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John Oliver

Posts Tagged ‘John Oliver’

No, John Oliver did not give away nearly $15 million of medical debt

john oliver debt

 

John Oliver is the news king of talk telly. But unlike Oprah, he’s not giving  away free cars – he’s burning cash! The host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight is a hero:

“Any idiot can get into it, and I can prove that to you, because I’m an idiot and I started a debt buying company and it was disturbingly easy,” Oliver said. John Oliver forgave nearly $15 million of medical debt with a tap of a giant red button on Sunday night.

 

John Oliver debt

The Indy says it was #15m

 

No. Wrong. It was cracking TV. But he did not do as CNN said he did. He purchased his lot on the secondary market at a huge discount.

Last Week Tonight spent about $50 to create a debt-acquisition company in Mississippi. The corporation’s name is Central Asset Recovery Professionals Inc – also known as Carp. According to Oliver, soon after its creation, Carp was offered a portfolio of medical debt worth $14,922,261.76 at a cost of “less than half a cent on a dollar, which is less than $60,000”.

Not $15m, then. And at $60,000 it was a marketing and PR bargain.

Posted: 7th, June 2016 | In: Celebrities, Money, Reviews, TV & Radio | Comment


World Cup Balls: John Oliver Nails FIFA (Video)

SO. FIFA is not the hot bed of love and equality we thought it was. It turns out that football is run by greed. John Oliver told of his shock and dismay on Last Week Tonight:

The negative publicity has been so overwhelming that even some of the World Cup’s biggest and longest-serving sponsors, including Adidas and Sony, have expressed concern. “The negative tenor of the public debate around FIFA at the moment is neither good for football nor for FIFA and its partners,” a spokesman for Adidas told The Guardian. Perhaps corporate pressure will accomplish what mockery and muckraking have failed to do: convince FIFA to reform.

Posted: 9th, June 2014 | In: Sports | Comment