Solar Scam

The sheer chutzpah of this dude who scammed the taxpayers out of a bajillion dollars. It's a heck of a story...

Basically, he was selling portable solar panel trailers to Fortune 500 firms who got a nice tax write-off for each one they bought, on the promise that they'd never actually have to take possession of the trailers and could instead rent them out through his corporation and rake in the profits.

There was just one problem...

That fall, a group from Sherwin-Williams was set to visit DC Solar’s production facility to inspect its purchase. Under the terms of the deal, the paint company’s generators had to be built and “placed in service” by year’s end.

As workers prepared for the inspection, a DC Solar sales executive named Brian Caffrey noticed that only the first, most visible rows of generators were fully assembled. The generators in the rows behind—some two-thirds of the total—were in various states of incompletion, though you might not notice if you didn’t know what to look for.

“Jeff, you have rows and rows of unfinished generators you’re presenting as finished,” Caffrey recalled telling Carpoff.

“You don’t worry about that,” Carpoff replied.

It's a lengthy article, but worth the read. It'd make a heck of a movie.

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