Bitconned (now on Netflix) is this week’s Infuriating Documentary Theatre. It is a story of scam artists who scammed people out of millions with such ease that one can only admire their audacity and the unregulated financial environment that allowed it. Bryan Storkel, the director, moves from 2022’s The Pez Outlaw, which was small potatoes to investigative journalists and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s bungalow-sized ones, and finds a tale as interesting as it is enraging.
So we have the crook, the investigator and the victim here, but we are going to spend more time with Ray because he oozes sleazy charisma from every pore. He talks about himself in no uncertain terms or details whatsoever (he said “I’m just like an onion, there’s layers,” which feels empirically false), so any self-admitted slippery slickster likely shouldn’t be trusted at all ever for anything period no matter what they say even if it sounds true. His family is Something Else: his grandfather was supposedly a mob boss; his grandmother chuckles that she was more of a gangster than her husband who made some kind of money in “something to do with the elevator business”; Trapani’s mom dances around her dad being involved with organized crime by saying she remembers seeing suitcases full filled up with cash come through their house once upon a time or another when she lived there or whatever you get it I’m sure you’re familiar with this kind of thing too. Ray looked up to Grandpa so I guess that means here come some old friends to talk shit about him: he was one of those kids who had street cred but grew up in sunny Atlantic Beach; in high school he became an oxy addict who sold pills by filling fake prescriptions; when he got pinched he ratted out his partners to lower charges against himself — so file that under foreshadowing for the rest of this story, right? “Ray is a piece of shit,” says one partner. And we might have to believe him.
And of course, with this and that and the other thing, Centra attracted millions in investment from random internet people. They rented fancy office space and hired 50 employees — who probably didn’t know the company was so weak it’d make a house of cards look like Helm’s Deep — but hey, what doesn’t keep Rensel away? Honest types are drawn to these things: a chance to make a quick buck while taking one outta the ether. And Popper’s here for the same reason. But has anyone noticed Trapani isn’t being interviewed in jail? Hmmm.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King is another Netflix doc about a different bitcoin scammer — Gerald Cotten, who died or faked his death after bilking folks outta millions (depending on whom you ask).
Performance Worth Watching: You’ll root for Topper; feel for Rensel. But my favorite part is when Andrew Halayko shows up for a cameo. I won’t spoil why.
Our Take: Bitconned is a let-him-hang-himself-with-his-own-words-type doc that uses Trapani’s first-person testimony as the primary component of the narrative, for better or worse. But be thankful Topper, Rensel and a few other more credible talking heads are here to counter some of that testimony; one player here – a former male stripper who stood in as Centra’s CFO, and yes, you may be amused by that – repeatedly pops up to interject that Trapani’s words should be taken with a grain of salt, because Trapani, who admits to struggling with addiction, was regularly swallowing handfuls of Xanax throughout this sordid saga. And you may heretofore consider Trapani to be a classic literary device: The Unreliable Narrator.
More accurately, he’s The Unreliable Narrator Who Got Away With It. I don’t think that’s a spoiler – you can easily find the news stories about Centra’s downfall, and Storkel makes it clear that there’s no bracelet around Trapani’s ankle in the opening scene, and we never see him in any type of correctional facility. One of the more fascinating elements of the film is Storkel’s access to Trapani, who doesn’t share why he agreed to participate. That leaves us to speculate and armchair-psychoanalyze the guy, and assume it’s an opportunity for him to feed his ego and smirk about his various malfeasances. This isn’t the portrait of a man who’s changed or been rehabilitated – in the closing moments, he says everything he does is “shady” – and therefore is an indictment of a justice system that uses and rewards snitches who help prosecutors get a conviction. Trapani admits he has a lack of empathy for other humans, and says he’s working on that, which is a prime example of how one sentence out of his mouth prompts us to simultaneously believe him and think he’s utterly full of shit.
But boy, will you love to hate Trapani. Storkel’s approach and visual style are entertaining, taking a lighter, occasionally humorous approach to true crime, but never becoming flippant or dismissive. (We also get halfway through the movie before Storkel interviews a lawyer, which might be a new record for an era in which attorney talking heads are as foundational to documentaries as seeds are to farming operations.) Bitconned gives equal diligence to the micro-story of Trapani’s scheming and the macro-story of crypto treachery, adding up to a saga that’s so stinking American it might make you nauseous. You’ll be torn between the idea of exposing Trapani and his ilk for the scumwads they are, and wondering if Storkel should’ve ever put the guy on camera in the first place. Either way, we feel something – a cocktail of outrage and bemusement – and that’s the mark of a pretty damn good documentary.
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