I was talking about the house as well. Do some reading about the housing bubble and the subprime lending crisis, and you'll understand how for several years there (especially in a place like Cali), pretty much any low-income doofus could live in a mansion if he played it right. Of course it would have been a house of cards destined to end in foreclosure, but for a while these fools could show everyone how "rich" they were.
A Russian guy did that here in Aspen for a short while. Threw tremendous parties with bitches and blow. Invited the super wealthy to partake in his extremely wealthy lifestyle. Eventually some of these Richie Riches asked him how he obtained such wealth. He showed them a (fake) prospectus of his oil fields in Russia and sold several stakes in the company amounting to tens of millions of dollars and then disappeared.
There was an investigation into his methods and finances and it was determined that he managed to front a 60M mansion, a Ferrari and a Bentley with 300K he had obtained by hustling someone else.
