That is a badly sourced(but understandable) and jaw dropping article.
How and or why was it so impossible to untangle this woman’s web of alias and bullshit?
Quite a con lady.
She reminds me of Bonnie Lee Bakley. She lived a similar life with multiple identities and mailboxes. Running a lonely hearts scam and conning old men out of money. Prostituting out her daughter.
Linda Taylor was more dangerous. It sounds like she was capable of nearly anything.
Good story.
That kind of reporting requires a lot of work.
Nice to see it still being done.
Sweet Jesus. Kidnapping, murder. She threatened a Chicago cop. And the length of the list - it was exhausting just to read about.
And the thing everyone knows about her is the welfare cheating (which was probably the least destructive thing she ever did).
It’s as if Hannibal Lecter were infamous for double billing his patients.
They did have to put something in the pot for lunch. 
To state the obvious - as a result of her welfare cheating story, an entire ideological political belief system is rampant. Thankssss: rolleyes:
And yet people denied that she did anything all that serious:
It’s certainly true that one story, no matter how dramatic, proves little to nothing about the question of whther welfare recipients as a group were costing the system large amounts of money via fraud.
But it’s equally true that Reagan did not exaggerate in any great respect the story of one single example of a woman who did, and those that claimed he was exaggerating were incorrect to do so.
That’s a hell of a story about an amazing con artist. I kept thinking: I wouldn’t want to be the salesman trying to sell her a car.
Whenever I read stories like this I wonder, “What could they have done if fate had caused them to be born in a higher socio-economic class or they had access to a higher education?”, because quite honestly it does take some intelligence to work these cons and stay alive living like this.
Reading about the ones that originally called Reagan deceptive, many did acknowledge that that person committed fraud, the exaggeration of Reagan was to make it sound like if that was a common thing. It also was not good for the narrative to mention that the “queen” was arrested for fraud. Meaning that with proper enforcement the Reagan tactic of nutpicking was indeed an exaggeration as the intention was to reduce wellfare.
As many of his ideas on welfare were in the end accepted, it is important to see where it has led us:
She could have made a killing in sales, whether real estate or vehicles. But people who scam for a living have a particular obsession with it; I’m sure a successful con, however small, is like a narcotic. Hell, she was even scamming while in prison.
Thanks for the link. The woman sounds like a pure psychopath.
It is high time that public opinion knew more about psychopaths. These good bookson the subject say that there is about 1 in every twenty persons. A minority of psychopaths turns to crime, but once they do, the chance of rehabilitation is pretty much zero. People like that cut a swath of misery through their fellow men.
It is nowadays possible to diagnose psychopaths with MRI scans. I would be in favour of locking criminal psychopaths up for life.
So, I still think it is reprehensible for politicians to point an accusing finger at people on welfare and label them as “welfare queens”. In another thread in GQ, I asked for data on the actual abuse of welfare, and a general number most people agreed on was 2 %.
That’s what always makes me wonder about people with such talent and smarts - why bother? They’d be able to make a damn good honest living if they tried.
Because a good honest living doesn’t give them the same thrill. And also, based on my own experiences, they want to feel like they’re smarter than the people they con, that the police the prosecutor
I think there must be a “Get Over” gene that runs rampant in some people and, as Chefguy says, it must be like a narcotic. To get over on others. For some reason they dont want to play by the rules and operate within the mainstream. And of course, they dont want to pay taxes on income. The whole “entitlement” idea comes into play: they feel entitled somehow to whatever is free for the taking.
Another thing is that they get to make their own hours. Some people have a really hard time keeping a schedule. And they don’t have to answer to anyone. Sure, some people work for themselves legitimately but that’s not something everyone can jump right into.
And then there’s just inertia. A lot of these people start their life of crime before they’re even old enough to have a real job, so then there’s no point in time where quitting it and starting at the bottom with a minimum-wage job seems like a good idea.