How scammer Obah Butler convinced venture capitalists to give him more than $1 million

It wasn’t long In his new documentary, Opah Butler tells one of the founders of his new company, Drops, that they should create a piece of luxury luggage that “looks like a bomb” and that it will sell for $200,000.

Right off the bat, I think his quest for £1m in 90 days may have come to an untimely end.

But I’m wrong.

Butler is a prankster British documentarian known for his stunts, such as managing to get Amazon to sell its drivers’ urine as energy drinks or creating a fake restaurant called The Shed and gaming TripAdvisor to make it the highest-rated London restaurant on the platform. His latest documentary, produced for Channel 4 in the UK, is called How I made £1 million in 90 days. Set in London and New York, the film examines the worlds of startups, venture capital, cryptocurrencies, and what ultimately comes across as a lot of bullshit, in the name of getting rich quick.

Butler opens the film by saying that, as someone who did not grow up with money and had no drive of his own, he is fascinated by the fact that people “worship” wealthy businessmen.

“It came from wanting to understand why… everyone is obsessed with money this way,” he told WIRED. “And I’m not talking about survival. I’m not talking about the ability to survive. I’m talking about…addiction to making money.”

His only rules for getting £1 million (US$1.3 million) are that he is not allowed to break the law and any costs he incurs while trying to achieve this are his own. He uses several strategies to raise money, including simply asking wealthy people to do so (this is not going well) and creating buzz for the cryptocurrency company UNFK by doing things like tricking bankers into committing crimes on camera. He also created Drops, a company that makes news for its controversial actions and then attempts to capitalize on the attention by selling “extremely expensive” items.

Butler seeks the advice of Venmo co-founder Ikram Magdon Ismail, who quickly announces himself as Butler’s co-founder of Drops and seems very enthusiastic at first, assuming that the company is “already worth at least $10 million” just because the two are connected to it, and that they might be able to sell Madison Square Garden within a year To tell their story. The brainstorming session includes plans to buy the first piece of land on Mars and sell the opportunity to name “first branded species.” But after Butler suggests a bomb-like bag and a pair of “realistic ad-blocking sunglasses” that completely remove the wearer’s vision, Magdon Ismail temporarily ghosts him.

Butler then embarks on a memecoin adventure heading south, before returning to Drops and launching “Britain’s first legal child exploitation factory in over a century”. He finds a loophole to avoid paying child laborers, considering that he is filming children in the documentary, so they are technically actors. His underage employees help him come up with marketing ideas to sell custom football jerseys bearing a fake religious cigarette brand called Holy Smokes. Although the clothing line is getting coverage in GQ magazine, Butler doesn’t sell anything worth anywhere near £1 million worth of T-shirts.