New Documentary Explores Investment Scam of Epic Scale
*By Conor White*
After the financial crisis of 2008, a group of investors looking for high-return investments sunk their money into a group of companies in China, only to find that what they thought was a great deal was potentially the biggest case of financial fraud in the last 25 years.
"What they discovered was these companies were not what they said they were," explained Jed Rothstein, director of 'The China Hustle'. "Some of them were complete, outright Potemkin village frauds, some of them were hugely misrepresenting their profits and their assets, and at the end of the day the guys in the film discovered that $50 billion was taken from investors here in the U.S."
In an interview Friday on Cheddar, Rothstein said it's still happening.
"According to the short-sellers, who are sort of the main characters in the film, there are a number of these companies still out there."
Despite uncovering the scam, investors have no way of getting their money back, punishing those who concocted it, or even stopping it.
"We really need to bring the regulatory regime up into the 21st century," argued Rothstein. "And that's going to be a pretty heavy lift in the current political environment where their main aim seems to be removing the regulations that we do have in place."
View the full segment [here](https://cheddar.com/videos/the-most-important-film-of-the-year).
Chef Palak Patel's love of cooking started when she was a teenager searching for ways to fuse her mother's Indian recipes with some of her favorite American foods. Patel, author of cookbook 'The Chutney Life,' joined Cheddar News to share some of her favorite appetizers and snacks ahead of next month's Diwali festivities.
'Living for the Dead,' a new series from Kristen Stewart and the team behind 'Queer Eye', recently premiered on Hulu and follows five queer ghost hunters traveling around the country. The show's cast -- Ken Boggle, Roz Hernandez, Juju Bae, Logan Taylor and Alex Le May -- joined Cheddar News to discuss the project and what scary encounters they experienced while filming.
Britney Spears' highly anticipated memoir “The Woman in Me” will be released Tuesday, revealing the pop superstar's personal take on events that have played out publicly in her decades as one of the most scrutinized figures in American life, along with private moments that she previously kept under wraps.
The first museum in the U.S. dedicated to the climate crisis is in New York. Miranda Massie, director at The Climate Museum, joined Cheddar News how the museum uses art and cultural programming to help people understand how big of a role each and everyone plays in understanding and helping with the climate crisis.
