see him on closed circuit TV

The Kofmel victims group sent me a link to newly released CLOSED-CIRCUIT TV FOOTAGE of Kofmel walking into a bank in April 2008 and apparently withdrawing funds from the property fraud account.

What makes this case so interesting? I suppose the fact that we only rarely have brazen con artists of this sort in the midst of our profession. There are plenty of annoying and mean-spirited people to be encountered in an academic life, but relatively few who do outright criminal things that capture the attention of international police forces. I never would have suspected that an academic position could be a useful cover for a sleazebag operation, but this guy seems to have proved that it can work.

I suppose the other interesting aspect for me is that, though I never knew Kofmel nor even heard of him until a few days ago, plenty of people I do know have written in to talk about their near-miss dealings with the man.

And by the way, that’s a very organized and comprehensive Kofmel Victims website. All kinds of links on there. I loved the one where, after being expelled from Sussex, he fired back with his “cesspool of mediocrity” remark. He certainly seems to have internalized the “never explain, never apologize” strategy for scandal spin. It’s all everyone else’s fault. Really remarkable.

What I’ve found myself wondering is– what stages does a person go through to reach this point? I mean, I’m sure Kofmel was a cute and lovable newborn. And I’m pretty sure that by 20 or perhaps 25 he was perhaps already in the habit of doing unsavory things (he was in bankruptcy court as early as 21, and his track record suggests that it was not just an honest business failure). But would someone like this have been an untrustworthy 10-year-old? There is sometimes a tendency to mock the notion that there was one moment when “everything went wrong”, or the incorrect fork in the road was taken. But I tend to suspect that there are probably discernible turning points in the formation of a human character, just as there must be an exact moment when the first cancer cell formed, unnoticed.