Hella Nation - Evan Wright [100]
But Warshavsky’s rise to national prominence as an Internet whiz kid was far more remarkable than reporters had imagined. He liked to tell them that he had been a precocious computer nerd who grew up on Seattle’s idyllic East Side, not far from Microsoft’s campus headquarters; he liked to say that he had made his first fortune while still in high school, when he started a phone-sex company more or less as a lark, and that one thing had led to another and here he was, poised to become one of the top players on the Internet.
Not long after his ascent to the Digital 50, federal investigators began looking into allegations of wire fraud, money laundering and tax evasion going back to ventures that Warshavsky had started during his teenage years. A new image of the entrepreneur emerged. In this version, Warshavsky had taken advantage of the dot-com fever of the late nineties to sweet-talk the nation’s leading news organizations and financial analysts into believing he was the prince of a rising digital empire, and not, as evidence now suggests, a swindler at the helm of a vast subterfuge.
Though Warshavsky will probably never make Time’s Digital 50 list again, he may rank as the first and greatest con artist of the digital era. My assessment of his greatness is biased: I worked for him for nearly a year. After I quit and he unsuccessfully sued me in October 1999, I helped expose allegations of his criminal activities made by nearly a dozen of his employees.
I FIRST MET WARSHAVSKY in January 1998 at an adult-industry convention in Las Vegas. At the time, I worked for one of the industry’s most flamboyant figures, Larry Flynt, as an editor at Hustler magazine. Warshavsky emerged from the pandemonium somber and businesslike in a charcoal overcoat, a white scarf around his neck. Against the raucous backdrop of the porn convention, Warshavsky, flanked by a pair of black-suited attorneys, displayed an almost preposterous air of dignity. He extended his hand and introduced himself. “I’m Seth Warshavsky, president of Internet Entertainment Group,” he said. “I’m a huge fan of Hustler, and I want you to work for me.” He vanished into the crowd, leaving behind the aura of a young man rushing toward his destiny. Much later on, after I had begun working for him, I found out that Warshavsky always hurried through trade shows because he was afraid that somebody he owed money to was going to kick his ass.
I started my job at IEG in November 1998, as a Web editor in charge of all sites, adult and non-adult. Company headquarters were located on the tenth floor of a glass-and-steel office tower on First Avenue in Seattle. White walls, black leather couches and splashes of abstract art provided a fitting atmosphere for the high-tech powerhouse lionized by the media.
Around the office, Warshavsky dressed in casual, hip attire: pressed jeans, a gold Rolex, a V-neck sweater worn without a shirt beneath, to show off his deeply tanned chest. Though The Wall Street Journal had described him as an “apple-cheeked” young man, the impression he gave sitting at his desk was that of a thirteen-year-old about to turn forty-five. He had prematurely graying hair and at times conveyed the weary, exasperated air of a man who was stranded on a planet of intellectual inferiors. Only when he laughed—his eyes squeezed shut as he giggled maniacally—did he become the irrepressible boy tycoon portrayed in the media.
Warshavsky’s most striking feature was a nervous tic. Every few moments, he would toss his head back and snort. “It’s like a trumpet call or something,” says Brian Cartmell, a childhood friend of Warshavsky