This is a true rags-to-riches story. Brian Kolfage was broke.
According to the source, Brian Kolfage personally confided that was “broke” last year after his “really fake” news empire collapsed and Facebook “deplatformed” him.
So what did he do? Did he go on welfare? Did he beg the nanny state for a handout? Did he flop on a street corner and beg? No! He did what any red-blooded American go-getter would do: he started a GoFundMe page.
His page raised $22 million to build a wall on our southern border, to out-Trump Trump. He really out-Trumped Trump, because the wall still wasn’t built, but Brian Kolfage isn’t broke anymore.
That anonymous source shared an Instagram post highlighting Kolfage’s recent purchase of a fine seagoing vessel which they believe is “close to a million dollars.”
Yay! Capitalism works!
TBH I think we all saw this coming. Anyone else care to speculate on when he’ll be broke and homeless? I’m thinking about six months.
I’d be rather surprised if the boat pictured cost near one million USD. Its looks fairly low-spec, small (10 metres max), not ocean-crossing capable, of stock design, and uncrewed; I’d put it at less than half that new, and possibly around 100,000USD (an order of magnitude less). Remove some of those outboard engines and it’s probably less than that new.
Those four outboard motors don’t look all that practical.
If you are going to do that, why not have a good marine diesel inboard engine like all the other yachts?
The stern looks a bit low to me for going out in the ocean.
A lot lower than the bow.
Like it could get swamped in rough seas.
The lines do look like it is a fast, racing boat though.
I wonder if it is designed for smuggling drugs or something?
Thousands of Americans turn to GoFundMe to get help paying their medical bills. This is largely because our paranoid, callous, hyper-capitalist country freaks out when anyone broaches the topic of a national health care system because they don’t want to pay higher taxes. Yet, those same…. people… will happily give millions to a con-artist who promises to help protect them from brown-hued immigrants.
Doubtless, the MAGA-hat crowd will raise pitchforks, light Tiki torches, and storm Kolfage’s property to demand he give that money back, right… RIGHT???
Thousands of Americans turn to GoFundMe to get help paying their medical bills. This is largely because our paranoid, callous, hyper-capitalist country freaks out when anyone broaches the topic of a national health care system because they don’t want to pay higher taxes. Yet, those same…. people… will happily give millions to a con-artist who promises to help protect them from brown-hued immigrants.
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Those four outboard motors don’t look all that practical.
If you are going to do that, why not have a good marine diesel inboard engine like all the other yachts?
The stern looks a bit low to me for going out in the ocean.
A lot lower than the bow.
Like it could get swamped in rough seas.
The lines do look like it is a fast, racing boat though.
I wonder if it is designed for smuggling drugs or something?
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#4 Akira,
All depends on the answer to the following questions:
1. Is Kolfage male?
2. Is Kolfage white?
3. Is Kofage at least nominally christian? (ie. not obviously some other religion)
Answer yes to at least the first two and the Maga crowd won’t care. Answer yes to all three and he will become a hero.
Photos on the kook’s pages — which I will not link to — show the boat under construction (so it’s a new, not a used), also identify the model, and give a peek at the lavish-looking fittings. The boat is a Jupiter Marine 41 (not the 43 speculated in the OP’s cited article). Apparently forward of the main cabin is an extensive living space for five people, apparently rather well outfitted; I suspect that is were most of money goes. Some quick checking finds recent used costing over 700,000USD, so the one million for new is plausible — my first reaction at @2 is probably wrong. It’s also a bit longer than I estimated, at c.12 metres
The important thing is that libs got triggered, of course.
If you follow the link, there’s a lot more information and a couple of updates, with possibly more to come. The text has been changed to say that a GoFundMe sponsor paid for the yacht, rather than Kolfage himself. And a further link shows that apparently Kolfage has a history of this sort of thing.
PS: Kolfage is not only white, male, and (nominally) Christian, he is politically right-wing and a triple amputee veteran (the top picture is cropped; scroll down to see an uncropped picture) whose earlier scams were in the names of injured veterans (who mysteriously never got the money he requested on their behalf). The MAGA crowd can’t throw money at him fast enough if he makes the right noises. although some may be wising up given that he keeps misappropriating funds.
Now I’m torn.
On the one hand, grifting is bad.
On the other hand, building a wall is worse and the people who paid for it are racist bastards, so I actully think tgeir money got put to a better use.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is shifting money to pay for the wall, out of pentagon programs. Basically, the whole idea that congress appropriates money for a purpose has gone out the window.
It’s also a tacit admission that many military programs are over-bloated. Though it sounds like they took the money from the program for helping build the Afghani police, and out of services for troops occupying foreign countries. So, it’s a fuck you fuck you fuck you all around, just the way Trump likes it.
His conscience, his heart, and his brain?
Does they really count as amputations if you never had them?
Wot did he spend the rest of the dosh on?
MAGA 2016: “MEXICO WILL PAY THE WALL!!!”
MAGA 2017: “The wall is really important, and the naysayers in congress are traitors for refusing funding”
MAGA 2018: “By chipping in, you can be your own brick in the wall!”
MAGA 2019: “Maybe we could deploy the military to build a wall out of shot migrants’ dead bodies, or something”
MAGA 2020: “America’s future depends on Trump’s reelection, so he can build the wall”
MAGA 2021: “America’s future depends on electing Kolfage in 2024, so he can build the wall”
@BLF:
The “Jupiter Marine 41” per naming conventions is 41 feet. This converts to almost exactly 12.5 meters (which, given boatbuilding, is probably actually the length and the 41 feet is the close conversion).
It does seem amazing to me that someone would pay $1M for that, though. If you want to cross oceans, you need something pretty different. If you don’t want to cross oceans, then you can live on the water for much, much less.
Chichester offers real floating homes for about 280k, delivered, and if you want to spend a million, I’m sure they’d fancy it up for you nicely. Or you could go with something really trippy, but fun, and with more space than that 41 footer.
This one is my personal fave for a home that floats but doesn’t move. While this one isn’t the fanciest looking but provides incredibly good value if you want your floating home to be an actual house boat that can cruise out to deeper waters for recreation and then head back in to shore for daily living. It also allows you to change location significantly with just a couple day’s notice (say, from Vancouver BC to San Francisco in about 4 days … so long as the weather is compliant … you wouldn’t want to be on the open ocean during high waves).
It’s times like these that make me wish I didn’t have a conscious.
On the one hand, the dud’s probably a racist shitstain anyway.
On the other hand, he stole money from racist fuckstains and put it into yachts.
On the other other hand, eat rich people.
On the other other other hand, why oh why does my conscience prevent me from doing something like this. I could get rich AND steal money from hornbrained racist fuckstains that deserve to be impoverished and miserable – A net good! – yet somehow my idiot conscience declares that lying is wrong anyway. Being the good guy sucks.
@#16, gijoel:
Is that “I wish that I was not conscious”, as in “I wish I did not have to know about this”, or “I wish I didn’t have a conscience”, as in “I wish I was a horrible person too so I could make a massive profit that easily”? Since both of them are reasonable responses I’m asking for clarification.
I’ve never had to deal with sea-going vessels or anything quite this big, but the conventional wisdom in boat owners circles is “A boat is a hole in the water, into which you throw money.” I doubt he want’s to go anywhere beyond Florida.
You’ve got to admit, an ocean-going luxury yacht is exactly the sort of thing a grifter would want to have for when the law catches up with him. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he doesn’t convert that cash into gold or some other easily traded commodity and then flee to somewhere in South America where he can live out the rest of his days in idle luxury.
cartomancer, @ #20:
You don’t really need to do that any more – there’s an entire global industry dedicated to helping rich fucks hide their ill-gotten gains without the practical difficulties of lugging a suitcase full of gold around. I’m currently reading all about it in Oliver Bullough’s book <a href=”https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/09/moneyland-oliver-bullough-review-wealth-corruption-oligarchs>Moneyland: Why Thieves and Crooks Now Rule the World and How to Take It Back.
Bugger, let’s try that link again: Moneyland: Why Thieves and Crooks Now Rule the World and How to Take It Back.
On a side note: why does the luxury the nouveau riche bathes in always looks so terribly cheap? I realize the nobility was scum too but at least they had taste.
Isn’t that what Bitcoin or some other Cryptocurrency is for?
AFAICT, Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies are ideal for hiding money and moving it around.
Anonymous and they don’t pass through banks or other central institutions.
raven: It’s certainly one of the options, but may be tricky if you have a “worthwhile” amount of money to move (buying or selling several million dollars worth of Bitcoin at a time is going to shift the valuation noticeably, if you can even find people willing to deal in those volumes), and there are other, more reliable options available for people with serious amounts of money to throw around. Bitcoin also has one of the key disadvantages of gold or other physical forms of cash – it can be stolen. (And a great deal of it has been.)
Bitcoin’s for pikers. The real money is in complex nested structures of offshore shell companies.
Got a bit of a spam infection here I see.
@PZ: As noted, comments #5 & #6 by nina3838 look like nothing more than the old spammer tactic of copypasting some text from prior comments and appending spam links.
In more recent news, I just happened to notice this article about Kolfage’s wall effort from May 28. It looks like he is actually trying to do something, although it being $20mil of something seems unlikely. It’s also in violation of city code, and of very little utility (he has permission and cooperation from one property owner to build on that one person’s property, but a wall that does not connect to any other barrier seems more of a folly than anything else), other than as a series of upraised middle fingers, as it were.