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Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

It is heartbreaking to watch the violence that is taking place on the streets of Minneapolis.  I have quite a few relatives that live in the Twin Cities area, and I have been there many times.  In the old days it always felt so peaceful, but not anymore.  The tragic death of George Floyd has unleashed a massive wave of anger, and the riots have made headlines all over the globe.  Originally, many had anticipated that Thursday night would not be as violent as Wednesday night was, but that was not a safe assumption to make.  Around 10 o’clock, protesters stormed into the Minneapolis Police Department’s 3rd Precinct building and set it on fire…

Minneapolis is in the midst of a third night of unrest in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, with protesters taking over the police department’s 3rd Precinct building late Thursday night.

The break-in happened at about 10 p.m., with helicopter footage showing a large fire burning near the main entrance.

Police released a statement, saying in part, “in the interest of the safety of our personnel, the Minneapolis Police Department evacuated the 3rd Precinct of its staff. Protesters forcibly entered the building and have ignited several fires.”

As the building burned, fireworks were being shot into the sky in celebration.

Of course the violence that we witnessed the previous evening was quite alarming as well.  By the end of the night, rioters had torched and looted a number of prominent retail stores…

Shocking images Thursday morning showed the widespread destruction left overnight after stores including Wendy’s, Target, Walmart and Autozone were looted and some even set on fire.

Mayor Frey pleaded for calm ahead of more expected protests this evening telling residents ‘we cannot let tragedy beget more tragedy.’

Videos also showed what was reported to be an apartment building entirely engulfed by flames as rioters stood and watched and the fire department was nowhere to be seen.

I don’t think that any of us will ever forget watching a Target store being looted, and at this point Target has decided to close all of their locations in the entire state “until further notice”.

Overall, more than 50 buildings were burned down on Wednesday night, and one protester boldly declared that “the whole city can burn down”…

“The whole city can burn down. They should all be out here protesting, not just people who care about black lives. Everybody. Burn it down. Make them pay. Maybe then they’ll understand,” one protester, Elicia S.—she declined to give her full last name—told The Daily Beast late Wednesday.

“I read somewhere that you’re never gonna care until it hits your front door. We are here now, knocking in the front door,” demonstrator Becky Mathews added.

Sadly, it isn’t just the rioters that are out of control.

When George Floyd was arrested, it wasn’t for committing a violent crime.  He was accused of “allegedly trying to pay at a local deli with a counterfeit $20 bill”, and surveillance video from the scene does not support police claims that he resisted arrest.

Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for eight entire minutes, and video of the moment when Floyd finally lost consciousness is absolutely horrifying.

Of course this is far from an isolated incident.  According to the Los Angeles Times, approximately one out of every 1000 African-American males will die at the hands of our police…

About 1 in 1,000 black men and boys in America can expect to die at the hands of police, according to a new analysis of deaths involving law enforcement officers. That makes them 2.5 times more likely than white men and boys to die during an encounter with cops.

Look, I have friends that are current or former police officers, and I am so thankful for the good men and women that work so hard to protect all of us day in and day out.

But the truth is that there are a lot of really bad apples out there, and troubling incidents are happening with increasing frequency all over the nation.

For example, a young mother named Sara Walton Brady was recently arrested by the police in Idaho for simply taking her children to play in the park.  The following comes directly from a message that she sent to me, and she said that I could share it with all of you…

On April 21, 2020 I saw a video on Facebook by other moms about a playdate at Kleiner Park scheduled for the afternoon. That video showed people at the park and the tape ripped down from the play structures. I decided to go with my two middle children and showed up about an hour late.

I was only there 5-10 minutes when three officers from the Meridian Police Department arrived; one Sgt. And two officers. The Sgt., who I now know is Sgt. Fiscus, came marching onto the playground ordering all of the children and moms off of the bark and playground area while brusquely explaining that the city of Meridian the parks and they were closed by the order of the governor and the mayor.

This obviously upset several of the moms there, including myself. I attempted to ask questions to the Sgt. About what authority he had to remove people from the park. During this attempted dialogue he continued to tell people that the playground area was closed and people needed to leave. However, he continually directed people to a concentrated area on the grass, which would have been a violation of the Idaho governor’s order of being closer than 6 feet. None of this made sense to me as I saw multiple other people recreating in the park – walking, fishing, and even people playing a game of basketball. It also didn’t make sense to me why we could be closer together on the grass and it was okay to violate that portion of this new found rule, but not on the park where the kids and the adults were much more spread out.

As I continued to ask these questions the situation became more heated and eventually the officer told me I had five seconds to leave the park or he was going to arrest me. The officer then proceeded to count down to me, as I often do to my children when they are not listening. I told him “Fine! Arrest me for being in a park! Do it!” While turning around to his threat.

I was placed inside the back of a very hot patrol car and left there for several minutes at which time I was eventually booked into jail for a misdemeanor trespassing charge. I was also accused of tearing the tape down on the playground that was had been placed there previously. I did not tear down any tape as it was down when I arrived. I was told that children had ripped it down.

.Multiple other people were on the bark while I was arrested yet no one else was charged with trespassing, cited, or arrested I was also told that after I was transported to the jail that several people went back onto the bark (after tearing more tape down) and began playing on the playground and bark as the police watched. None of this was addressed by the police.

My case has now been conflicted to the State of Idaho. This is very concerning to me that they have not dismissed the case and they have unlimited resources to make an example of me. It’s also concerning to me that while people are losing their jobs and businesses’ that the State would use hard earned taxpayer money to waste on a mom who was at a park with her kids and try to make an example of me.

Please help me raise funds for legal fees to fight the State of Idaho. I am told that it could cost anywhere from $30,000-$50,000. You can go to supportsarabrady.com.

Sincerely,
Sara Walton Brady

I was friends with Sara Walton Brady long before this incident occurred, and I can tell you that she is a rock solid citizen.

In fact, Idaho would not be in the giant mess that it is today if a lot more patriots like her lived in the state.

Unfortunately, the truth is that the whole country is a giant mess, and what we have witnessed so far is just the beginning.

Our entire society is on the brink of a complete and utter meltdown, and I expect that the upcoming election will bring tensions that have been simmering all over the nation to a boiling point.

There is a reason why so many people are looking to move out of our major cities right now.  America is literally in the process of coming apart at the seams, and there will be a lot more rioting, looting and civil unrest in the days ahead.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) released the transcripts between then-incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kisliak, which revealed that Flynn asked Russia to take “reciprocal” against sanctions levied by the Obama administration over interference in the 2016 US election.

“I ask Russia to do is to not, if anything, I know you have to have some sort of action, to only make it reciprocal; don’t go any further than you have to because I don’t want us to get into something that have to escalate tit-for-tat,” Flynn told Kisyak.

12/23/16 – Flynn relays his goals about the Russia/US relationship.

Flynn: “We will not achieve stability in the Middle East without working with each other against this radical Islamist crowd.”

It was never about collusion. pic.twitter.com/xN3twZYa6H

— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) May 29, 2020

Despite clear evidence to the contrary, Former FBI agent Peter Strzok used that conversation as a basis to continue his investigation into whether Flynn was a potential Russian agent, according to recently unsealed court documents. The agency used the call as leverage to try to get the retired general to admit to a violation of the Logan Act – an obscure old law nearly a quarter-century old which prohibits private citizens from interfering in diplomacy (which, as it turns out, is standard practice among members of transitioning administrations).

FBI agent Joe Pientka, who interviewed Flynn with agent Strzok, wrote in his interview notes that he did not believe Flynn was lying to them during the interview – while other recently unsealed notes revealed that the FBI considered a perjury trap against Flynn to “get him fired.”

If there was a preexisting improper relationship between the Trump campaign and Russia, @GenFlynn would never have needed an official call with Kislyak to prevent the disaster the Obama admin was creating.

It’s common sense if you’re an honest broker.

— John ‘Murder Hornet’ Cardillo (@johncardillo) May 29, 2020

‘Scandal beyond Measure’: @TomFitton says transcripts of the Flynn – Kislyak calls further prove General Flynn’s innocence and the deep state’s deception. #AmericaFirst #MAGA #Dobbs pic.twitter.com/99qggR1uDp

— Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) May 29, 2020

After the FBI’s malfeasance came to light, the DOJ moved to drop the case against Flynn – which US District Judge Emmet Sullivan has refused to do – instead asking a retired federal judge, John Gleeson, to provide legal arguments as to whether Sullivan should hold Flynn in criminal contempt for pleading guilty to FBI agents – which he now says he did not do.

Following the release of the transcripts, Sen. Grassley said in a statement: “Lt. General Flynn, his legal team, the judge and the American people can now see with their own eyes – for the first time – that all of the innuendo about Lt. General Flynn this whole time was totally bunk. There was nothing improper about his call, and the FBI knew it.“

The transcripts show that Flynn was acting in his country’s best interests, and his only crime was bruising the fragile ego of the Obama team and their pathetic foreign policy https://t.co/P3nuifreUI

— Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) May 29, 2020

Earlier Friday, DNI John Ratcliffe declassified the transcripts and released them to Congress. See below:

Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

The only thing between several businesses and a bunch of people rioting is a couple of unnamed armed citizens.

As all hell breaks loose in Minneapolis over the lack of action taken against a police officer who killed a citizen on video, some self-titled “free Americans” helped store owners protect their property. They heard that the store owners had boarded up windows and were standing guard with machetes, and they went to help.

But if you think the men were there because they disagreed with the protests, you’d be incorrect. In a statement to Max Nesterak, a reporter for the Minnesota Reformer, the men said:

“Basically you see the records that cops keep,” one man told Nesterak in a now-viral video posted to Twitter. “And cops are a lot less likely to try and tread on people’s rights when there’s other armed Americans with them. So I figured it’s about damn time that some heavily armed rednecks stood with fellow citizens.”

“It turns out these guys are out here with machetes and shattered windows trying to keep looters out of the businesses ’cause cops can’t get in here,” one man said. “So I figured before there were cops, there were just Americans, so here we are.”

“Bottom line, justice for Floyd and I hope they stop looting at some point. If there were more of us we could go stop them from looting, but it’s just us four,” said the man on the right.

“We definitely don’t agree with the looting, but we agree with the cause of the protests,” the other man said. (source)

Watch the interview here:

These two men say they support the protests but not the riots and are helping protect a tobacco store owner from looting
pic.twitter.com/PDn2Jd8iEB

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 28, 2020

As of today, the good Samaritans are still unidentified.

This isn’t the first time armed citizens protected businesses during times of unrest.

This is not the first time that armed citizens have protected property during riots.

During the Ferguson riots in 2015, St. Louis Ink Tattoo Studio and County Guns remained unscathed as businesses around them burned or were looted, due to the protection of armed citizens.

After hearing of the roving bands of looters, Mike Gutierrez knew he had to protect his tattoo shop. He brought a posse with him, including Adam Weinstein, owner of County Guns, who was acutely worried about criminals getting their hands on his merchandise.

“We didn’t want them coming in here and then running around with a bunch of free guns,” Weinstein told Daily RFT when we arrive at the store around 12:30 a.m. this morning. Weinstein was outfitted with an assault rifle, pistol and tactical vest. Gutierrez cradled his own rifle in his hands. (source)

And who can forget the videos of Korean-American store owners in Los Angeles protecting their businesses with a variety of firearms as angry mobs besieged the area during the LA Riots of 1992?

This should serve as a reminder of why citizens need guns

After the on-camera death of George Floyd, it was a given that unrest would ensue, particularly when the police officer who killed him and the three who stood by and prevented citizens from coming to Floyd’s aid were merely fired and not arrested.

If you’re faced with an angry mob, you’re going to want as much force equalization as possible. In all the cases above, no armed citizens shot anyone. Their presence and willingness to defend their property served as a sufficient deterrent, as is often the case. In nearly every situation, people rioting are going to choose targets that aren’t likely to kill them. And this doesn’t just hold true for civil unrest – a gun in the hands of a determined person has deterred countless crimes – and I speak from experience.

You can’t count on the police to save you during times like this – they’re busy and likely couldn’t get through the crowds anyway. You’re completely on your own. And at some point during prolonged turmoil, the police and military will finally throw their hands up in the air, give up, and go home to protect their own families,

The only person you can rely on to protect your family is yourself.

The only person you can truly rely on during scenarios like this is yourself.

While I’m always going to recommend first to not be there during times of unrest, if you are there and you missed the window to leave during a riot, you’re the only game in town when it comes to the safety of your home, your livelihood, and your loved ones.

Take a long hard look at the threats you face during civil unrest. Wherever you live, whatever your situation, you need to plan as though 911 does not exist. Whether riots are occurring in the streets or not, in the seconds during which the lives of your family hang in the balance, you are completely on your own.

Sometimes the mob just wants to set your home or business on fire. But In other situations, it won’t stop with the destruction of your property. You may have to defend your home. And for this, you must be armed. No amount of hand-to-hand self-defense training will deter an angry mob but staring down the barrel of your firearm just might. Here’s more information about being prepared to survive civil unrest.

Being willing to protect your family is not an endorsement of police brutality. I know that I am personally disgusted by the action that set off this entire chain of events. However, when the angry crowds are on your street, it’s no longer about the initial incident. People aren’t thinking rationally when it has escalated this far.

Being armed is a matter of survival in situations where the normal rules of society have completely broken down.

I’m sure I’ll receive another barrage of email wishing me and my children dead by our own guns. Blah, blah, blah. It always amazes me how people who swear vehemently that they’re against violence can send me those letters that fervently and creatively hope for our gruesome murders.

Watching the effectiveness of firearms in the hands of people like the ones mentioned in this article to deter violence – not commit more of it – makes me even more determined to remain prepared to protect myself and my family.

What about you?

The CME eurodollar trading pit – long been facing the threat of extinction as Skynet takes over trading – could finally be facing a perfect storm of headwinds in the coronavirus pandemic.

The pits are arguably the worst place on the face of the Earth to be during a global pandemic is which being spread by droplets. Traders crowd shoulder to shoulder and scream at the top of their lungs, often breathing and sweating on one another, to execute trades. 

But in the Eurodollar options pit, traders seem to think they’ll eventually be back, according to Bloomberg. Traders there feel like they can perform better than algorithms and have an advantage on the floor that computers don’t have.

CME member Pete Kosanovich said: “When it gets busy, there is still a buzz, you can feel things happening. When you hear stuff happen in other pits, it’s a lot like being at Augusta and hearing the ‘Tiger roar.’ If you hear something happen in Treasury options, you can get ready for something to happen in eurodollar options.”

The floor closed abruptly on March 13 alongside of other trading floor operators, like ICE and CBOE. 

Others, who favor electronic trading, think the time is right to finally do away with floor trading. Christian Hauff, CEO of Quantitative Brokers, which sells trading algorithms for U.S. Treasury securities and Treasury futures said: “This is the opportunity to not look back but move forward as an industry.”

Those in the pit argue that the nature of the product keeps open outcriers in the game. The futures debuted in 1981 as a way to speculate on interest rates paid on dollar deposits overseas. They are the most traded interest rate derivative as of last year, with a daily average volume of about 2.7 million contracts in 2019. 

In the pit, trades are often structured as spreads, straddles or butterflies – which traders argue gives humans an advantage, due to the large number of possible trade combinations. Kosanovich, for example, has brokered trades with as many as 16 legs. He says he has seen trades with as many as 24. 

He said: “It seems like it should be easy to trade these complicated multi-legged strategies, but it’s just not. Brokers’ fiduciary responsibility as members is to get the best price for the end user.”

Before the shut down, the pit accounted for about half of the daily average volume in eurodollar options. But re-opening – given the physical demands of open outcry trading – is going to be tough. This means that the fate of the pit, perhaps for the long-term, is going to fall to the CME Group. Executives have said they wanted to re-open three weeks after the state lifts its stay-at-home order.

Market makers and floor brokers would have to sign a waiver to acknowledge they are working at their own risk. CME Chief Executive Officer Terry Duffy said on an April earnings call that keeping the floor open doesn’t cost much and that he intended to abide by the rules that as long as the floor was more than 30% of trading volume, he’d keep it open. 

The question of whether or not people will have adapted to electronic trading by the time CME re-opens the pit remains to be seen. 

Thomas Fitch, founder and CEO of RVAssets, which supplies trading algorithms for eurodollar and Treasury options, said: “Nobody was prepared to go to 100% electronic, but the market did it with no problem whatsoever.” 

Chicago-based futures and options broker Albert Marquez concluded: “Under normal conditions, I would expect that most end-users would want the pit back. It’s far more efficient and markets are tighter. That being said, it’s not exactly the best time for eurodollar options with rates where they are.”

Senior editor Ash Bennington joins managing editor Ed Harrison to discuss the latest developments in markets and macro in the era of coronavirus. Bennington and Harrison talk through the risks and potential upside to growth as European institutions debate bailouts in Europe, the possible ripple effect of President Trump’s call to revoke Hong Kong’s special trade status, and the plausibility of the renminbi becoming a global reserve currency. In the intro, Real Vision’s Peter Cooper discusses some of the latest economic data coming out of Canada.

During what was an extremely hectic last trading session in May, one headline somehow managed to cut through the clutter, compelling the world to turn away – even if only for a few brief moments – from the conflagration in Minneapolis, and click.

In a blockbuster report that relies on hundreds of pages of public securities filings and other documents, Forbes reported Friday that Kylie Jenner lied about being the world’s youngest billionaire, strategically misleading Forbes and the rest of the world with calculated lies, including what appear to be falsified tax returns.

Based on the information uncovered by its reporting, the magazine has removed Jenner from its billionaires’ list.

Instead, they’ll be placing her on the close but no cigar list…

So, where did it all go wrong for Jenner? Forbes has more details.

Filings released by publicly traded Coty over the past six months lay bare one of the family’s best-kept secrets: Kylie’s business is significantly smaller, and less profitable, than the family has spent years leading the cosmetics industry and media outlets, including Forbes, to believe.

Of course, white lies, omissions and outright fabrications are to be expected from the family that perfected—then monetized—the concept of “famous for being famous.” But, similar to Donald Trump’s decades-long obsession with his net worth, the unusual lengths to which the Jenners have been willing to go—including inviting Forbes into their mansions and CPA’s offices, and even creating tax returns that were likely forged—reveals just how desperate some of the ultra-rich are to look even richer.

“It’s fair to say that everything the Kardashian-Jenner family does is oversized,” says Stephanie Wissink, an equity analyst covering consumer products at Jefferies. “To stay on-brand, it needs to be bigger than it is.”

Based on this new information—plus the impact of Covid-19 on beauty stocks and consumer spending—Forbes now thinks that Kylie Jenner, even after pocketing an estimated $340 million after taxes from the sale, is not a billionaire.

Among other luridly interesting revelations that offer rare insight into the innerworkings of the Kardashian-Jenner clan, the Forbes story details how the ultra-influential strategically manipulate press coverage to perpetuate lies and myths that enhance their personal brand. For example, after Forbes placed Kylie at No. 59 on its celebrity income list for 2018 – provoking the ire of the Kardashian-Jenner family’s gaggle of publicists – the family successfully sold the numbers to Women’s Wear Daily. Though WWD – known in some circles as “the bible of fashion” – purports to cover “the business of fashion” as well as trends and key players in the industry, it clearly didn’t have the account expertise to sniff out the bs in the forged tax returns that Kylie’s publicists fed to the magazine’s editors.

Here’s the strategy that $250,000/month Hollywood publicists don’t want you to read: first, you find a critically-respected but non-mainstream media organization to shower with attention with the implicit agreement that they uncritically parrot at least some of the BS you’re spoon-feeding them. Step 2: say nothing while the mainstream media, strapped for cash and manpower, uncritically parrots that report. And poof – a lie is born.

During meetings at Kris Jenner’s palatial Hidden Hills, California, estate and the family accountant’s office nearby, Forbes was shown tax returns detailing $307 million in 2016 revenues and personal income of more than $110 million for Kylie that year. It would have been enough to put her at N0. 2 on the Celebrity 100 list, behind only Taylor Swift, the accountant was quick to point out. But the documents, despite looking authentic and bearing Kylie Jenner’s signature, weren’t exactly convincing since the story they told, of e-commerce brand Kylie Cosmetics growing from nothing to $300 million in sales in a single year, was hard to believe.

After speaking with a handful of analysts and industry experts who also found the Jenners’ claims implausible, we settled on a more reasonable estimate for our 2017 Celebrity 100 list: $41 million in overall earnings for Kylie, good for the No. 59 spot. Kris was “so frustrated,” the Jenners’ PR flack shot back. “We’ve done so much.”

Two months later, a story appeared in WWD, a trade publication known as “the bible of fashion,” using the exact numbers the Jenners first tried to give Forbes. “There has been raging speculation about the size of her business, with guesstimates ranging from $50 million up to $300 million,” the story reads. “Well, here’s the bad news for more-established beauty players: Jenner’s surpassed the higher figure with ease. Kylie Cosmetics actually has done $420 million in retail sales—in just 18 months—Kris Jenner revealed. . . . ” It was the first time the Jenners had publicly disclosed the size of the business, the story boasted—“and they provided WWD with documentation.”

It’s just another dismaying example of why public trust in the press is at an all-time low.

That sky-high revenue number—repeated everywhere from People to CNBC and Fortune—took hold. By the summer of 2018, when Forbes set out to calculate Kylie’s net worth for our list of the richest self-made women, the industry’s opinion of Kylie’s business had shifted. Those huge revenues were “totally possible,” said one analyst, adding that she had heard similar numbers herself. Another suggested revenues were around $350 million. The estimates kept climbing. Revenues were $400 million, according to a Piper Jaffray research note in 2018. An Oppenheimer report projected sales would top $700 million by 2020.

The Jenners offered us their own number: 2017 revenues were up 7%, they said, to $330 million. “No other influencer has ever gotten to the volume or had the rabid fans and consistency that Kylie has had for the last two and a half years,” an executive at e-commerce platform Shopify, which manages Kylie’s online store, told Forbes at the time. Based on her rapid success—certified by industry sources, plus those 2016 tax returns—Kylie appeared on the cover of Forbes magazine in July 2018, ranking No. 27 on our listing of the richest self-made women. At age 20, she was worth $900 million, we estimated, and would soon become the youngest self-made billionaire ever.

“Thank you for this article and the recognition,” Kylie Instagrammed. Kim Kardashian West tweeted her congratulations—twice. “I am SO proud,” Kris Jenner wrote, finally pleased.

The next month Kylie celebrated her 21st birthday at West Hollywood nightclub Delilah, in a Barbie-themed blowout complete with a pink ball pit, performances by Travis Scott and Dave Chappelle—and bartenders in black T-shirts with Kylie’s Forbes cover printed on them, her face plastered next to the words “America’s Women Billionaires.” By early the next year, she officially crossed the ten-digit threshold.

Sell-side analysts, having little interest in a private company, first took an interest in Kylie Jenner’s wealth when cosmetics brand Coty announced it would buy 51% of the business. Jenner sold that stake for a reported $600 million – more than half a billion dollars – for a largely untested e-commerce platform that owed all of its growth to trendy Instagram marketing.

At this point, we suspect bankers working on the deal immediately realized Jenner was massively inflated not just her personal wealth, but the relative success of her business.

Despite that, Forbes finally capitulated, granting Kylie Jenner the long-sought mantle of “the youngest self-made female billionaire,” a label that elicited more than a few chuckles in the Zero Hedge newsroom, and across twitter.

During the first call with analysts after the deal was announced, the company’s CFO endured a torrent of criticism.

“I think everybody was surprised,” says Wissink, the Jefferies analyst, who was on the call. “The negative that came out of that announcement was that the business was a lot smaller than everybody had expected.”

So much smaller, in fact, that there’s virtually no way the numbers the Jenners were peddling in earlier years could be true either. If Kylie Cosmetics did $125 million in sales in 2018, how could it have done $307 million in 2016 (as the company’s supposed tax returns state) or $330 million in 2017?

Yet, the public perception of Jenner’s wealth has somehow survived. Until now. As Forbes explained, the belief that the K-Js somehow faked Kylie’s tax returns is based on the notion that there is “no way the numbers the Jenners were peddling in earlier years could be true…If Kylie Cosmetics did $125 million in sales in 2018, how could it have done $307 million in 2016 (as the company’s supposed tax returns state) or $330 million in 2017?

Securities analysts consulted by Forbes believe it’s unlikely that the business saw its sales collapse during what had been billed as its most successful year to date. Rather, the sales likely were never anywhere near that big to begin with.

One explanation: Kylie’s business quietly fell by more than half in a single year. If so, Coty paid up for a “high-growth” brand that is actually a much smaller business than it was just a few years ago. (Coty would not answer any questions about Kylie Cosmetics for this story.) Data from e-commerce firm Rakuten, which tracks a select number of receipts, suggests there was a 62% decline in Kylie’s online sales between 2016 and 2018.

Still, virtually every industry expert polled by Forbes thinks the business couldn’t have collapsed by so much so quickly. “It seems unlikely that much revenue could have evaporated overnight,” says Evercore analyst Omar Saad. “There doesn’t seem to be any evidence the business has cratered,” adds cosmetics veteran Jeffrey Ten, who has led companies like Note Cosmetics, Nyx and Calvin Klein Beauty. “If so, why would Coty buy it?”

More likely: The business was never that big to begin with, and the Jenners have lied about it every year since 2016—including having their accountant draft tax returns with false numbers—to help juice Forbes’ estimates of Kylie’s earnings and net worth. While we can’t prove that those documents were fake (though it’s likely), it’s clear that Kylie’s camp has been lying.

There’s also the issue of profit: Forbes had been estimating that her business, which has little overhead, was notching 44% net margins. But Coty’s filings indicate that Kylie’s profits are likely lower than we figured, since her Ebitda margin—which factors in some, but not all, of her expenses—is only around 25%.

Another shocking reveal: For years, the KJs insisted that all the profits from the business (which, like the revenue figures, were also vastly overstated) went to Kylie, as the sole owner. But filings by Coty showed a chunk of the private equity retained by the family is owned by an irrevocable trust belonging to Kylie’s mother, Kris, her manager, who also takes a 10% chunk out of all her daughter’s annual earnings from the business.

Accounting majors and reporters covering corporate finance will also appreciate this little nugget.

There’s also the issue of profit: Forbes had been estimating that her business, which has little overhead, was notching 44% net margins. But Coty’s filings indicate that Kylie’s profits are likely lower than we figured, since her Ebitda margin—which factors in some, but not all, of her expenses—is only around 25%.

Of course, as one of Forbes sources reportedly said, the family is in the entertainment business, where “everything is exaggerated.” This strategy is undoubtedly part of the playbook that helped Kris Jenner build what has undoubtedly become one of the more profitable family businesses in the US.

But securities lawyers and compliance officials might look at it from a somewhat more serious perspective: Might the Jenners’ aggressive and strategic manipulation of the press – a strategy that clearly duped a public company into grossly overpaying for a majority stake in Kylie’s Cosmetics, leaving shareholders saddled with massive losses while Kylie cashed out – constitute some form of securities fraud? If an accountant actually helped clients forge tax returns, shouldn’t he or she at least face some professional repercussions, if nothing else?

Only time will tell. As for Kylie’s actual net worth, Forbes has an idea, and it’s actually not all that far removed from the figure that Jenner was peddling: Thanks to the revenue from the Coty sale, Jenner is likely worth more than $900 million.

In short, it’s probably too late for Kylie to ever become the youngest ever female billionaire. As for being “self-made”, well…we’ll let readers figure that one out for themselves.