipulations, she said: 'I am a queer woman, so my entire life, I felt like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, and that I was going to be caught, and that I was running away from something, and that I was bad. 'So it certainly was a heightened version of that, but it was not that uncommon from all the feelings I had had my entire life up until that point.' Kari also discussed what was 'by far the worst thing [she] ever did', which was lying to multiple people about having cancer - which she did while living in New York. 'That is just f***** up beyond belief,' she said, adding that she lied 'for the attention'. She explained that she came up with the cancer lie when a woman she had a crush on was in a burgeoning relationship with a man, and she wanted her attention - even getting the woman to accompany her to hospital appointments. When asked how she was able to go to hospital given she didn't actually have cancer, Kari explained: 'Because it's easy to manipulate anyone and everyone. But also, if you go into a hospital and you say "I have all of these things that are happening to me," they're internal things, it takes time for them to parse out whether or not you're lying.' Opening up about why she had lied to, and conned people, Kari said: 'The best that I can give is because of, at the time, my own insecurities and my own ego and my own confusion around who I am as a person. 'And now, it's a double edged sword having a story like this. And so in finding that people are interested in what I have to say, it feels like a disservice to not utilise that in some way, toward moving the needle toward a more compassionate society in some way.'
Engadget
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Engadget
Video Games Weekly: Censorship, shrinkage and a Subnautica scandal
Welcome to Video Games Weekly on Engadget. Expect a new story every Monday or Tuesday, broken into two parts. The first is a space for short essays and ramblings about video game trends and related topics from me, Jess Conditt, a reporter who's covered the industry for more than 13 years. The second contains the video game stories from the past week that you need to know about, including some headlines from outside of Engadget. Please enjoy — and I'll see you next week. This week, I'm fried. Maybe it's the plodding and ever-present crumbling of society and human decency, or maybe it's because Love Island USA just ended so I'm feeling extra listless. It's a familiar summer sensation, but this year everything is exaggerated and extra tense, the stakes of every action seem higher, and instead of melting into the warmth of the season with a popsicle and a smile, I often find myself frozen and numb. I am the popsicle, coo coo ca choo. ADVERTISEMENT Advertisement I'm not sure exactly what I'm trying to convey here, but I think it's clear that I shouldn't be writing anything too serious at the moment. I'm working on a few reports and trying to keep my composure amid the chaos, and all the while, the video game headlines keep rolling on. I've included a few more than usual this week, as penance for my popsicle state. The news UK studio The Chinese Room, creator of Still Wakes the Deep and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, is independent once again. The Chinese Room leaders completed a management buyout with help from VC firm Hiro Capital to fully split the studio from Tencent subsidiary Sumo Digital, which acquired it in 2018. A number of people were laid off as part of the transition and the studio is left with a total of 55 employees. The Chinese Room is still working on Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines 2 for Paradox Interactive, and it also has original projects in development. ADVERTISEMENT Advertisement Still Wakes the Deep was one of my absolute favorite games of 2024. Whether you're a fan of beautiful paranormal horror or you're just really into oil rigs, give it a go. Vice's owner, Savage Ventures, doesn't want you to read this story . Or this one . Vice removed two articles about Steam's new ban on certain 'adult-only' content and the organization that pushed for the change, Collective Shout, which has the support of prominent anti-pornography groups with conservative religious foundations. The stories were written by contributor Ana Valens, who said the removals were 'due to concerns about the controversial subject matter — not journalistic complaints.' Valens has vowed to never write for Vice again and a handful of reporters there have resigned in solidarity . Censoring stories about censorship is certainly a choice, Vice. The home of Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology, Supermassive Games, is laying off 36 people, restructuring its team and delaying one of its projects into 2026. A statement from the studio says the decisions were in response to the video game industry's 'challenging and ever-evolving environment.' It's estimated that Supermassive had more than 300 employees before the layoffs. ADVERTISEMENT Advertisement Directive 8020, the fifth installment in the Dark Pictures Anthology, is now due to come out in the first half of 2026, rather than this fall. Honestly, I'm not surprised to hear Supermassive needs more time to work on Directive 8020. I watched Engadget UK bureau chief Mat Smith play the demo at Summer Game Fest in June, and while it looked great, we were both surprised by how short and non-interactive the segment was. He summed up this feeling in his preview with the line, 'Finally, I got to play (but only for a few minutes).' Supermassive is also working on Little Nightmares III, a series that it took over from Tarsier Studios. Tarsier created Little Nightmares and its sequel, but lost the rights to the IP when the team was acquired by a subsidiary of Embracer Group in 2019. Series publisher Bandai Namco kept the Little Nightmares brand and commissioned Supermassive to build the third game, while Tarsier is working on its own project, Reanimal . It makes sense that Supermassive would prioritize Little Nightmares III in order to fulfill its obligations with Bandai. The game has already been delayed once, and it's set to hit PC and consoles on October 10. I still have high hopes for FBC: Firebreak to be the Left 4 Dead revival we've always wanted, but fact is, it's not quite there yet . Remedy Entertainment is aware of this hard truth and has a plan to fix it. The studio laid out its pipeline for making FBC: Firebreak easier to jump into, more fun to play and less confusing overall, with most major changes coming in an update this winter. PCGamesN published an interview with Counter-Strike co-creator Minh Le, who left Valve years ago to try out independent development. One sentiment stuck out to me. ADVERTISEMENT Advertisement 'They didn't force me out or anything,' Le told PCGamesN. 'But a part of me kind of regrets it. Looking back, my decision to leave Valve was, financially, kind of a poor decision. If I had stayed with Valve, I would have been able to retire by now.' It's not presented as an indictment of Valve, but I find it notable that Le describes the studio as a place to retire, rather than a space to innovate and create the next generation of video games. At this rate, Valve will never outrun its reputation as the studio where talented game developers go to die (professionally speaking). But, hey, at least they're not getting laid off en masse. Which, unfortunately, brings us to the next headline. Cyberpunk 2077, Sea of Thieves and Dune: Awakening support studio Virtuos is laying off 270 developers, which is about seven percent of its staff. Virtuos is currently best known as the studio behind The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered alongside Bethesda, and it has more than 4,000 employees across Asia, Europe and North America. The cuts affect developers in Asia and Europe, with 'fewer than 10' in France, where work on Oblivion Remastered was headquartered. Make sure to pin this one on your calendar. Saber Interactive is making Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival, a first-person, action-survival horror game that features actor Doug Bradley as Pinhead for the first time in nearly 20 years. Barker himself provided input on the story, too. It's coming to PlayStation 5, PC and Xbox Series X/S, with no release date yet. "The Hellraiser universe is defined by its unflinching exploration of pain, pleasure, and the thin and terrifying line that separates the two," a description from Saber Interactive reads. "That essence is at the heart of our game." Game Developer reporter Chris Kerr spoke with a number of employees at Zenimax who are still reeling from the layoffs that Microsoft enacted in early July . The vibes there sound pretty terrible. 'This carcass of workers that remains is somehow supposed to keep shipping award-winning games," one senior QA tester told Kerr. The developer continued, 'Microsoft just took everything that could have been great about the culture and collaboration and decimated it. Morale is terrible. It's grotesque. People are stressed. They're crying.' When Xbox isn't firing thousands of employees in one blow, it's quietly laying the groundwork for the future of video game distribution. An update for Xbox Insiders this week introduces cross-platform cloud support, bringing your cloud library and play history to the Xbox PC app. This means you can access cloud activity on an Xbox console, PC or Windows handheld, and seamlessly play cloud games across devices. This is just how video games are going to work in the coming decades, and it's interesting to watch our future slowly roll out in blog posts and software updates. Did you miss all of the mess around Subnautica 2 last week? Or, more accurately, this past month? To quickly summarize, Subnautica publisher Krafton is being sued by the series creators after it fired them and then delayed their game, allegedly sabotaging a $250 million bonus payout due to developers. To not-quickly summarize, see my complete breakdown of the drama . I don't know who else needs a little levity in their life right now, but I certainly do. Thankfully, the stop-motion show My Melody & Kuromi is coming to Netflix on July 24, and there's already an adorable tie-in music video by LE SSERAFIM to enjoy. Zen out, watch all of the Sanrio sweetness and finally settle the debate: Are you more of a Kuromi or a My Melody? Additional reading Have a tip for Jessica? You can reach her by email, Bluesky or send a message to @jesscon.96 to chat confidentially on Signal.
GMA Network
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- GMA Network
Awra Briguela pens message of gratitude for Vice Ganda
Awra Briguela just graduated from high school and among those she thanked was Vice Ganda, her manager and 'Lovely Muder.' As seen in her Instagram post, Awra wrote her letter on the back of her graduation photo, dedicating her accomplishment to Vice. "Para sa 'yo 'to. Hindi ko 'to mararating kung hindi dahil sa 'yo," Awra said, adding 'Salamat sa walang sawang paniniwala at pagmamahal. Pangako, patuloy akong magsusumikap. Mahal na mahal kita.' Vice Ganda also wrote a message for Awra, addressing her as "My Lovely Dowter." "I've always believed in you! And I'm prouder that you try hard everyday to redeem yourself. I'm just here rooting for you. To more wins, anak ko," Vice said. In the caption, Awra said "every milestone feels better when you know you didn't walk alone." "I love you always and FOREVER, My Lovely Muder," she added. Awra graduated high school from the University of the East this month. Ahead of the ceremony, she proudly showed her grades to Vice and said it was all for her. In 2024, Awra also thanked Vice for being there during difficult times. Awra's accomplishments are hard won, especially after the troubles she went through in 2023, when she was detained by the Makati City Police after her involvement in a brawl. After posting bail, she filed a counter-affidavit in connection with the complaints she faced. — Nika Roque/LA, GMA Integrated News
Daily Mirror
21-07-2025
- Daily Mirror
Prisoner escapes jail by hiding in cellmate's LUGGAGE as officers left baffled
A prisoner managed to make a mad-dash escape from a French prison, taking the opportunity of his cellmate's release to hide inside his fellow-prisoner's luggage A 20-year-old prisoner made a daring escape from jail after seizing an opportunity during his cellmate's release - and no-one even noticed he was gone until the following day. The prisoner - who was reportedly serving multiple sentences in France - climbed inside his cellmate's laundry bag, in what has been called an "extremely rare event" caused by a "accumulation of errors." Sébastien Cauwel, the director of France's prison administration, told AFP that the lag, who has been identified by local media as Elyazid A, "took advantage" of the moment of his cellmate's release on 11 July to stage his escape from Corbas prison, near Lyon. Inside Ronnie Biggs' prison escape more daring than audacious £2.4m robbery Three 'possibly dangerous' prisoners escape HMP Springhill as public warned "This is an extremely rare event that we have never seen in this administration and which clearly shows a whole series of serious failures," the official said. According to the BBC, the escapee was under investigation in a case linked to organised crime, and there is even the possibility that his getaway itself was "part of an organised gang and criminal conspiracy". Remarkably, after Elyazid climbed inside the large canvas bags used by prisoners upon their release, and his cellmate rolled the luggage out of the prison. There were no checks by staff, and the incident occurred entirely unnoticed. The bag was so large and heavy that the cellmate to who it belonged requested a trolley to use as he left the prison, with guards even reportedly helping him get the duffle bag onto it before sending him on his way. Once the prison staff had finally realised someone was missing the next morning, a manhunt began across France, and according to Vice, the escapee was picked up pretty quickly. A mere 24 hours after the manhunt had been launched, the prisoner was found climbing his way out of a cellar in Sathoney-Camp, just north of Lyon. He did not resist when the police arrested him, French authorities confirmed. However, his cellmate - who is now alleged to have plotted the escape with him - has not been found since. Corbas Prison has been under scrutiny recently due to overcrowding - with critics claiming that the likelihood of this kind of escape only increases with prisons operating over capacity. As of May this year, there were around 1200 prisoners in the maximum security facility of Corbas, which has a capacity of 678. This means the facility is holding nearly double the amount of prisoners than it has capacity for. The number of prisoners being so high, "obviously makes the prison officers' job somewhat more difficult than it might otherwise be," prison service chief Cauwel told the local media. He added that there was a possibility officers had not noticed the escape for an entire day, because as soon as a space becomes empty, the cells "are immediately refilled".
Yahoo
17-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Damning Resurfaced Video Reveals Just How Evil Stephen Miller Is
A resurfaced video of a younger White House deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller shows the president's ghoulish policy adviser raving that 'torture is a celebration of life.' In a video dated 2003, 17-year-old Miller sits backward on a school bus speaking about the United States' invasion of Iraq. 'To the issue of the Iraqi civilians, I think that as many of them should survive as possible, because the goal of any military conflict is to kill as few people as possible,' Miller said. 'But as for Saddam Hussein and his henchmen, I think the ideal solution would be to cut off their fingers.' 'I don't think it's necessary to kill them entirely, we're not a barbaric people, we respect life. Therefore torture is the way to go. Because tortured people can live. Torture is a celebration of life and human dignity,' he continued, as teenagers off screen burst into laughter. 'We need to remember that as we enter these very dark and dangerous times in the next century. And I only hope that many of my peers and people who will be leading this country will appreciate the value and respect that torture shows towards other cultures,' Miller said. Twenty-three years later, Miller is a central figure leading the United States, and his inhumane immigration policies have marked the way for hundreds of people to be detained in tortuous conditions and deported to dangerous third countries and foreign gulags. Speaking to Vice in 2017, former White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders dismissed the video as being inauthentic. 'This is clearly a sketch comedy routine performed by teenagers and for teenagers as part of a video yearbook,' she said. 'This teenage skit does not reflect any policy position, past or present, held by Stephen Miller. This is another comical overreach by the media.' But there's plenty of reasons to consider Miller's heinous statements legitimate. Miller was raised in California, where his 'evolving political views could not have been more at odds with those of progressive, inclusive Santa Monica, a fact in which he delighted,' wrote Vanity Fair special correspondent William D. Cohan in 2017 after Miller had helped craft the Trump administration's travel ban on predominantly Muslim countries. Miller's former classmates recalled that he would challenge Latino students to speak English and loudly opposed putting student announcements in multiple languages—an attitude that mirrors the Trump administration's recent policy to end all multi-lingual services purporting to promote the use of English. In 2002, Miller wrote a whiny op-ed for the Santa Monica Lookout, railing against the 'political correctness' he believed had taken over his school, and declaring that 'Osama Bin Laden would feel very welcome at Santa Monica High School.'
