THIS WEEK IN: DO BETTER CRIMES, AMERICA

It’s either too easy to do crimes in 2019, or we’re all not doing enough crimes.

Take the case of Brian Sapp, convicted this week in federal court of running a relatively modest $1.8 real estate scam. Sapp brazenly lied to his loved ones, co-workers, and closest friends in setting up a nonexistent real estate business he used to subsidize his lifestyle. It is a classic setup by criminal standards, a Ponzi scheme where the profits were never real, new investments only paid the dividends from old investments, and at the middle was someone just charismatic and devious enough to keep it all in the air as long as he could.

Except that Sapp wasn’t even that good at doing crimes. He barely lasted six years on the grifting circuit. He foolishly hired real employees for his fake company, and rolled over and told the FBI everything they wanted to know when caught. Worse still, he chose victims any jury would fry a man over: Close friends, the parents of a disabled kid, and a dude dying of cancer. (Did he hit the widow up for more cash almost immediately after the funeral? Yes, yes he did.)

The capper: He got those Federal charges, the kind you never want because they stick and stick hard. Keep the crimes and money in-state if one can, y’all.

Sapp wasn’t even good at the part any movie or show emphasizes as the reward for #GriftLyfe. He didn’t buy exotic animals, drugs, or do anything as idiotically grandiose as, say, becoming a college sports booster. Instead, Sapp spent the money on the worst thing imaginable: Going to hIgh-priced real estate conferences. You idiot, Brian, you dolted fool, you patchy stupid merkin of a man.

He did do one thing which is the point of this whole discussion, and the reason we’re talking about him in the first place. With $80,000 of his best friends’ and families’ money, Sapp bought a Mercedes van, outfitted it with all the latest tailgating gear, and did the actually got right in this entire failure of an attempt to join the Grifting Class.

He took it to Penn State tailgates.

U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia

Oh, and he also described himself as “crushing it.” The minute someone you have given large sums of money to uses these exact words, set yourself and them on fire as quickly as possible.