What I Saw as a Fake Billionaire | Fakes, Frauds and Scammers

Andi Schmied pretended to be a billionaire to infiltrate NYC’s most exclusive and expensive homes, which only cater to the unbelievably wealthy and privileged.

Touring homes up to $85 million, she wanted to see and photograph how the 1% of the 1% lives in one of the most iconic and expensive cities in the world.

To do so, she had to transform herself from an artist into a convincing billionaire almost overnight. But while snapping 25 penthouses she discovered a world of high-rise apartments sitting empty in a city facing a housing crisis.

00:00 Intro
01:00 Why I Wanted Access to NYC's Penthouses
04:31 Transforming Myself into a Billionaire
05:07 Touring Luxury Homes up to $85 Million
07:13 New York's Housing Crisis
08:45 The 'Soulless' High-Rise Apartments

Watch more like this:

How I Stole $2.8M as a Teenager

How We Staged a UFO Hoax

My Wife Hired a Hitman So I Faked My Death

About VICE:
The Definitive Guide To Enlightening Information. From every corner of the planet, our immersive, caustic, ground-breaking and often bizarre stories have changed the way people think about culture, crime, art, parties, fashion, protest, the internet and other subjects that don't even have names yet. Browse the growing library and discover corners of the world you never knew existed. Welcome to VICE.

Connect with VICE:

The VICE YouTube Network:

[VICE]

¿Quieres ver el video en español? Haz clic en el botón de configuración para cambiar la pista de audio.

Want to watch this in Spanish? Head over to the settings button to change the audio track.

[Benoitlechasseur]

They actually trick you into thinking this is the "best view" money can buy. The best view is surrounded by nature, not concrete.

[wearesatellites]

The part about the skyscrapers stealing sunlight from everyone else felt like the perfect metaphor for the relationship between billionaires and the rest of us.

[Netti]

I lived in the wealthy Annapolis MD for many years. One day we took a water taxi tour of all the rich homes and I will Never forget the guide saying “the larger the home, the less it is used”…. That one sentence changed my life outlook forever.

[motherreeder]

There's something unsettling about how the realator was talking to her. Just creepy. I'm getting major dystopian vibes. I know probably not everybody shares the same opinion about this, but I feel like there's something messed up about paying billions to live at the top of a souless empty building suffocated in the middle of an overcrowded city blocking out the sun. Is it just me?

[rufuspipemos]

Her mention at the end about shadows cast by buildings where the rich don't even live impacting everyday people for me was the most profound thing in this video.

[rebeccagutierrez]

I literally laughed out loud so hard when the realtor was describing she should live there and what she should say to her husband.

[drsnooz]

As a former high-end carpenter, I often marveled at how people with money invariably build fantastically expensive, utterly cold and desolate spaces. You look at one of their kitchens and think, "Where are the glasses?" There's no way to tell. It's an inscrutable mystery. You look at the living room and, think "where do I sit?" And the truth is that there's nowhere to sit. You dare not fart in one of those homes, or stink up the bathroom, or so much as give your kid a box of crayons, much less allow a bout of stomach flu to run its course. They aren't homes. They're mausoleums. Beautiful, ornate, cold and lifeless. They are places for the bodies whose souls died (or were sold) long ago. There is nothing there worth desiring.

[rgpzevy]

that real estate agent voiceover sounds like an ad n a dystopian movie 😂

[donparkison]

The most telling thing is that the more outlandish her behavior, the more the agents believed that she was ultra rich. Its because those people are completely detached from reality and insulated from consequence.

[lindseyaliceford]

I love how she made it a point talking about the large shadows these buildings cast. Never thought about that. Taking away the sunlight

[AwokenEntertainment]

what shocks me most about this video is that so many of those places sit vacant!! 😯

[chadotem]

To say that this whole situation has an ominous dystopian feeling is underselling it... I visited NYC back in the summer of 2015 and in every corner, every alley, basically everywhere, there were homeless people. Some were holding signs that say "They wouldn't give me a job" or "I'm trying to find a job, please" but there was this one sign b a homeless woman that caught my eye at the time. And it never left my memory. The sign said "America has failed me, dare to hear me?". I saw that sign and sat down with the woman, offered her some of my soup as we talked about her difficulties. She said she was in the army, served in Iraq as a medic. She had to come back home due to her injuries in hopes that the government would take care of her. But they didn't. Her leg had to be cut with an operation and government still asked for money. She then said that she reached out to VA's, but they didn't help her at all saying that her injuries and her debt had nothing to do with her time in service. So, with both government and VA turned their backs to her, she paid her bills with the money she saved for her child when she has one, in the future. Then she begun to look for a job but most of the establishments would frown when they heard she was in the military. With nothing else and no hope in sight, she said she turned to VA again, for job. But she still got refused and rejected. It's heartbreaking to say the least, to see and hear all these people when the U.S. government keeps putting hundreds of millions of dollars into defense contracts and fights in "wars" that has nothing to do with them... But hey, American Dream right? What a joke!

[NettyB]

There’s something dystopian about mostly empty luxury buildings surrounded by rats and squalor. Love her work!

[raphaeldouglas]

Most people are taught that "you only need a good job to become rich". These billionaires are operating on a whole other playbook that many don't even know exists.

[Discordadmin]

I live in SF and I believe that we just passed a law that taxes the empty buildings as an incentive to rent out the totally empty buildings.

[hippiehillape]

I live on a mountain in the southern Appalachians near the Smokies.

In a 600sq' glorified shack I built myself for less than 25k

I share a property line with the Nantahala national forest.

My view is incredible. Nothing but mountains layered to the horizon.

[goldrecordsvideos]

Its wild that looking at a view of buildings is considered extreme luxury

[lancemillward]

Genius. The stranger she acted the more they believed her

[aellalee]

I love how she explained that you can't even get to the viewings without special knowledge. I didn't know that.
And pointed out how those buildings literally cast shadows on whatever is beneath them depriving them of the sun.