Article: https://www.complex.com/life/social-media-influencer-jay-mazini-charged-with-wire-fraud
Jay Mazini, a notable influencer who had a couple of famous PR stunts handing out cash with the likes for 50 cent, is being investigated by the FBI for wire fraud enticing people to sell their bitcoin at above market price. Unfortunately, when his followers complied, Jay never sent them the equivalent value in cash, essentially stealing $2.5M in bitcoin from his followers. This is the ongoing challenge with this new influencer economy, more specifically, where someone can become an influencer at such a young age and amass wealth that in turn makes them feel invincible. Something similar has recently happened with David Dobrik, a young vlogger, now worth $20M+ and charged with sexual assault. Just a few weeks ago, he launched an instagram-like app called Dispo which was quickly valued at $100M+ based on the amount of downloads it generated. No one is perfect, but in the past, individuals could learn, mature, and understand the professional landscape. Now with success coming much earlier, many of those steps are skipped and VCs often care less about the integrity of founders and more on the audience they can build. Looking ahead, I do not see this issue going away, but only getting worse with so much dry powder available in the pandemic coupled with the rise of decentralized currency like bitcoin.
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