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Who Was Stephen Paddock? The Mystery of a Nondescript ‘Numbers Guy’
The New York Slimes ^ | October 7, 2017 | Sabrina Tavernise, Serge F. Kovaleski and Julie Turkewitz

Posted on 10/07/2017 10:59:03 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum

LAS VEGAS — Stephen Paddock was a contradiction: a gambler who took no chances. A man with houses everywhere who did not really live in any of them. Someone who liked the high life of casinos but drove a nondescript minivan and dressed casually, even sloppily, in flip-flops and sweatsuits. He did not use Facebook or Twitter, but spent the past 25 years staring at screens of video poker machines.

Mr. Paddock, a former postal worker and tax auditor, lived an intensely private, unsocial life that exploded into public view on Sunday, when he killed 58 people at a country music festival and then shot himself. But even with nationwide scrutiny on his life, the mystery of who he was has only seemed to deepen.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: fakenews; lasvegas; lvmassacre; nevada; nyt; nytimes; paddock; paddockbio; stephenpaddock
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To: snarkytart

The “same explosive” makes for a great headline, but it can be bought in lots of gun shops all over the country. Easy to get, safe to use and still packs a wallop.

The officer’s video cam imbedded in the link is very interesting. Probably gets started just after the initial volley or so. Shows the chaos - with the cop pretty much just directing people which way to run, stay next to the wall, etc.

Towards the end, one man is yelling “I need an ambulance, I’ve been shot in the arm. I need an ambulance. There’s nobody down there helping us.” But he did have a makeshift tournequet on his arm.

An obvious emotional and shock-fueled reaction. But of course the shots had just quit about a minute or less before this guy shows up - so of course no medics would be there yet.


41 posted on 10/07/2017 12:57:18 PM PDT by 21twelve (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2185147/posts FDR's New Deal = obama)
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To: Vic S

“Why bother removing it from pictures?”

Someones trying to control the narrative.


42 posted on 10/07/2017 1:03:09 PM PDT by dljordan (WhoVoltaire: "To find out who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.")
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

You bring in cash and play the machines and your winnings are recorded on the card. When you leave you bring the card to the cashier and they pay you and issue a 1099 for anything over $600.


Perfect way to launder money. Take $1M in dirty money, bet it all in Vegas and “win” $400,000. Now you’ve got a 1099 form to make the money “legitimate”. The $600,000 loss is the casino’s win.


43 posted on 10/07/2017 1:08:55 PM PDT by Flick Lives
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
Stephen Paddock began buying and refurbishing properties in economically depressed areas around Los Angeles, teaching himself how to put in plumbing and install air-conditioning. By the late 1980s, “we had cash flow,” said Eric Paddock, who added that he had given his life savings to his older brother to invest and eventually became a partner in his company, because “that’s the kind of guy he was. I knew he would succeed.” Source

In other words, before he flipped out, he flipped houses ...

44 posted on 10/07/2017 1:12:07 PM PDT by x
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To: Flick Lives
The $600,000 loss is the casino’s win.

Which is why they are more than happy to comp you all that free stuff.

45 posted on 10/07/2017 1:12:28 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (You can't have totalitarian globalist government if the peasants are armed.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum; All
...you can't win at video poker, you can only get a payback of about 70%.

You really ought to do some homework before you post false statements like that.

Even 8-5 Bonus Poker returns 99.17% when played optimally. Add in the points and comps, and your return is over 100%.

There are other video poker games that return over 100% when played optimally, but the casinos have removed most of them, ever since the economy tanked in '08.

Paddock was reportedly a "numbers guy" and he's been playing VP for years. I would guess he played at the professional level.

I know a lot of pro VP players. Even women in their 70's, who have been playing for years, and who almost never mis-play a hand.

Also, FYI, Nevada Gaming Commission Regulations state that even slot machines (not VP) have to return at least 75% when played optimally. Some return as much as 95% (adjustable by the casino).

Slot machines and Video Poker are two completely different things.

46 posted on 10/07/2017 1:14:23 PM PDT by ChicagahAl (Stay safe out there. The Haters (</<<TM) are dangerous. Very dangerous.)
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To: x

He hasn’t been flipping houses for a long time, if he ever actually did.

Flipping houses doesn’t make you scream “OH MY GOD!” at the top of your lungs in your sleep.

There is something that made him do that, and it wasn’t flipping houses.


47 posted on 10/07/2017 1:14:26 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (You can't have totalitarian globalist government if the peasants are armed.)
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To: snarkytart

They don’t mean the exact explosive, they mean the exact same kind of explosive.


48 posted on 10/07/2017 1:15:54 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (You can't have totalitarian globalist government if the peasants are armed.)
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To: ChicagahAl

So the casinos just kindly allow people who play video poker to take away more than the bring in forever?

I don’t think so.

People who win too much get banned.


49 posted on 10/07/2017 1:17:18 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (You can't have totalitarian globalist government if the peasants are armed.)
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To: bgill

I can’t speak to how he got his money(but real estate is a valid assumption)

But the reason for this horrendous act has been staring at us from nearly the start(IMHO)

Res Ipsa Loquitor

(The act speaks for itself)

Allow me to explain my theory.

Every father wants his son to do better than he did and every son wants to prove to the old man that his is every bit as good as he and maybe better.

He had no wife, no children and no family business to pass on to his heirs.

The guy is a schuck. Sure he made some serious dough(from whatever source) but he had no legacy.

Now there are plenty of childless men out there but how many men had fathers who were on the FBI Ten most Wanted List?

HIS father achieved “fame” by being a bank robber and an escaped convict. Thus Paddock decided to go into the “family business” and “do better” than his old man in one giant “Cl%sterf$ck”

Bank robbers are a dime a dozen and to gain headlines and the attention of the American Conscience for years to come his “Opus Grande” would take the Wagnerian route, a.k.a. Hitler, kill as many people then off oneself.

Hey, if you cannot succeed big, fail big! (It worked for Madoff!)

He couldn’t up his father’s crime by himself(wasn’t that smart and it would take others to pull off an “Ocean’s Eleven robbery” Plus failure at this point meant spending the rest of his life in prison so that wasn’t an option.

It is all the explanation we will ever get.

Not politics.

Not major grievances

No vast conspiracies to undo America, the casinos or the Republican Party

Just an aging nobody who wanted to be somebody.


50 posted on 10/07/2017 1:24:47 PM PDT by RedMonqey (` Res Ipsa Loquitor.)
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To: RedMonqey
Thus Paddock decided to go into the “family business” and “do better” than his old man in one giant “Cl%sterf$ck”

We're on the same page.

51 posted on 10/07/2017 1:29:32 PM PDT by bgill (CDC site, "We don't know how people are infected with Ebola.")
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To: ChicagahAl
Even 8-5 Bonus Poker returns 99.17% when played optimally. Add in the points and comps, and your return is over 100%.

That's true, but you still go home with less cash than you started with (and a free vacation). It can't make your a millionaire.

52 posted on 10/07/2017 1:35:50 PM PDT by Wayne07
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To: Fantasywriter
That’s interesting.
There’s some interesting “conspiracy theory” over here about there being Mossad involvement due to an Israeli paper posting on the incident only 5 hours afterward, complete with his “muslim name”.

I was surprised by how quickly the MSM picked it up (though not about the instantaneous gun-control bent), but that is even quicker.

53 posted on 10/07/2017 1:43:20 PM PDT by Edward.Fish
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To: snarkytart
and who wouldn’t defend their property or business from rioters.

You know, that's what I think a lot of these antifa guys fail to realize: that a lot of people would be a-ok with people defending their family/property/lives with lethal violence in the midst of a riot.

54 posted on 10/07/2017 1:45:31 PM PDT by Edward.Fish
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To: bgill

All facts point to him being an aging loser facing the realities of his life vs the “dreams” he had in his youth.

Most of us will go through this process cause we all don’t get to be the “Defensive End for the Dallas Cowboys”(my unrealized dream)

The problem with “conspiracy theories” is somewhere reality must come in to play.

I like a good conspiracy tale as anybody but I’m not willing to believe a “Hollywood script” outside of a fantasy

But I’m just queer that way(snicker, snicker/)


55 posted on 10/07/2017 1:54:37 PM PDT by RedMonqey (` Res Ipsa Loquitor.)
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To: RedMonqey

and since he went out in a blaze, glory or not, there will be a dozen more trying the same thing before long.


56 posted on 10/07/2017 2:00:20 PM PDT by bgill (CDC site, "We don't know how people are infected with Ebola.")
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Once again we are being sold the Brooklyn bridge. The deep state knows on day one and if we knew we would have their heads. Better to build the narrative that we haven’t a clue so we will behave, my view


57 posted on 10/07/2017 2:04:11 PM PDT by ronnie raygun (Trump plays chess the rest are still playing checkers)
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To: Edward.Fish

How would Mossad profit from being involved? The 4chan posts add up because they predicted the location, mentioned casinos, and supplied a motive. The motive makes sense because it was done once already. First, 9-11, then TSA and ridiculously expensive and ineffective scanning equipment at every airport. To date the TSA hasn’t caught a single terrorist, but it has greatly expanded the government and lined countless pockets with its exorbitant expenditures.

But that well is running dry. Deep State needs a new cash cow. To make it happen, follow the previously successful business model.

I.e.: create a mass murder, and then implement an expensive response. In Vegas we have ~500 casualties. When the gun control hysteria dies down, ‘cooler heads will prevail.’ Congress will mandate another massively expensive fix. Casinos will come first, but next will be universities, schools, hospitals, conserts, fairs—you name it. They may be able to include churches that exceed a certain membership number.

Connected people will make a fortune. That is the goal.


58 posted on 10/07/2017 2:04:50 PM PDT by Fantasywriter (Any attempt to do forensic work using Inernet artifacts is fraught with pitfalls. JoeProbono)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

.
Stephen Paddock was a collateral asset of the Swamp; a true useful idiot.

Yes, he definitely was laundering money, from the swamp!

They were supporting him through the casinos, keeping him available for whatever operation they might conceive.

He paid them back with interest last Sunday; providing them with yet another gun confiscation ploy.
.


59 posted on 10/07/2017 2:06:51 PM PDT by editor-surveyor (Freepers: Not as smart as I'd hoped they'd be)
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To: RedMonqey

You’re probably right.


60 posted on 10/07/2017 2:09:36 PM PDT by TigersEye (0bama. The Legacy is a lie. The lie is the Legacy.)
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