She wanted to help her expat friends in Dubai by helping them send money to their foreign
bank accounts but instead she just kept the money!
But she probably isn’t the worst person to find to help you.
That person may just be Gilbert Arenas’s assistant, who stole close to 7 million from.
The same thing happened to Kevin Hart, his personal assistant stole close to a million
bucks from him!
4 - No Laughing Matter Dylan Jason Syer
Crime can happen to anyone, and that’s what happened to Kevin Hart.
From 2017 to 2019, Kevin Hart was defrauded out of nearly $1 million in unauthorized credit
card charges.
The scammer was none other than Hart's personal shopper, Dylan Jason Syer, who was trusted
with Hart's personal credit card to make purchases.
Syer, a Long Island native, owned a personal shopper business in which he charged the actor's
credit card with legitimate purchases, but the things he bought weren't always what Hart
had in mind.
Syer spent about $923,000 of Hart's money and an additional $240,000 on jewelry and
watches from a luxury jeweler in California.
He spent thousands on fine art and other collective items, including five Patek Philippe watches
worth more than $400,000.
He bought a Sam Friedman painting, 16 Bearbrick collector dolls, 5 KAWS collectible dolls,
and two Louis Vuitton bags.
He showed off many of these purchases on his personal Instagram page.
Syer and Hart met in 2015 through his personal shopping business, Syre Consulting, LLC.
He was hired to make several purchases for the actor and was given his personal credit
card under the assumption that he would only make authorized purchases.
By the time Hart uncovered the year-and-a-half-long scam, he was out more than $1 million.
Aftermath The cops kicked in his door to serve a search
warrant in February 2021.
They recovered about $250,000 worth of cash and goods.
Syer was arraigned and charged with a laundry list of fraud and theft charges and potentially
faces up to 25 years in prison.
The Queens County District Attorney warned that no one, not even celebrities like Kevin
Hart, are immune to scams.
3 - Almost a Hilton Renata Shamrakova
Renata Shamrakova, the personal assistant to Nicky Hilton's ex-husband, spent nearly
$1.6 million of his money on elite AmEx on shopping sprees and exotic vacations.
She conned Todd Meister while she worked for him at his upper-east-side townhouse in Manhattan.
Neighbors started noticing piles of packages showing up at Renata's door.
They were later discovered to contain high-end jewelry with expensive rings, necklaces, and
bracelets.
She also used his credit card to purchase airline tickets and fund her travel abroad.
She covered her tracks by paying off the $800,000 credit card bill using Meister's JP Morgan
checking account and transferring the funds to American Express.
Hilton Connection At the heart of the story, we have Nicky Hilton,
Todd Meister, and of course, Renata Shamrakova.
Nicky Hilton is an American businesswoman, socialite, model, and fashion designer.
But she’s probably most known for being Paris Hilton's younger sister and fellow heir
to the Hilton family fortune.
Born into the wealthy Hilton family, she continued her streak of inherited wealth by marrying
into the Rothschild family through James Rothschild in 2015.
Paris was Nicky's maid of honor, and they honeymooned in Botswana after the wedding.
But before that, Nicky married Todd Meister.
He was a football star at the uppity Riverdale Country School before going on to Harvard
to get a degree in business.
Then, Todd started a company in the mid-90s dedicated to investing in Internet startups.
He sold the company in 2000 and started working as a hedge fund manager while still finding
time to party.
Meister was Nicky's longtime friend before they started dating on and off in 2003.
Nicky was just a kid when she married Meister.
But he treated her like gold, and they had great chemistry.
Her parents were thrilled about the wedding.
Hilton-Meister The ceremony was held in August 2004 at a
Las Vegas Wedding Chapel.
Nicky wore an aqua-blue silk dress, and Meister donned a button-down shirt and pants.
Paris witnessed the vows, along with Bijou Phillips and comedian Jeff Beacher.
But not everyone was convinced it would last.
Meister's friend guessed it was a publicity stunt that would get annulled three days later.
Unfortunately for the couple, he wasn't so far from the truth.
The marriage was annulled three months later, with the couple saying they got married "on
a whim."
According to friends of the couple, they tried to give their marriage a "fair shot," but
it just wasn't meant to be.
But while he was distracted being the newest member of the Hilton family, his personal
assistant was stealing his AMEX.
Black Amex Renata used his banking information to apply
for an American Express credit card in his name and then added herself as a secondary
user.
In April 2011, the Ukrainian woman got too comfortable with her new boss and went on
a wild spending spree.
She sent the items to her apartment in Chelsea on 21st street.
Many of the purchases included pricey jewelry and exotic vacations.
By the time her swindling days were over, she had stolen nearly $1 million from Meister.
Unfortunately, Meister didn't notice the stolen funds for ten months.
He notified police in January 2012, and Renata was arrested four days later.
She was charged with grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property, identity theft,
and forgery and held on Rikers Island for a $100,000 bond.
Her parents even tried to sell their home to help their daughter avoid jail.
Renata also started a social media campaign to pay back the money she owed to Meister,
but it was less than successful, raising a grand total of $335.
She took the stand at the Manhattan Supreme Court in December 2013, where she pleaded
guilty to felony grand larceny.
She was sentenced to up to three years behind bars.
The defense team requested that she stay at Rikers Island, but the judge denied this motion
and sent her to a prison in upstate New York.
2 - Play Money Jason A. White
Ex-NBA star Gilbert Arenas found out, out of the blue that his trusted personal assistant,
John A. White, scammed him out of roughly $7 million dollars in Arenas’s estimation.
However, on court docs Arenas could only prove around 2.1 million.
Arenas only found out when he started noticing discrepancies in one of his bank accounts
where he would have what he called, a play money bank account.
White had given himself unauthorized access to this specific play money bank account that
Arenas used basically as a petty cash account.
Whenever Gilbert needed, for example, 20 thousand dollars for a weekend trip to Miami, Arenas
would have White call up Arenas’s money manager and have him transfer the money to
Gilbert’s play money bank account.
Then the money would be in there for Arenas to use.
But White went on and abused this power by telling Arena’s money manager that Arenas
would need money for a made up purchase.
And as soon as that money would touch the play money account, White would transfer that
money into his own bank account.
So Arenas would never see the discrepancy in the balance.
And the money manager would never follow up with Arenas since White was his personal assistant.
At the height of Arena’s career, Arenas' assistant was stealing millions of dollars
by transferring money from Arenas' bank accounts into his own.
He spent the money on a home in Florida, a Ferrari, and a Range Rover.
Aftermath White was found guilty and sentenced to 57
months in federal prison and two years of supervised release.
The judge banned him from opening or using any credit cards without his probation officer's
permission.
White asked for a retrial when new evidence emerged that could change his guilty conviction.
Many witnesses came forward with statements that Arenas was aware of the big transactions
White was making on his behalf.
White also found signed forms from the bank showing that Arenas was fully aware of these
transactions.
People close to Arenas came forward to say that the NBA star was known to spend carelessly,
like when he bought a home for one of his girlfriends in Florida.
The scammer accused Arenas of lying when he said White wasn't authorized to make these
big purchases.
Then there are Arenas' Instagram posts that seemed to brag about defrauding American Express
by not paying his tab at a Gentlemen's Club.
Still, the judge wasn't convinced.
He rejected White's request for a retrial, saying this new evidence didn't suggest innocence
and wasn't relevant to the criminal case.
1 - Forex Fun Katie Blaymire
Katie Blaymire moved to the United Arab Emirates in 2011 to start working as a physical education
teacher at an international school where she taught a British curriculum.
She was born and raised in Lancashire, England, but moved after her mother died in 2008.
When her five-year contract ended at the international school in UAE, Blaymire started doing private
swimming lessons for the children of wealthy locals in their personal pools.
Then, she got a Facebook message that invited her into a life of crime.
Someone asked her if she was looking for work, hoping she would be able to swap their Emirati
Dirhams for another currency at a better rate than what the banks offer.
Currency Exchange At first, it didn't seem to be a problem.
Blaymire, a staple in the Dubai party scene, did these currency exchanges for a while.
A driver picked up the sender's money and brought it to Blaymire.
Then, she'd exchange it for cash in her British bank account.
She offered reasonable rates, and there weren't any problems until things snowballed and went
totally wrong.
During the pandemic, she saw the opportunity to rip off many expats, especially Emirates
airline crew members and pilots, who had been laid off and were desperate for better exchange
rates.
She used fake names like Imogen Smith and Dawn Smith to lure them in.
Her clients thought she was genuine until they realized their money wasn’t being returned.
One businessman, Mr. Ossman, said he lost £42,000 to Blaymire after using her services
to expand his kebab business.
She told him she was pregnant and wanted to get rid of her dirhams so she could return
to her husband in the UK—a win-win for them both.
But then she disappeared.
Ossman spent two stressful, sleepless weeks trying to get in touch with her.
When he confided in some friends, they told him that Blaymire had a reputation for scams.
An Australian air hostess lost £6,500 after trying to send money back home to put a deposit
down on a house.
A Spanish pilot said he lost £22,000 trying to send money home to pay for his father's
funeral.
He saw Blaymire's post in an airline Facebook group and assumed she worked in the industry.
He trusted her.
The deal was supposed to save him £250 in bank fees, but the money never arrived in
his account in Madrid.
Blaymire met his wife and kids and was friendly to the whole family.
The pilot never knew she was capable of such heartlessness.
She also scammed a British pilot out of £50,000, a Belgian cabin crew member out of £20,000,
and a French airline worker out of £18,000.
WhatsApp messages show the dozens of excuses she used to explain why the victims never
received their money.
A Dubai resident sent her £28,000 as an investor to develop a food-ordering app.
Blaymire spent £2,000 on software development but never developed the app.
The investor never saw his money.
When victims tried to get their money back, Blaymire threatened them.
She wasn’t allowed to leave Lancashire until she paid back the debts owed to her swimming
class business partner, Alex Campbell, who took her to court after he invested £15,000
in her company, FloatUAE, in exchange for a job.
When Campbell tried to cash a security check for his investment, it bounced.
At least 20 people filed complaints with the police, and Blaymire was arrested and jailed
on Christmas Eve 2019.
After a civil court case, a travel ban was placed, preventing Blaymire from leaving Dubai.
The court instated a repayment plan and put her on the no-fly list.
She was released from jail after repaying the debt that caused a previous check to bounce.
Aftermath Meanwhile, she blamed multiple people up the
chain of command for all the money that had mysteriously vanished and denied that she
was operating a scam.
She said she used £100,000 of her personal savings to repay some victims, leaving eight
victims who were owed a total of £80,000.
According to Blaymire, she’s the real victim here, saying she's been blackmailed and received
death threats.
Sometimes, she even blamed the bank for the 'mix-ups' that caused her to serve jail time.
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Let us know in the comment section what you would rather do, manage your own money or
hire a professional?