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Sept. 28, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
53:00
MIDDLE-AGED FEMALE INCELS PREYED UPON!
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Hey there, Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain.
Hope you're doing well. Okay, we're going to take you on a journey, and I'm a long-form kind of guy.
I... I love long symphonic prog rock like Yes, and I've listened regularly to the, what is it, close to half-hour song Echoes by Pink Floyd.
I'm a long-form kind of guy.
So, if you like long-form, great.
If not, there's lots of other people out there for you.
So, I want to talk about the flip that occurs between men and women.
So, for men, I've talked about being dicknapped, which is when your penis takes over, kidnaps your brain, and Rolls your gonads like bowling balls in hot pursuit of some sort of Thelma and Louise cliff edge of personal testosterone destruction because some woman grabs your hormones and ropes you in with them.
Two mixed metaphors outrageously.
And this delusion that men talk themselves into when there's a pretty face or a curvy body that comes along, it flips.
So for women over 40, it flips if they're single to the point where men are easily taken in by women when they're young adults.
Women are easily taken in by men when they are post-fertility.
And it's really, really rough on women.
And it's not something we talk about.
And therefore, I want to talk about it because it seems really important to talk about.
So we're going to talk about it through this article from Toronto Life.
I don't know why I couldn't find it on the website, but it's here on Apple News.
And it's called Heartbreaker.
To women in search of love, Sean Rutenberg was the Holy Grail.
A successful, sensitive, confident man looking for genuine connection.
Yeah, see, that's tough, right?
Successful, sensitive, confident man looking for genuine connection.
So if he's a good-looking and wealthy guy and he's in his 40s, he's going to be looking for a younger woman.
Like, it's just the way things are.
And the women who say, well, you know, I've got great qualities of personality, I've got great character, I've got a house, I've got a career, I've got a this, I've got a that.
Yeah, that's all nice. That's all nice.
But a man in his 40s who's attractive and successful is in the same position as a hot woman of 20 when it comes to the daily market.
And she's in a choose-em kind of position, and he's in a choose-em kind of position, and the question as always is why would he choose you?
And that's always an interesting question.
If in particular in your 40s, if you're a woman in your 40s, of course, and you're divorced, you're single, well, you've kind of squandered your most attractive years and now, you know, your collagen is breaking down, your subcutaneous fat is dissolving, you're getting haggard, you're tired, your boobs and your butt are drooping and so on.
I mean, it happens to men as well.
But men, as we know, tend to age better.
In terms of sexual market value, men age better than women because women's What they didn't know, he spent decades stealing millions from just about anyone who crossed his path.
Lonely women on dating sites were only his latest, easiest prey.
So the first thing Victoria Smith knows about Sean, no last name, no picture, was his passion for adventure.
Okay, so just so you don't know, right?
I'm sure you do. Passion for adventure means I have money.
It's a dark whistle for a reason.
I have a passion for adventure. I like to travel all the time.
Well, that costs money.
I like extreme sports.
Well, they cost money.
So passion for adventure is a signal to a woman That the man has resources, and for women in general, that is, particularly women in their 40s, that is kind of catnip.
It's kind of irresistible. It was hard to miss a see how many profile mentioned it three times.
She knew she could use some adventure in her life.
Before her divorce... She had traveled widely, and even now in her 40s, living alone in Toronto's West End, her kids nearly grown, she tried to maintain that spirit.
She'd recently visited Hawaii, exploring the lush blah blah blah, but she wanted someone to share those experiences with.
She clicked match, the phone pinged, they began exchanging email.
Sean told her his last name was Rothberg, which was close to his real surname, Rutenberg, and that he was a Toronto entrepreneur with a master's degree.
Like her, he was divorced and had two kids he adored.
He liked hockey. His first and deepest passion was soccer.
He still dreamed about playing in the World Cup, which struck her as boyish and charming.
See, that's not boyish and charming.
That's just deluded. There's no way anybody's going to end up playing in the World Cup starting out in their 40s.
I mean, come on. This is like a woman in her 40s saying, you know, I really, I dream of being a gymnast.
It's like, that's just...
So he's testing to see if she has any capacity to determine fantasy from reality, right?
So he's hooking her in with, I have money, right?
I'm an entrepreneur with a master's degree.
Hey, I was a Toronto entrepreneur with a master's degree.
Anyway, so...
That's, like, so he hooks her in with resources, and then what he does is he...
He talks about playing in the World Cup, and now he's testing her to see if she says, what are you talking about?
You're still dreaming. You're over 40.
What are you crazy? That's not a rational...
But she won't do that, right?
So he knows that she will not confront him on his delusions, right?
He wanted to wake up every day, he said, trying to understand how he and his partner could ever have been apart.
Right, so this is a dog whistle for codependency, for fusion, for merging, for, you know, this rather desperate platonic synchronicity, I'm half, you make me whole, you complete me kind of garbage, that signals need to a woman, that his need is so great that her requirement to bring Personal integrity, morality, virtue, trustworthiness, and so on is diminished.
The more a man needs a woman, the less quality she has to bring to the relationship.
In other words, the more a man desires a drug, the less pleasant the drug dealer has to be, right?
So, for younger women offering up the potential for sexuality, you know, basically firing the V-cannon, Or at least loading it.
That is a way that she stimulates demand and desire in a man to the point where she has control over him without having to have personal qualities of integrity and virtue and so on.
That's why you know that I can't feel my face when I'm with you, those kinds of songs, I love you, I need you, I want you, I'm desperate for you, you fill my thoughts.
These are all signs of power transferring to the female because of Deluded attachment obsessions within the male, right?
So it's really, really important.
So when he says, I can't even understand.
I want to live like I can't even understand how we could ever have been apart.
So he's signaling that he has resources and he's capable of Attaching in a stalky kind of manner to a woman.
This all, I mean, this guy knows how to play women, man, because this is all setting up the woman's thirst for control, which gives her security and relationship without having to have personal qualities, right?
When she asked him about his travel philosophy, he followed back, when are we leaving?
My bags are packed! Which is, again, signaling to her that she will be in control.
He sent over some pictures. He was handsome in his 40s with a strong chin and dark penetrating eyes.
We're penetrating us. It's like Roger Rabbit.
He had a deep, even tan and understated sophistication.
Linen shirts, cashmere v-necks, designer sunglasses.
I really am fortunate, he wrote to her, that I have a pretty great life.
The only thing missing from it is someone to share both the good and bad times with.
Smith sent back a photo showing her high cheekbones and long blonde hair and told him that she liked collecting art and searching for new music online.
So, what are the qualities he has?
Well, he's handsome, strong chin, dark penetrating eyes, deep even tan, and he dresses well, and he's got money, and she's got high cheekbones and long blonde hair.
So, this is just a vanity collision.
I mean, you look good, I look good, let's look good together.
And I remember going out with a woman once, so good-looking, that my friends were joking that when we went into a restaurant together, everyone thought I would be her security guard.
It's kind of funny. Kind of funny.
Anyway. They compared notes on what they consider the most important elements of relationship.
Chemistry and communication, they asked.
The ultimate deal-breaker. Lying, she wrote.
Right, so falsifying things, lying and so on.
But he's dreaming about playing in the World Cup in his 40s.
Come on. Chemistry is also one of these things that is a substitute for virtue and value.
Well, we just don't have chemistry.
And what that means is generally hormones and pathologies are not finding a way to lock in so disaster can be achieved.
In August 2013, less than a month after their match, they met in a cafe.
She walked in to find him more dapper than his photos, suggested his silver-flecked hair and square glasses gave him an air of seriousness.
Five feet, eight inches.
He was short but had a strong athletic physique.
Gregarious and engaging storyteller.
You've got to watch out for the high charisma storytellers in this world.
I know, I know. I'm kind of one of them.
But you've got to watch out for these people because they can really charm the socks out of you.
And there's a reason why they put so much effort into charming people.
It's to blind them to particular characteristics that may be...
He practically brimmed with extraordinary rollicking stories of his business career, of making millions off a deal in champagne-soaked dinners with the billionaire Richard Branson, who's kind of this pirate-looking guy, Virgin Airlines, I think?
Anyway. Okay, so he's telling her stories of making millions of dollars in champagne-soaked dinners with a billionaire.
So again, this is like catnip to a woman who is really into status.
This is the ultimate catch for a woman.
And of course, if he is the ultimate catch, why is he dating a lonely divorcee in her 40s?
I mean, come on.
Everybody knows the breakdown point of Leonardo DiCaprio.
The woman hits, what, 25 and he dumps her for a new model, literally a new model.
And so, let's say Leonardo DiCaprio starts dating some lonely, half-depressed, needy woman in her 40s who's divorced.
It would be like, meh, meh.
Anyway, so... Anyway.
He introduced her to his two young sons.
Right? So they met again and again.
So he's saying, yeah, I'm incredibly wealthy.
I'm high status and all that.
And I'm needy and I want you.
So he introduced her to his two young sons.
See, that's not good either, right?
Because I've known enough single parents to know that you wait at least six months to make sure the relationship is stable and positive before you start introducing...
Your partner to your kids, right?
I mean, you don't want to get involved in what I got stuck in, which was sort of the conveyor belt of low-rent, trashy men going through my mom's place, our place.
Sorry, a door might just slam here.
It's just creaking. A ghost!
Now, here's something interesting.
It struck her as strange that he drove an SUV and not the Aston Martin he often mentioned, but he explained that away.
He sometimes drove his brother-in-law's car because as a very private, very wealthy person, he liked to keep a low profile.
I'm sorry. I mean, come on.
Come on. You can't believe that for a second, right?
See... Pro tip, right?
So if someone is very wealthy and wants to keep a low profile, he doesn't buy a super expensive sports car at all, right?
And also, if he's super wealthy and he wants to keep a low profile, why doesn't he just buy an SUV rather than borrow his brother-in-law's car?
What does that mean? He drives his...
He drives his Aston Martin over to his brother-in-law's place, leaves it there, picks up the SUV, drives somewhere.
Well, he's already driving in his Aston Martin, so this makes no sense.
Oh, I have an Aston Martin, but I show up in some beat-up SUV, and it's like, oh no, I just like to keep a low profile and not show any wealth.
But of course, if you look back up here, linen shirts, cashmere, v-necks, designer sunglasses, okay, so he's already showing off his wealth.
And so this idea that he's just not...
I don't know. It's just funny, right?
I mean, it's funny in hindsight, of course, but that's just a lie, right?
Smith had been a stay-at-home mom when her kids were young and came away from the divorce with her home, a condo that she rented out and around $600,000 in the bank.
Oh! See, now here's the key, right?
So you go back up here and you say, oh, put these threads together, right?
So, before her divorce, she had traveled widely, right?
So, here's the thing. She married a rich guy, and she just took him to the cleaners in the divorce, right?
Holy crap! She'd been a stay-at-home mom, and then she got divorced from the guy, and she got a home in Toronto worth, I don't know, millions, I assume.
A condo she rented out, around $600,000 in the bank.
Oh my God. And yet this guy is considered to be the con man, right?
I mean, now she's did it, of course, I'm sure, legally through the court system, but the court system is so terrible for divorces these days.
So she's used to, I guess, wealthy guys, right?
As their relationship progressed, Sean often seared the conversation with various business ventures, one of which was an idea called Trivia for Good, a gaming app, blah, blah, blah, charity angle.
It intrigued her. One day he made his pitch.
Most of the company has been invested in, but there are still a few opportunities.
She would get regular dividends, and later, if she wanted, she could sell her shares for a profit.
Smith was excited to be involved in an endeavor that would make her money and do some good in the world.
Anyway, mid-September, a month and a half after they met, a month and a half after they met, she handed over a bank draft for $160,000.
Oh my God, like six weeks after you met, he's handing over a bank drop for $160,000.
Of course, if this guy is involved with Richard Branson, he doesn't need his girlfriend to invest and he shouldn't have his girlfriend invest at all because business and family don't mix for the most part.
Oh, my God. That's just crazy.
I mean, that's money that I guess she got from her ex-husband for being a stay-at-home mom and all that.
Smith had suffered through a painful divorce and adjusted to the prospect of a life alone, but a long time since her future looked bright.
Finally, reluctantly, she allowed herself to feel something like hope.
But this is desperation. This is how little she values herself, in my humble opinion, and I have a lot of sympathy for this woman because people just don't tell her the truth, and I didn't know the truth about these things when I was younger and made lots of terrible mistakes, so I have a lot of sympathy, but this is so terrible.
This is so terrible to just hand over all this money to keep this guy.
This is how insecure I guess she is, right?
Which is, well, I obviously have to fill up whatever I'm lacking with $160,000, Okay, lovers make the easiest marks in the dating world.
No consumer protection agency, no regulatory body or task force looking out for earnest secrets of love.
Yeah, earnest secrets of love. Here's $160,000.
All right, we all want to believe we're too smart to fall for a con, but our propensity to believe in something or someone rests far more on our state of mind than some predisposition.
Someone going through a major life change, a lost job, or a bad breakup is more susceptible, blah, blah, blah.
Anyone, anywhere can be had if the scammer is skilled enough.
I don't really think that's true.
I don't really think that's true. In the U.S. in 2019, some 25,000 people reported being the victim of online romance scams with losses estimated at more than 200 million U.S. dollars.
And of course, that's just the people who admit it.
There are far more people who don't. In Canada, in that same year, 760 Canadians lost $22.5 million for romance scammers.
Romance scams now constitute the highest loss form of consumer fraud.
I mean, to me, massive alamoleon child support payments are...
A massive romance scam, but of course you won't see many articles about that.
Okay, scammers lurk on all platforms.
They construct elaborate excuses, can't meet in person, blah, blah, blah.
They're away on a foreign military posting on an oil rig or with an international aid organization, blah, blah, blah.
All right.
So around the same time as Rootenburg and Smith began their relationship, a woman named Kim Barker logged on to eHarmony.
She was a 43-year-old doctor, a newly single mother of three from Toronto who had just become medical officer of health at blah, blah, blah.
Far from her adult kids and alone in a new city.
Wait, she's a newly single mother, but she had adult kids.
She decided to do online dating.
Sean said he worked in mergers and acquisitions in Toronto.
So mergers and acquisitions, of course, are a dog whistle for I have a lot of money.
No photo on his account, but looks for unimportant to her anyway.
She was legally blind.
A result of contracting malaria during a six-year stint in Tanzania, working for UNICEF in her early 30s.
Oh. - Oh.
43-year-old single mother who's half-blind.
It's going to be kind of tough to have an adventurous dating travel-central lifestyle if you're half-blind.
And my gosh, I mean, she was, I guess, doing pathological altruism stuff in Tanzania.
And she...
What was she doing?
Early 30s, so she's like 43.
So early 30s, 10 years back.
Her kids are adults now, so she basically, let's say her kids are 20, or roughly around 20, and we're talking 10 years back.
So she was working in Tanzania and became blind, or mostly blind, while her kids were 10 or 8 or 12 or 13 or whatever.
Like, what are you doing? What are you doing working for UNICEF in Tanzania when your kids are young?
Did they come with you? Did they also get ill?
Did you stay? Like, what the hell?
It's just bizarre. Anyway, so with regards to her sight, she could still discern the broad strokes of things, like the outlines of a man's face if he was close enough to her.
She could still read a computer screen, too, under the heading, one thing you wish more people knew about you, he'd written, that I really do care.
Again, care being the, I can become obsessed with a woman and give her all my power.
She devoted her life to helping others, and that line resonated.
She clicked match. They were speaking by phone at least twice a day.
The glamorous life he described fascinated her.
His latest venture, he told her, was a platform he was launching with Richard Branson, and he was flying to London Weekly for visits.
It will transform media and advertising, he said.
I have to be honest with you, Sean.
She said, I feel like you're totally out of my league.
I just don't swing in those kinds of circles.
That's what I like about you, he replied.
You're down to earth. Well, yeah, she's down to earth because she's crawling along looking for an exit.
So she knew she needed to learn to trust people.
It had never been her strength, and years of breakups had chipped away at what little trust she had left.
So, this is the way that women are described in articles written by women, right?
This is the way that women are described.
Really got all that, no agency, right?
Years of breakups had chipped away at what little trust she had left.
In other words, she didn't choose the wrong guys.
She didn't act badly in a relationship.
She didn't destroy her relationships with nagging or withholding sex or whatever.
Or she didn't make herself kind of undateable by going and getting malaria, caring for whoever out there in Tanzania.
She didn't make bad decisions in her life.
You know, It's like water wears away the stone.
You can't blame the stone. It was just actions of physics, right?
So years of breakups just chipped away at my little trust.
She had the poor thing. She had no agency and made no choices or anything like that.
He had a mysteriousness that both unnerved and enticed her.
So in September 2013, they got more serious.
He drove to Sault Ste. Marie, which is where she lived.
He was surprised. She was surprised when he arrived in an SUV and not the Aston Martin he had mentioned.
Blah, blah, blah. He's constantly concerned with people tracking him, he said.
As a person of immense wealth, he explained, he was constantly concerned with people tracking him, so he borrowed his brother-in-law's car.
When you make as much money as I do, he said, you like to stay private.
Again, resource access to women in their 40s is like sexual access to men in their 20s.
It is just something that overrides reason.
When you make as much money as I do, you like to stay private.
And he's, you know, people are going to track him, you see.
So he borrows his brother-in-law's car.
But of course, if people are tracking him...
I mean, this just makes no sense.
If people are tracking this guy, then they're going to track him going to borrow his brother-in-law's car, right?
They know where he lives, so he drives with his Aston Martin to go get his brother-in-law's car.
His brother-in-law drops off his car and, what, hangs around at his house?
I mean, this just makes no sense, right?
So, straight-up lie.
And again, he's just...
He's testing to see if she's completely enamored with him to the point where she has no power in the relationship and will do and obey anything he says.
Women do the same thing when they're younger.
They show up late.
I remember once I was in yoga class, asked a woman out, and she wanted to join me at a movie where I was meeting some friends.
And I said, okay, no problem, but we're kind of running late, so if you don't mind hurrying up.
And she took like 25 minutes to come out of the change room, right?
Because she was testing me. She was trying to see if I was somebody who would put up with bad behavior.
In other words, was I so enamored and besotted that I would put up with bad behavior?
And would she have all of this power and control?
And I said, well, you're very late.
But I said to my friends, you were coming.
So let's go see the movie.
I went to see the movie.
I dropped her off. And I never asked her out again.
Because, I mean, it makes no sense.
Like, why would somebody forget? She agreed to hurry, right?
There's no way you hurry 25 minutes.
Anyway... So, yeah, so he's basically making completely incomprehensible stories, the purpose of which is to find out if she has any capacity to judge or call him or any self-esteem or any independence or whatever, right?
Or any skepticism. Okay, the relationship progressed quickly.
They spoke on the phone multiple times a day, met in Toronto on weekends.
He told her about this trivia for good, how proceeds would go to helping people in need.
He urged her to invest, but she declined.
Ah, so she's trying to set up a little bit of financial boundaries and what happens?
He said, this is what happened with my wife.
She didn't want to be involved with me in what I believed in.
She didn't trust me.
So basically he's saying, give me money or I will break up with you.
And then this mirage will be revealed and you're going to actually have to adjust your expectations of sexual market value.
Look, adjusting your expectations of sexual market value is really tough.
is really tough now men go through this in their teens and I know a few men who didn't go through this in their teens and they ended up single for life it's just something you have to do so when you're in your teens as A boy.
You ask out the very prettiest girl or the very highest status girl, the very most attractive girl.
It could be more than looks or whatever.
But you ask out the most attractive girl you can conceive of or you can get in contact with.
And then you work your way down, right?
I remember clearly asking out the most popular girl in school who had a locker near me.
And I said to her...
I must have been 13 or 14.
I said, hey, would you like to go swimming on Friday?
And she turns to me and she says...
With who? Mayday!
Mayday! We're going down!
And I actually met her years later at a party and she really missed being the most popular girl in high school or junior high I guess at that time because sometimes it doesn't last.
So you just keep asking out girls and then you ask out a slightly less attractive girl and eventually you'll find where you settle, right?
And it's You know, we all have high ambitions and then it plays out in a particular way.
And then I had a great makeover because a relative of mine visited me from England and got me off my bowl cut and velcro pants or velour pants and got me.
And it was funny. I had this makeover, in a sense, that turned me from fairly nondescript to a pretty good looking young man.
And it was so startling for people that when I went into school, After I got my weekend makeover, got a good haircut, he went out and paid for really great clothes for me and so on.
And I went into school and I couldn't figure out why no one was talking to me.
And it turned out because everyone thought I was the new kid.
That's how radical the transformation was.
And from there, I could ask out anybody and get a yes.
And it just taught me something.
I hadn't particularly changed except for the exterior of me.
And I got serious swagger and started dating like crazy and went to nightclubs starting about the age of 16 or so.
All of that and learn how to dance and I remember a bunch of the kids who thought I wasn't cool after I'd been going to discos for a year came in and saw me dancing up a storm and asking out girls and all that.
My reputation. Like, it's just funny how these kind of swings occur in life, and you realize just how shallow slash biological the world is.
It's a very, very important lesson.
So, yeah, she is afraid now to figure out what her real sexual market value is.
And, you know, sexual market value doesn't mean just for sex.
It means romantic or dating market value.
But what is her sexual market value as an infertile woman Who is half-blind, or mostly blind?
You know, how far down do you have to go?
Well, she doesn't want to find out, right?
So she just gives her money. She might lose the...
So when she says, oh, my wife didn't want to get involved and didn't trust me and blah, blah, blah, and that's why I divorced her, basically, she says, it says, Barker's stomach tightened.
She might lose the first man she'd grown to care for in years and who wanted her in return.
She wrote him a check for $100,000 and make it out to Sean Rothberg.
When the bank called to verify the transaction, they told her she'd made a spelling mistake.
Sean's last name was Rutenberg, they said.
When she Googled that name and discovered that he had a criminal record, she felt betrayed.
She confronted him. Ooh, bad idea.
When people lie to you about a criminal record, detach.
She confronted him and he mounted an impassioned defense.
He'd been charged with fraud, he said, but it was all a misunderstanding.
He told her how he'd sued RBC, it's a bank, and one, a liar, sued the Toronto Star, a liar, and was in the middle of suing the court system for a terrible miscarriage of justice.
The application was dismissed, so was the appeal.
He showed her court documents as proof.
He'd been mistreated by the banks, the media, and the courts, and all he wanted was a chance to start over.
Well, I've been mistreated by the media, but anyway.
And for those of you watching, there's a picture here.
And yeah, listen, I don't mean to diss her.
I'm sure she's a good doctor and all of that, but she's not an attractive woman.
She's not an attractive woman.
So yeah, mid-40s, divorced, mostly blind, not physically attractive, and yet this millionaire, jet-setter, good-looking guy is like all over her, right?
Come on. Come on.
It sort of reminds me of, oh gosh, what was it, one of the Mike Myers films?
One of the Wayne's World's films?
Dana Carvey plays Garth, I think his name was, and some really, really hot woman totally gets into Garth, who's kind of a nebbish, dweeby nobody, And it turns out it's because she wants him to, what, kill her boyfriend or commit some crime?
I can't remember. But anyway, it's explained why this incredibly hot woman would be going for this average dweeby person, right?
And this is how men are warned about this kind of stuff, right?
In late September, they traveled together to Big White Resort near Kelowna.
Ibaka was a frequent flyer, and she assumed he was too.
Rutenberg had called her from the Maple Leaf Lounge before, or so he said.
dead, so on the day of the flight, she went there expecting to find him.
He wasn't there.
When she reached him on the phone, he explained he didn't want to risk missing the flight, so sat by the gate.
Once she got there, she found him surrounded by luxury magazines, pouring over pages filled with cars, yachts, and vacation spots.
It was bizarre, she thought, that he would buy so many magazines that were available for free in the lounge.
When she said as much, he turned it around on her.
He felt irritated by interrogation and reminded her of the importance of trust in their relationships.
They smoothed things over.
She couldn't shake the feeling that it all seemed a bit strange.
Okay.
I mean, come on.
So... This guy lied to her about his last name and the bank called and said, oh this is his real last name and she googled him and found that he had a criminal history and we'll get into the criminal history in a bit So,
he lied to her about his last name, and lied to her about his criminal history, and lied to her about the Aston Martin, lied to her about being followed, lied to her about why he's not in the frequent flyer lounge.
I mean, come on. But again, men do crazy things for women when men are young, and women do crazy things for men when women are older.
Like, you can listen to the Dear John podcast, About this woman in her late 40s with four failed marriages, I think, three or four failed marriages, who fell for this guy who was a complete scam artist, a drug addict, and ended up trying to kill her daughter.
I mean, this is how long things sort of went on for, right?
So there's some sort of backstory about all of this stuff.
Born into a life of opportunity.
He attended the private United Synagogue Day School and Crescent School.
Strong athlete, good math student, generally popular, blah, blah, blah.
And he tried out for varsity soccer but didn't make the team, so he told friends when he was in his early life, he told friends he'd instead been recruited to pay for the elite Maccabi Canada rep soccer team in Israel.
According to one source, Rutenberg went so far as to buy the uniform and travel to Israel during the tournament.
So... He ended up with a job at a collections agency, right?
So people who phone you up and say you've got to pay your bills and all of that.
He met a physiotherapist named Lena Rothstein and So, they had children, and his, Rutenberg's in-laws, loaned the money towards a down payment in a home in Lawrence Park, according to a source. His job didn't afford him the lifestyle of his neighbors, but he spent like crazy.
He bought himself a Porsche when his wife wanted to improve her cooking.
He flew to Italy for classes.
And so he didn't like doing collections work.
He created a fake resume and with a colleague formed a management consultancy.
He talked his way into a business strategy role at Dell, which is a computer company, and then he moved on to Compaq.
The ruse lasted until his bosses realized he didn't have the skills he claimed, but before they could fire him, he talked his way into another business role, blah, blah, blah.
So... I mean, this really kind of just scammed a whole bunch of people, and things went pretty badly, and...
He offered to invest.
The doctor invested $20,000 when he got a 20% return.
He invested another $75,000, which disappeared.
A senior lawyer at a Bay Street firm bought in as an NHL player.
Of course, their money was never invested.
It just went into his personal slush fund.
And this is before Bernie Madoff and all of that.
And so Ponzi schemes weren't much in people's consciousness and all of that.
And let's see here.
He was the star of the company at this collections agency until his bosses received calls from strangers asking why money had been withdrawn from their accounts.
The company discovered that the account numbers Rutenberg had written on deposit slips were real but didn't belong to the debtors he purported to collect from.
He was fired but managed to talk his way into another agency.
According to a former co-worker within a week, regulatory officers walked in, pulled him from his cubicle, tore up his license and banned him from the industry.
So, anyway, his wife eventually divorced him, and he went on a whole bunch of pillaging and all of that, and let's see here.
He found another victim and executive in 2006, an executive from Montreal.
After dating for a while, and after she'd loaned him more than $200,000, they bought a home next door to where his brother and sister-in-law lived, a five-bedroom house in Lawrence Park, blindingly expensive.
She thought she'd met the father of her future children.
He thought he'd discovered a gold mine.
At this point, he perfected his sales pitch.
And you can see this, again, I want to sort of really understand the seesaw that happens between the generations, right?
So when men are young, their lust for women makes them vulnerable to being financially exploited by women.
When women get to what used to be called a certain age, which is basically post-fertility, their Loneliness and low sexual market value makes them susceptible for financial exploitation from men, right? So men end up sinking a lot of money into women when they're young, and women end up sinking a lot of money into men when they get older, right?
It's really, really important to understand these things, right?
So a tech entrepreneur gave him $250,000.
A Florida financer named Jeremy Schwimmer wired him $400,000 and so on.
And anyway, he never really got their money back.
And then what happened was he started doing other kinds of frauds with the banks and mortgages.
And so he ended up...
He ended up pleading guilty to two counts of fraud totaling $2.2 million and he just served a couple of years in jail.
Pretty wild. And in jail, he typically slept for just four hours a night, and his cellmate was Joseph Gromofsk, a Canadian lawyer convicted of insider trading in 2009.
He shared a unit with Garth Drabinski, the former theater impresario, who was convicted of fraud in 2009 for a scheme that cost investors an estimated $500 million.
Rutenberg made friends with Drabinski's associate, Myron Gottlieb, who'd also been convicted of fraud, and he would later assist Rutenberg with setting up trivia for good.
Anyway, so he was released in 2012, tried to pick up where he left off, and got into other kinds of scams.
But the important thing is the women here, right?
It was eight months after Rutenberg's release in prison that Victoria Smith, the divorced mom who loved to travel, fell for him.
That's the woman from the beginning. She had no idea that her boyfriend had spent three years in prison and was a career con artist, right?
So $2.2 million, three years in prison.
That's like a Gowan song, right?
So what is that? $700,000 and change a year for three years in prison.
I mean, it's crazy. It's crazy.
To me, you get a year for every $100,000.
A rational legal system would be for every $100,000 you scam from someone, you get a year in prison, which would be 22 years in prison for this guy, right?
Because otherwise, I mean, even that's kind of generous because it's got to be a lot less than a salary, right?
Okay, so within months of meeting him, she'd had over $160,000, and then Rutenberg said, hey, do you want to invest the rest of your savings?
And so she gave him a bank draft for $435,000, the rest of her savings.
Well, and they're not really savings, because I don't think she saved that money.
I think she got it from the divorce, right?
So he goes straight to the car dealership and walks out with a BMW. So, Rutenberg paid for three vacations to the Bahamas, of course, with Hermione Vons bringing along his sons and Smith's daughter.
So... While Rutenberg was dating Smith, he would visit his other girlfriend, Kim Barker.
This is the half-blind doctor, convinced her to invest $100,000.
Now, Barker had explained she was having trouble finding a qualified candidate to serve as chief financial officer to oversee Algoma Public Health's $23 million annual expense budget and $25 million worth of assets.
So, long story short...
This woman hires this guy, Rutenberg, her boyfriend as interim chief financial officer with a salary of $205,400 without disclosing their relationship to the board, right?
It was incredibly bad.
Incredibly, incredibly, incredibly bad.
What can I tell you?
What can I tell you?
To hire a guy With a history of being a con man as a chief financial officer overseeing $25 million of spending in assets, give or take, without telling that he's your boyfriend.
Oh man, just terrible.
Just terrible. So, it just gets nuts, right?
He explained his odd behavior so well, right?
This is his odd behavior. He'd pay for everything in cash, even ticket items that says it was a matter of privacy.
She agreed to open a joint bank account in her name because she said his criminal record prevented him from doing so.
She also applied for a MasterCard and added him to the account, which meant the bank didn't complete a background check on him.
When he started ringing up the account, she was unaware.
He'd signed them up for paperless billing and only he knew the password to the online account.
I mean, come on. Come on!
I mean, you put this in a novel, people wouldn't believe it.
Like, okay, I know she's blind, but she can't be that blind.
And she's a smart woman. She's a doctor, right?
Not wise, but smart.
And, come on.
I mean, a matter of privacy?
If he's so into privacy, then...
Why does he want it to be added to the account of MasterCard?
Why does he even have a joint bank account if he's so into privacy, right?
And if you put someone with a history of being a con man on your credit card and then, well, she was unaware because only he knew the password to the online account.
I mean, come on. I mean, it's one of the things you'd want to ask for, right?
Eventually, Rutenberg struggled to manage both relationships.
Anyway, it doesn't really matter here.
There's a bar mitzvah and...
Ends up that the two women find out about each other and there's a confrontation and a surge of panic arose in this woman.
Wait, which of the woman is this?
Let me just double check here.
Smith, right? So this is the first woman.
A surge of panic rose on her where was her money.
She asked for it back, but he convinced her it would all work out if she just gave him her trust and some time.
She decided not to call the police.
if he stayed in the relationship.
She thought she might get her $600,000 back.
Her decision didn't last.
It was too hard to be with someone she didn't trust.
After one last trip together to New York, she broke up with him.
She stayed in touch with him, exchanging texts and talking on the phone, where she had before asked politely for her money.
Now she insisted he'd respond by toying with her, proposing a date to meet to sign the necessary documents, and then rescheduling again and again.
Yeah, so three years and six months for $2.2 million.
Whew. When Smith finally realized deep down that her life savings were gone, she was devastated.
So again, in my particular opinion, she got the money unjustly through the divorce, and now he got the money illegally, or unjustly at least, through scamming her.
Her days became a haze of panic attacks and tears.
She became deeply depressed and stopped seeing most of her friends, probably experiencing what her husband experienced during the divorce.
Swallowed by shame and uncertain how she'd tell everyone what happened, she couldn't keep food down.
She attempted suicide. She went to rehab.
When she texted Rutenberg to tell him she was thinking about trying to kill herself again, he texted back, please don't, and I wish you would get back together with me.
Smith moved out of her home and in with a friend.
Her family kept her close, calling every few hours to make sure she was still alive.
Now, where are her friends and her family?
You know, I've had so many men call me over the years in my call-in show to talk about how They were in too deep with some woman and so on, and this is where the dick-knack phrase came from.
You've got to look out for the people in your life.
If they're on the verge of falling into these scams or whatever, you've got to, got to, got to.
Please, my friends, I'm begging you, please look out for the people in your life.
Lust washes us away, and only friends and family who are outside the situation can rebuild.
I almost got married to the wrong woman.
It would have been a complete disaster for my life.
And I was saved by a friend.
I mean, I guess Elton John style, right?
So, I won't give you the full story, but I was engaged.
And a friend of mine's wife said to me, normally people who are engaged seem a whole lot happier.
And I thought about it, and I thought about it.
It's one of these phrases that just drops into your life.
You never know what little phrase you're going to drop in that's going to save someone from a disaster.
Please get involved. The scammers don't want you to get involved.
The exploiters don't want you to get involved.
Please, please get involved.
Because if your friends are like, your friends and family, oh, you've got a friend that's going to put you up and your family keep calling you for a few hours to make sure she was still alive.
Where were her friends and family when she was handing over massive amounts of money to a guy she met six weeks before?
Come on. Come on.
Now, maybe they were there.
Maybe they told her all about this.
In which case, what they needed to do was to have an intervention and say, look, if you have anything to do with this guy, we're not going to have anything to do with you.
And that will, like a needy person who generally falls for these kinds of scams, will respond very positively, angrily, but positively in the long run to an intervention where you say, if you choose this guy six weeks on the internet who's asking you for huge amounts of money, we're going to have nothing to do with you because we can't get involved in this.
And we don't want to end up being party to some lawsuit or some crime situation.
So no. So help me now or try and save me later.
That's the way it is, right? So, the sick carousel of broken promises.
Rutenberg's Banford Smith lasted two years.
Finally, she called for police and, anyway, fraud cases she ended up trying to help with.
So, in January 2015, three months after Smith finally saw through Rutenberg's lies, Barker had her own reckoning.
And... So, let's see here.
It doesn't really matter, but...
They find out that her boyfriend with a criminal history was the man that she hired to manage all of these resources that the public health has, right?
The mayor called Barker incensed.
Barker was mortified. She resigned in disgrace and took a job in Iqalui as the territory's health officer.
But despite the major transgression, she stayed with Rutenberg.
She still loved him.
Oh. So he's ruined her career, he's ruined her finances, and was still fearful she wouldn't find another partner to spend her life with.
They vacationed together in the Bahamas.
By then, they'd been together for almost three years.
Ugh. The CIBC called to tell her, a bank called to tell her that he'd rung up $28,000 in overdraft on their shared accounts.
She was stunned. And, ugh, it's just wretched.
And, um... So, she finds out about the other girl, she meets with the guy, and he just shows up.
They have a meaningless exchange, and he leaves her with the bill.
In July of 2019, Bruttenberg was convicted of defrauding Smith, but it's unlikely she'll ever get her money back, and he's delaying things like crazy, of course, and with coronavirus, the courts have slowed down as a whole.
For Smith wants an open-hearted, free spirit.
This is not... You have to have this story of this pure, innocent, agentless, virtuous, virgin, white-haired Valkyrie of joy and hope that gets broken into and smashed up by a sinister man and she has no agency in it whatsoever,
right? For Smith, once an open-hearted free spirit, that's how you describe somebody who's needy and naive and is willing to surrender basic common sense and put health resources at risk in what turned out to be a pandemic, right? Barker says she'll never date again.
How could I? She says softly.
The emotional ramifications feel endless and the financial repercussions keep crashing over her life like waves.
So, yeah, it's rough.
It's rough. A former colleague of Sean's has had his credit decimated so badly, even his 90-year-old mother was told to take her banking business elsewhere.
A friend who invested a quarter mil that he never got back nearly lost his house.
And it just goes on and on and on.
And it doesn't really matter what the end of it is, but it's crazy, crazy stuff.
It's crazy stuff.
So, look...
Love is our involuntary response to virtue.
If you want love, you need to be virtuous.
You need to have integrity. You need to be honest.
You need to stand up for what you believe in.
You need to have wisdom. You need to be a positive force in people's lives, and you need to tell the truth, and you need to stand up and help people.
Everyone talks about family and friendship, and there's nothing more important than friends and family and so on.
But if people really lived like that, if they formed a protective phalanx around everyone's capacity To be taken in as the result of lust or neediness or loneliness or a desire for higher status or whatever.
If we actually truly cared about each other, these people would have no purchase.
It is a lack of love.
I mean, this guy, a pathological con man and so on, knows how to play these women, but how is it that these women are so easy to play?
Why is it that people aren't standing up to protect these people from these exploiters?
Now, in Dirty John, the woman's family does, you know, really not want to have anything to do with her if she keeps dating this guy.
And the man, I can't remember who, does put a barrier and says, you can't be around here, you can't be around my kids because I don't want this guy around my kids or whatever.
But it is really, really, really important that we protect each other and stand up to these people.
And if it means that you have to threaten to cut off a relationship with somebody who is...
Bringing a predator into your life?
Then that's what you have to do.
It's the best chance that they have to be saved.
And we also need to remind women that all of the heady romantic and sexual power that they enjoy in their 20s will be completely reversed in their 40s should they remain single.
And what they need to do is spend their highest sexual market value time gaining a quality, virtuous, steady, dependable man.
And he may not be some David Beckham high-status, David Beckham lookalike high-status investment banker, six-foot-two with a motorcycle, rock-hot abs, like this complete fantasy that doesn't exist.
It may not be that.
But it will be a guy Who, you know, by the time you get into your mid-40s, let's say you marry in your early to mid-20s, by the time you get into your mid-40s, your fertility is gone, your looks are fading and all of that, and the man is very, very high status, you already have enough shared love and experience and joy that he's not going to be interested in looking for a younger woman.
I mean, I'm not looking for a younger woman.
I've been married close to 20 years.
It would never cross my mind.
It would never be of interest to me because my wife and I have wound our lives together so beautifully that there's no upgrade, there's no substitute, there's nothing better.
So, we need to remind women.
Now, of course, we do the exact opposite.
What we do in the media as a whole is, post-divorce, women always end up with some young, hot guy who's a sculptor and just worships her, and she has all this crazy sex, and she never seems to worry about any bills, and she's never...
Or like there's a Bridget Jones diary thing where this lonely, infinite breakup, sexually used up woman, Bridget Jones, ends up with like two billionaires vying to become I mean, a woman in her 40s who gets knocked up by some guy and the idea that there's these two billionaires who are just going to do anything they can and fight over her.
I mean, it is so destructive.
It is almost like an act of war against the next generation to allow women to maintain themselves in these delusions that The value of their 20s is going to continue into their 40s.
It's so destructive and it's so harmful to women.
You know, care about women? Yeah, I care about women.
I want women to be happy. I want them to be in stable, loving, committed, monogamous, permanent relationships.
Now, this is not the way.
This is a cautionary tale that I guess I'll be one of the few people who will tell the truth about, because all of this is about, oh, she was a hopeful, wonderful woman, and she just got taken in, and everybody could happen to anyone, and blah, blah, and it's all the man's fault, and yeah, the man's a bad guy.
Absolutely, the man's a bad guy, and there are bad guys out there, and he's not a violent guy, though, right?
He relies upon Participation in delusion and the more we hold reality away from people and we hold reality away from men to some degree but in particular modern society is holding the truth away from women to the point where they're becoming dangerously deluded as you can see in this It is just brutal what we're doing to women and how much reality we're withholding from them.
And it is destabilizing the family.
It is destabilizing society.
And yeah, ladies, if you're in a marriage and you've got kids, I'm not saying stay in an abusive marriage or anything like that.
Of course not. But, you know, the number one reason, like the vast majority of divorces are initiated by women.
And the number one reason given for the divorce is something called dissatisfaction.
Yeah, well, welcome to life, man.
Everybody gets dissatisfaction from time to time.
Everybody feels dissatisfied from time to time.
It may last for quite a while.
It hasn't happened to me in my marriage, but I know that it does happen.
So, just realize that what's on the other side of that divorce is a pretty lonely and horrible life where you kind of have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for someone who'll be with you.
And I talked to this woman years ago Who was really shocked that in her late 40s, she suddenly flipped.
She could no longer attract anyone, any man in her 30s.
She could now only attract men in their 60s.
And she's like, I don't want to be someone's nurse.
And I'm like, well, unfortunately, you're a woman in your 50s.
And she was living with a guy basically because he had a nice house and he might die soon.
I think I might have used the phrase straddling the Nazgul for a house or something like that.
But it's brutal. And women should not Like, if a man makes mistakes in his twenties, he can correct them.
But if a woman After her sexual market value is mostly gone, she can't rewind.
She can't go back and get that in return.
She can't go back and get that back.
So this is something we really need to remind women.
Please remind them. Stop dating around.
Stop milking your sexual market value for free vacations and dinners and trips and stop chasing after the top 5% of alpha males because they'll just use you up and keep moving on to younger models and then you'll end up in the 40s trash heap of Male begging.
Begging for males. And it's unbelievably brutal.
It comes as a deep and profound shock and a lot of pathology within society is designed to keep this truth away from women so that they continue to waste their fertility and smart people continue to have fewer babies and Western civilization continues its demographic decline.
Get out there. Get married young.
Have your babies young. There's plenty of time for your career when you get older and Have a happy continuation of society.
This is Ben Molyneux for Free Domain.
Hope you're doing well. Please, if you find this helpful, FreeDomain.com forward slash donate.
Really, really appreciate your support.
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