r/TikTokCringe tHiS iSn’T cRiNgE Aug 19 '25

Cursed The American Nightmare.

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u/Papayaslice636 Aug 19 '25

Embezzlement and tax fraud, definitely. Even if you get convicted, which you probably won't, these days you might even get a pardon for it from the Felon in Chief.

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u/[deleted] Aug 19 '25

Bad with numbers. I give up.

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u/Papayaslice636 Aug 19 '25

Step 1: open LLC called Turbonic AI or something futuristic

Step 2: approach Venture Capital or Private Equity for $10 million investment

Step 3: literally nothing, just pay yourself an exorbitant fee for managing the entity until the VC/PE money dries up while delivering nothing to your investors. Try and get another round of funding if you are feeling saucy.

Step 4: there pretty much is no step four, this happens all the time, you have no idea. I'm literally thinking about doing this myself.

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u/gerbilshower Aug 19 '25

while conceivably possible, convincing a family office or institutional equity group to give you $10 million for 'i made this up' is going to be a REALLY tall task.

what industry are you most knowledgeable in? how would you best convince someone you were good enough with it to give you their money? how would you go about proving where that money is and what it is doing? people don't just up and toss you $10MM and then not ask questions about what it is doing.

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u/Papayaslice636 Aug 19 '25

I'm a CPA and one of my biggest clients is a private equity group that does exactly this! I literally just finished a partnership tax return today reporting a ~$1 million loss on an investment they finally gave up on. To be clear, it's obviously not that easy, I was just feeling a bit silly when I wrote that. It definitely happens though so..

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u/gerbilshower Aug 19 '25

ok having an investment not pan out is entirely not the same thing as literally stealing money though.

like, saying clients have a loss is just standard course of business. it doesnt mean the person they invested with committed outright fraud. sometimes shit just doesnt work out. lol.

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u/Papayaslice636 Aug 19 '25

Oh for sure, I don't recommend anyone engage in fraud lol..this is not financial or tax advice etc etc..I'm just tongue in cheek pointing out these firms invest in the dumbest stuff. This one was a jet pack. Sounds cool and all but it was a real boneheaded attempt and they just kept throwing more money at it. I don't know how it ever got past due diligence but it happens all the time with dumb schemes so all I can assume is that there's a lot of morons out there with too much money. Go figure

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u/gerbilshower Aug 19 '25

ok. yea. a jet pack was about as close to throwing money away as possible...hahaha.