By Dean Maddox, Public Safety & Crime Reporter

You ever want to see the perfect example of how folks get hustled just because somebody important told them it was a good idea? Look no further than the monkey JPEG craze. This wasn’t just some quirky little fad — it was a flat-out reminder that if you don’t use your own brain, the world’s full of people ready to empty your pockets. From Wall Street sharks to celebrities on late-night TV, it’s all the same game. They talk, you trust, and you end up broke.

Remember when Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon were on TV holding up pictures of cartoon monkeys like they’d just bought the Mona Lisa? Yeah, that was the peak of the NFT circus. Celebrities strutted around bragging about how they paid six or seven figures for what amounts to a damn jpeg of an ape in sunglasses.

Fast forward, and now the whole mess has crashed harder than a tweaker in county lockup. That million-dollar monkey? Worth a couple hundred bucks if you’re lucky. Some folks lost a couple grand, others flushed hundreds of thousands, even millions. Regular dudes are driving pizzas around just to cover bills after blowing savings on this hype.

Here’s the point: use your damn brain. If something sounds stupid, it probably is. You don’t need Wall Street smarts to know a monkey picture ain’t worth a house. But people heard celebrities and “important” folks talking it up, and they figured it had to mean something. Newsflash — those people don’t give two shits about you. They were just looking to cash out before you realized you’d been hustled.

And this isn’t new. I’ve seen scams on every corner of North Highlands — fake Rolexes out of trunks, three-card monte on street corners, pyramid schemes knocking on doors, phone calls promising you the lottery if you just send a wire. The NFT craze? Just the same scam dressed up in tech buzzwords. Different package, same old bullshit.

You want to know how to not get scammed? Simple: if it doesn’t make sense to your own two eyes and ears, don’t touch it. Trust yourself before you trust some celebrity with a stylist and a PR team. If you’d laugh at it when a street hustler tried to sell it to you, then laugh at it when a billionaire in a suit or a famous singer does the same damn thing.

Lesson learned? Quit letting rich assholes tell you what’s valuable. The next big hype will roll through, promise you the moon, and leave you with nothing but lint in your pockets. Don’t be a sucker. Think for yourself. That’s the only investment that pays every time.