For sixty years, the Gambino crime family ran a Christmas tree racket in New York City.
Every vendor who sold trees on the streets of the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan paid tribute—a tax on the holiday itself. Most paid without question. It was just how things worked.
Then came Glenn Walker.
Glenn was a stubborn Florida farmer who built a Christmas tree empire in the South Bronx. When the men came to collect, he refused to pay. When they shot at him in Florida, he survived. When they firebombed his lot, he turned it into a publicity opportunity and had his best season ever.
He thought he had won.
As we approach Christmas Day, we published Part One and Two of “The Man Who Wouldn’t Pay” by Clara Preve Durrieu — a true crime story about Christmas trees, organized crime, and what happens when an honest man decides to fight a corrupt system.
It’s the inaugural story from The Foundry, a new magazine from Brazen launching in 2026. The Foundry will feature serialized narrative nonfiction—bold stories, unforgettable characters, published in chapters.
Story in comments. Enjoy and Merry Xmas to you all!
Spoke this week to a packed house at the The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand about the unprecedented nature of the state capture by South African national Benjamin Maurberger.
Armed with billions of dollars from Chinese-financed Cambodian scam centers, Mauerberger:
—infiltrated Thailand’s government, setting policy and acting as a defacto minister
—funded political parties and became indispensable to Thaksin Shinawatra among many others
—secretly bought up huge stakes in Thai energy and finance companies to benefit from government policy
—played a role in the thawing of Cambodian-Thai relations and the ensuing tensions
—set up front companies in Singapore that laundered hundreds of millions of dollars.
He’s now on the run in Dubai, sought by the U.S., which has had enough of its people getting scammed out of their life savings.
But the Thai elite, whose people also are victims, has closed ranks. Too many were bought. Investigations are stalled.
This reminds me of how Najib fired his AG when the first 1MDB stories came out a decade ago.
Mauerberger’s state capture is more complete than Jho Low’s in Malaysia.
So what happens next?
Catch my interview on the protected $1.5B mafia network that scams Americans and whose unmasking is causing a political meltdown in Thailand.
https://omny.fm/shows/moneyfm-saturday-morning-show/saturday-mornings-scams-stocks-secret-deals-project-brazen-exposes-southeast-asia-s-1-5b-dirty-money-network
This is the white Jho Low.
Thailand fights to stop state capture by a criminal network.
We face weaponization of Interpol’s Red Notice system.
Catch up!
/thai-deputy-pm-denies-everything-threatens-billion-baht-lawsuits-were-publishing-it-all/
