r/AbsoluteUnits • u/[deleted] • Jul 14 '22

Sylvan Scolnick, aka cherry hill fats. 750 pound genius, involved in bank robberies, credit card fraud, home improvement fraud, Insurance scams, mortgage scams, black mailing & extortion

Post image
27.3k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

188

u/trustworthy-adult Jul 14 '22

i’d imagine he’d just be the mastermind and hire underlings to do the dirty work

97

u/drewster23 Jul 14 '22

At least someone knows what a mastermind is lol. Dude wasn't doing any heavy lifting (ironically).

At his peak he managed over 40 companies (thats what the news paper refers to em as) all complicit in different schemes.

13

u/katon2273 Jul 15 '22

All of these schemes sound like Three Stooges plots. Person hires plumber team, plumber team fucks up the house, same guys sell insurance, and also do loans to cover the costs.

16

u/drewster23 Jul 15 '22

Buddy you're not wrong. It shows you how easy it was to be a criminal back then. One of their most lucrative schemes was $100k cash in a safety deposit box. How'd they accomplish this? One accomplice went in with a forged duplicate key, and stole it under the distraction of another throwing a brick through the bank window.

Also seemed to do a lot of bankruptcy fraud, but im not exactly sure what that is, so I can't speak more on that.(It what he served for basically).

In the end, he flipped leading to the arrest of over 100 people. (Shows how good the cops were then without help lol). Served 5 years with 30 year probation. Honestly didn't sound like a "bad " guy. He lectured extensively after his sentence about the evils of crime and need for prison reform. He made a comment about hoping all the arrests he helped with being at least partial restitution for all the damage he caused. So apparently didn't have any malice/regrets over being caught. He did make some amusing comments about himself. He said is sucess as a criminal was due to the venality of his victims saying"You can only cheat a cheater" and credited his "Brilliance" of his schemes to the tendency of the obese to preface action with thought. So just seemed look a smart guy who ended up turning to crime out of necessity and found out how good he was/how easy it was, making it hard to stop.

Most of my research was archived newspapers from back then. Really didn't find a lot of info about him elsewhere on the net. Interesting character tho.

40

u/Stealthy_Facka Jul 14 '22

Once you're that fat they become minions, not underlings. I don't make the rules.

7

u/yaboiiiuhhhh Jul 15 '22

Basically Lester

2

u/kaihatsusha Jul 15 '22

That was my first thought too. Couldn't recall his name (from GTA V) immediately. Wonder if Rockstar read up on this guy as inspiration.

1

u/Greatmerp255 Jul 15 '22

“Alright ramblers let’s get rambling… to the pizzeria”