A Family’s Betrayal: The Life Within

Crooks run this world, just keep that in mind. When we think of a criminal dealing with large sums of money, we visualize modern icons like Bernie Madoff, the Lehman Brothers, even David Ershon. Them, like many others who own a solid fraction of the world’s wealth, have done their fair share of bad in society and should be incarcerated for life.

However, not every money-robbing criminal can be blamed for.

My name is Penelope Pauley, a former IRS Deputy Commissioner who ran the Services and Enforcements Department from 2010 to 2020. I went on to discover many tax evaders and multi-millionaires during my time, most notably taking down Wells Fargo’s COO for tax fraud in 2016, hitting my record of collecting $738 million in offshore revenue. It was a hell of a job, but I loved it.

However, this story doesn’t end the way you’d want it to. It’s not the kind of relief you get from those happy ending Disney films you watch with the family. Far from it.

This is the story of Kamil Kardasz, a nobody that was born into the somebodies.

I didn’t know him before, but almost every breathing thing on the planet has heard of the Kardasz family. Going as far as the 1600s, the Kardasz family was one of the first ones to discover the modern-day taxing system. They were the pioneers of accounting, and while you disagree and state that taxing the people of society goes way back to the barbaric times, well you’re right. However, the Kardasz family pushed to also provide more income for families rather than sending off nearly all your pay to the kings and queens of the time.

Now, after their successful debut in cornering the money market with their idea, they went off to become one of the richest families in the history of the world. This led to all offsprings of the family becoming born with a golden spoon and a bowl of diamonds next to them. Every family member went off to become an investor, a business owner, even heads of the world’s biggest banks. It wasn’t until Elisa Kardasz – aunt to Kamil Kardasz – would be the face of one of the biggest designer brands for the high class called Depois.

Elisa Kardasz was like Anna Wintour, Karl Lagerfeld, Kate Spade – you name it. She lived in Hong Kong after developing her brand and lived a lavish lifestyle. It wasn’t until she passed away at the age of 82 that made her death a national day for fashion-lovers.

Elisa had no home, no family. While she may have had a net worth of nearly a billion dollars, her heart was hollow. The Kardasz family split their own ways over the centuries and lost touch with their family name.

However, just because she had no family herself didn’t mean she was going to throw away all the money that she made – it had to go somewhere. Elisa had a poor connection with her brothers and sisters, but there was one name she had in mind: Kamil.

Kamil to her was someone special. A first-born for her brother Theodore, she used to spend quality time with Kamil when she would come to visit them in Manhattan, as they would go visit her in Hong Kong. When Kamil’s parents passed away, they left him nothing from their fortunes, resulting in him being lost to his own devices and having no hope for the future. I guess Elisa wanted Kamil to have the life the Kardasz’s always had, so he left him a small inheritance of $500 million.

For you and I, $500 million is more than we could ever ask for. It was more than Kamil could have imagined, but that sum is only a fraction of what half the Kardasz family members had in their accounts. Life of the wealthy, that is for certain.

Kamil, before the money, was not rich. For a man living a 9 to 5 lifestyle outside of New York City, slaving away at an office job he hated, he did it all to at least give his two children a sample of the rich childhood he once had. Now that Kamil ended with this beautiful inheritance, he was able to give his family what many of us only dream of.

Kamil quit his job. He closed the doors of his New York townhouse and took the family for a summer-long vacation. Based on his transactions that I tracked at the IRS, he was having a blast.

He bought 4 houses in the summer of 2019, with costs ranging between $1.5 to $5.8 million. The inheritor purchased a yacht for $2.1 million, a Porsche dealership for $12 million in cash, and a castle in Scotland for $60 million. Yet, after all that money spent, he had more than enough to keep his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and beyond happy.

I felt for the guy. If I ended up as a deadbeat with nowhere to go after my own parents wouldn’t give me a dime from their wealthy share of assets, I too would flip them off and live the life I wanted. I began to be entertained by his way of living.

Fast forward to the summer of 2020, one whole year after his discovery of wealth.

Back in Hong Kong, a controversial national security bill was passed for Hong Kongers to be extradited to China for their supposed crimes. This led to many media tycoons, hedge fund managers, and underground heads being persecuted in mainland China. It was a difficult time for the special administrative region to experience.

My team at the IRS and I were doing our usual duties at headquarters: chatting away, filling out papers, reaching out to certain someones and so on. It wasn’t until I received a call from the Directorate of Operations at the CIA and began to understand what was going on in Hong Kong.

It turned out that Chinese authorities ended up confiscating the rest of the late Elisa Kardasz’s assets in her penthouse suite in Causeway Bay, HK. There were a few things here and there that no one, even Kamil, decided to take back home. There was a vase, her old bed frame, and a small black ledger.

“What was in the ledger?” I asked, curious to see what sort of connection an important phone call from such a higher-up and a black book has.

After long negotiations with the Chinese Government and the CIA to send the ledger back on domestic soil, we ended up getting the piece of information in our hands. What I enjoyed more than anything with my job was that there was always this excitement of finding something from our cases, and while some may find a light at the end of the tunnel, others can only see a dark abyss waiting to swallow them.

Countless days and weeks passed by as my team and I were trying to connect the dots of what this ledger held. We were getting in touch with every contact from the book, investigating every transaction from 1961 to 2018, and travelling to the banks’ head offices in search of Elisa Kardasz’s name connected to them.

What we ultimately discovered was nothing short of a Ponzi scheme.

Elisa Kardasz never made the money from her designer products, she stole it all. She robbed multi-millionaire investors from all corners of the world, with hopes that they would all make a fortune from a fashion brand. Stealing nearly $1.4 billion in cash, the woman became an evil filled with greed. No wonder she was exiled from the Kardasz family.

As we made this discovery, I had to find out where the money is right now, and the only name I could think of was Kamil.

It was more than a year since he inherited the money, so there was hope that he’d still hold on to most of it, if not all if we could freeze his assets. As I went forward with the investigation to track him down and hold his account, I realized that it was already too late.

Kamil Kardasz’s account read that he had $100.13 million left.

I could not believe it. It turned out to be true, however. Kamil wasted 80% of his inheritance on investing in new technologies, spending a ton of it on luxurious items and giving it away to hundreds of his friends and family members to live well off.

We couldn’t arrest all of them, and neither did I want to arrest him for a crime he didn’t commit. But it had to be done. My team and I decided to contact the FBI to track down Kamil Kardasz and hold him accountable for his actions. This wasn’t a John Dillinger moment, this was a Bernie Madoff moment.

The FBI captured Kamil and placed him on trial 2 months later. There was no way out of this. Dozens of family members of the multi-millionaires that Elisa stole from appeared at the New York County Supreme Court, making their statements that the Kardasz family are nothing but scum.

I wasn’t at the courthouse, but it was aired on the news for all to see. It may have not been the trial of the century since it lasted no more than the morning, but it was nearly impossible for me to watch a man who didn’t know anything about Elisa’s filthy actions being locked up for 90 years in a maximum-security facility outside of Louisiana.

Kamil didn’t do this, nor did he ever have this thought in mind that all of his money was basically fake. He didn’t know anything behind Elisa’s motives. All she ended up doing was feeding him to the sharks.

A month after his incarceration, I quit my job. Shortly after that day, I was constantly hit with disbelief that this is how justice worked. I get it, though, I really do. The FBI and IRS worked together to sell all of Kamil’s personal assets to produce $50 million. It may have been far from the $500 million he inherited, but it was better than nothing.

I never went to go visit Kamil, simply because he has no idea who I even am. I learned that the Kardasz family, just like how they were to Elisa, left him in the dust. Another family member, gone.

As aforementioned, crooks run this world. Not every criminal is bad, and not every ethical follower is good. What I’m saying is that sometimes the ones seen as heroes end up being the villain in the plot. Stories like this that I have acquired through my life make me realize how broken the judicial system really is. Everyone has to blame someone if not them.

I’m currently writing this as I have background noise coming from CNN on my TV. It turns out that Chinese officials are investigating more and more wealthy individuals’ accounts, deeming most of them as suspicious. Anderson Cooper is starting his show off as the headline on the channel reads: STOCK EXCHANGE MOGUL DEFEATED – WHAT WAS IN THE LEDGER?

This is Penelope Pauley, signing off.