In my beginning is my end……….Danny Pang, from an adolescent and onward, just wanted to be liked, admired, and  be flush in cash for an extravagant lifestyle.

As a kid in Las Vegas, he’d take numerous friends to high end restaurants and foot the entire bill. Everyone wanted to be with him, and it seems, that’s what he wanted.

How he financed these spending sprees is another story.  Once, he was caught taking money out of a cash register of a motel run by a friend’s family. He denied stealing, and was able to convince the owner not to prosecute if Pang took him out for dinner.

Another time, a friend’s ATM card went missing, after she had withdrew cash with Pang standing next to her.  A security camera showed that Pang used the card. When confronted, Pang said he found it on the floor.

Later in life, the stakes got bigger, but the modus operandi stayed the same: bamboozle people out of money and then deny it.  At 42,at the time of his death, he was accused of running a vast Ponzi scheme, used to finance a lavish lifestyle, including Lear jets, numerous BMW’s and Mercedes, and huge gambling debts. 

The company , PEMGroup, was a huge money generator, based on blatant lies, and Pang’s ability to sell.  Pang claimed to have graduated from U of California, Irvine with BA and MBA degrees. The school has said that Pang registered for one summer session, and certainly didn’t graduate with any degrees. To get investors, Pang lied about important people he supposedly was doing business with. He said he once worked with Michael Milken, the famous junk bond trader. Pang also said he that he used to be a senior executive at Morgan Stanley., another lie. Pang was a salesman par excellence. One of his associates said Pang could “sell snow to an Eskimo.”

Something about Pang is very attractive. Sure, he was a thief, a liar and a scoundrel, and fleeced huge amounts of money from people ($600 million at last count from PEMGroup activities), but he was so clear and open and consistent as to what he wanted out of life, that I kinda admire him.