An interesting thing from the article I only looked a tiny bit into is the story about Louis Ziskin. The article mentions Ziskin, CEO of AirQueen, one of the companies that got the counterfeit...
An interesting thing from the article I only looked a tiny bit into is the story about Louis Ziskin. The article mentions Ziskin, CEO of AirQueen, one of the companies that got the counterfeit gloves:
Louis Ziskin decided to go to Thailand in an effort to recover his company's lost $2.7 million, but things quickly went wrong.
Ziskin and several others were arrested and charged with assault and kidnapping after a confrontation in a Bangkok restaurant.
Ziskin says he wasn't there and strenuously denied the charges.
I've only briefly searched online, but I think the story is more interesting than it first appeared. This press release from DropIn, another company Ziskin founded and was CEO of, explains he was actually in Thailand, not to recover some of the money AirQueen lost, but to
file a criminal fraud complaint with the Economic Crimes Division of the Royal Thai Police
The press release mentioned several news articles falsely reported or gave misleading/incorrect facts about when he was arrested in Thailand. For example this Daily Mail article (archive link, since it's a source I've heard that is not particularly reputable) says Ziskin was a former US marine but DropIn says he was never a marine nor enlisted in any military service. I also found other articles/news sources with images and videos, and the situation does sound a bit like a movie plot.
I'm not sure if Ziskin had anything to do with the kidnapping/attempted murder/ransom case, but there actually is footage of a person that looks like they are being dragged out of a restaurant against their will. Some stuff about an Israeli private detective being hired, a different person who actually was a former US marine and other foreign collaborators (some still on the hunt from Thailand’s Crime Suppression Division), and a Taiwanese businessman being forced to call his employers for a ransom all sounds to me like something from a Taken film or other action flick.
A months-long CNN investigation has found that tens of millions of counterfeit and second-hand nitrile gloves have reached the United States, according to import records and distributors who bought the gloves -- and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Criminal investigations are underway by the authorities in the US and Thailand.
[...]
The gloves, produced almost entirely in south and east Asia, rely on a finite supply of natural rubber, highly-specialized factories and niche manufacturing expertise. Ramping up supply couldn't happen quickly and production from trusted, established brands was spoken for years in advance.
Governments and hospital systems scrambled to get what they needed -- and dozens of shady companies looking to turn a quick profit saw an opportunity.
[...]
CNN attempted to reach all of the importers. The vast majority did not respond but two did say the shipments were substandard and the gloves weren't even nitrile. One company, Uweport, told CNN they were unable to re-sell them to medical companies, as planned. Instead, they were sold at a lower price to distributors that supply American food processing plants, hotels and restaurants.
The other company, US Liberty LLC had a very similar experience with Paddy the Room. It says it was also bilked by a different Vietnemese company which sent them "gloves with holes, with stains, ripped, and in different shades and colours," company President Firas Jarrar told CNN.
[...]
Stein, who has built up a following of buyers and sellers on LinkedIn, often finds himself counseling people who lost millions of dollars to nitrile glove fraud and trying to talk people out of signing deals that are clearly too good to be true. He says the discounts on offer are often impossibly steep.
An interesting thing from the article I only looked a tiny bit into is the story about Louis Ziskin. The article mentions Ziskin, CEO of AirQueen, one of the companies that got the counterfeit gloves:
I've only briefly searched online, but I think the story is more interesting than it first appeared. This press release from DropIn, another company Ziskin founded and was CEO of, explains he was actually in Thailand, not to recover some of the money AirQueen lost, but to
The press release mentioned several news articles falsely reported or gave misleading/incorrect facts about when he was arrested in Thailand. For example this Daily Mail article (archive link, since it's a source I've heard that is not particularly reputable) says Ziskin was a former US marine but DropIn says he was never a marine nor enlisted in any military service. I also found other articles/news sources with images and videos, and the situation does sound a bit like a movie plot.
I'm not sure if Ziskin had anything to do with the kidnapping/attempted murder/ransom case, but there actually is footage of a person that looks like they are being dragged out of a restaurant against their will. Some stuff about an Israeli private detective being hired, a different person who actually was a former US marine and other foreign collaborators (some still on the hunt from Thailand’s Crime Suppression Division), and a Taiwanese businessman being forced to call his employers for a ransom all sounds to me like something from a Taken film or other action flick.
From the article:
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