FTX's Fortune in Debt Includes a Massive Bar Tab Owed to Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville

Craig Barritt. Getty Images.

In the fraud scandal storm that is swirling around FTX Cryptocurrency and its disgraced CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, it's tempting to have little sympathy for the victims. Because so far all we know is that the people who lost money seem to be the types who have lots of it. Brand ambassadors like Tom Brady, Gisele Bundchen, Steph Curry, Larry David and the like. I mean, so far it doesn't sound like a situation where Mr. Potter is going to take over every piece of property in Bedford Falls once the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan goes under and throw a bunch of widows into debtor's prison. The lights will be staying on in all these celebrities' vacation homes. And Gisele is not going to have to do some babysitting jobs on the side to put food on the table. 

But still, there are lines that you do not cross. Being an eccentric kook who looks like a human unmade bed and has the oddly on-point name of a Bond villain with a strange ability to suck famous people into a Ponzi scheme while having group sex with your goofy, LARP-enthusiast friends:

… doesn't give you carte blanche to ripoff anyone you want. There are limits to what we're willing to accept. Some celebrities are off limits. Even sacred. And one of them, is Jimmy Buffett:

Source - FTX-backed cryptocurrency firm Alameda owes more than $55,000 to Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville beach resort, based in the Bahamas. …

[B]ankruptcy documents did reveal creditors to Alameda, which was run by disgraced founder Sam Bankman-Fried's ex-girlfriend, Caroline Ellison.

According to the documents, Margaritaville is owed $55,319, the fourth-largest debt for Alameda. … 

The tab echoes the claims of a party culture that thrived at FTX, which is also based in the Bahamas and once held a star-studded event in the Caribbean island with tickets selling at $3,000-a-head. 

Buffett's Margaritaville resort in the Bahamas opened last year, the latest in the singer's bar and hotel venture that has grown to include a $1 billion retirement community in Florida.

You bastards. You odd, polyamorous, crooked bastards. You can do what you want to other famous people, but by God you leave Jimmy Buffett alone, or you've made an enemy out of the American public. The Boomers, at least. Especially the ones who live in the Northeast like I do. To us, he's a demi-god. His cheerful blend of non-threatening, hedonistic escapist music and tender ballads have been the background music of our summers and given us hope through the winters for generations now. How dare anybody skip out on a tab at his establishment? There's evil, and then there's Chewin' and Screwin' at Margaritaville Evil. 

Besides that, FTX was trusted there. "Sure," the managers said. "You can run up a bill for hundreds of $12 Margies and thousands of Fried Coconut Shrimp with Mango Salsa Dipping Sauce! You're good for it! We'll settle up next time you come in!" But these sociopaths just kept adding to it with no intention of paying like they were Joe Pesci in Goodfellas. It takes a special kind of criminal to lie to a cheerful server in a tacky Aloha shirt at a theme restaurant based on a 1976 drinking hymn.

Now you might be saying, "Calm down, Old Balls. A lot more people lost a lot more money than Buffett did in this deal. Plus he's insanely rich." Which is true. He is an absolute mogul who turned one Top 10 hit in his career into a lifestyle brand that became an empire. As one of my friends said after we saw him in concert, "Jimmy Buffett is a genius because he's no more talented than one of the Cape Cod Happy Hour DJs we used to go see, and he's making millions." While I disagree about the opinion of his musical abilities - that's a hill I and the hundreds of thousands of MILFs shaking their moneymakers to "Why Don't We Get Drunk and Screw?" will die on -   I'll concede the rest. He is a genius. He's sold us a dream of carefree living with no responsibilities under the palm trees and slapped it on songs, t-shirts, hats, books, tequila, frozen foods and even over 55 communities, and we can't get enough of it. That's worthy of our respect. 

So I say we get this SBF creep and his entire band of weirdos. We mobilize. If the government won't send in the troops, we get every Buffett fan with a fishing boat or party barge, form a flotilla, and storm the beaches of the Bahamas like it's Normandy on D-Day. No 55-grand to Margaritaville, no justice.