Stealing Hollywood: The True Story of Teen Burglars Known As the Bling Ring
Twitter. Facebook. Instagram. They are curious things when Hollywood is involved. They feed into our voyeuristic tendencies and let us befriend people who never actually know us. Through them we don’t just know a celebrity—we become their friend. We know what they wear. Where they eat. What TV shows they like.
For seven young adults, it wasn’t enough to be the social networking friends of a celebrity. They wanted to know what it was like to be the celebrity. And for a one-year period they stole a piece of Hollywood.
Their story is more than a poor person who desired. Their story is about spoiled kids who did have it all…but they wanted more.
They were the Bonnie and Clyde of Generation Adderall. Young, spoiled, and reckless. Collectively they were known as “The Bling Ring.” This is the incredibly true story of how they stole Hollywood.
For seven young adults, it wasn’t enough to be the social networking friends of a celebrity. They wanted to know what it was like to be the celebrity. And for a one-year period they stole a piece of Hollywood.
Their story is more than a poor person who desired. Their story is about spoiled kids who did have it all…but they wanted more.
They were the Bonnie and Clyde of Generation Adderall. Young, spoiled, and reckless. Collectively they were known as “The Bling Ring.” This is the incredibly true story of how they stole Hollywood.
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Stealing Hollywood PDF and ePub |
Excerpt
Prologue
It all started with Nick.
He was never the leader though, no matter what the media would eventually say about him. A leader has to have followers and nobody had ever followed Nick Prugo anywhere. Not even on Twitter.
No, it was Rachel who was always the leader. It was Rachel who came up with the idea. It was Rachel who called the shots. It was Rachel who masterminded a multi-million dollar criminal conspiracy that saw its rise and fall before she was even old enough to (legally) buy a drink.
But it all started with Nick.
And it ended with him, too.
Chapter1: Indian Hills
Calabasas, California is like its own little world. It’s a quiet, sterile suburb on the outskirts of L.A. county, nestled snugly in the Santa Monica Mountains right between Malibu and nowhere, populated mostly by people with more money than God. There’s no homelessness in Calabasas, no poverty or struggle—it’s a community that has sheltered itself from that sort of ugliness. One of those places where the air is fresher, the grass is greener and the streets are safer, a place that by all rights should be immune to problems of any kind. But problems always find a way of springing up in spite of our best efforts. So in wealthy bedroom communities like Calabasas, it’s important to identify those problems early, then cut them out like cancerous tumors and toss them in the garbage can.
Indian Hills High School was one of these garbage cans. Located in the nearby and nearly as affluent Agoura Hills, it was sometimes labeled an “alternative” or “continuation” school, but that sort of thing has never fooled anyone. It was a school for losers. It was a place where kids were sent when adults didn’t know what else to do with them. The student body was made up of less than a hundred kids, all of them weeds that had been pulled from the lawns of their discriminating society before their anger issues and bad attitudes could contaminate the future politicians, CEOs and studio executives that populated the classrooms of the “normal” schools. If you ended up at Indian Hills, you either took it as the wake-up call you needed to buckle down and start getting your stuff together, or you just gave up and decided to go ahead and prove that everyone was right about you.
Nick Prugo found himself at Indian Hills in 2006, after being kicked out of Calabasas High. Nick was a shy and quirky kid, lacking in any form of self-esteem or confidence. He was one of those kids who somehow managed to stand out and blend into the background at the same time. He just came off as kind of weird, and high school can be a hard place when you’re kind of weird.
His parents did their best to medicate him into the appearance of normalcy. He was put on Zoloft for his anxiety issues and Concerta for his ADHD. But there’s no cure for teen angst and if anything, the pills probably just made it worse. Nick was withdrawing from the world, retreating further into his shell, becoming more and more isolated with each passing day.
It would have been one thing if he’d been a loner by choice, but he wanted friends. He wanted a social life. He wanted people to sit with at lunch, people to talk to in the halls between classes, people to get high with on the beach after school and to party with on the weekends. He wanted those things very much, but he just didn’t know how to go about getting them. And even if he did, it was almost a given that he would fail, so he just didn’t bother. He sat by himself day in and day out, quietly envying everyone around him.
After a while, it must have gotten to be too hard. When every single day feels like another losing battle, sooner or later, you just get tired of fighting. So Nick surrendered and stopped showing up for school. It didn’t take long for his absences to add up to unacceptable levels, and the administration expelled him, which at that point was pretty redundant.
Nick’s parents weren’t very well off, at least not by Calabasas standards. His father was an executive at IM Global, a small film distribution company, and his mother ran a dog-walking business. Instead of driving a new BMW or Lincoln Navigator like all the other kids in the neighborhood, Nick was stuck with a crummy little Honda. They weren’t exactly keeping up with the Joneses as it was, and they sure as hell couldn’t afford to send Nick off to a private school, even if there was one willing to take him, which was highly doubtful. It was Indian Hills or nothing.
And it was at Indian Hills where Nick met Rachel Lee.
# # #
Rachel was a fun and outgoing Korean-American beauty who, just like Nick, had been booted out of Calabasas High for her refusal to go. But at Indian Hills, she was thriving. She was one of the most popular girls in school. She had looks (a prerequisite for popularity) and brains (optional), but the thing that made her stand out the most was her sense of fashion. She was always dressed in the newest, the latest, always wearing the cutest shoes and carrying the perfect handbag. If she didn’t win the “Best Dressed” award every year, the fix had to have been in. She was the premier authority on clothes and accessories and she had taken notice of Nick. The new kid in the school of misfits had a knack for keeping up with the most current trends set by the most current celebrities, taking pieces of their styles and incorporating them into his own. Okay, so maybe he didn’t quite have the swagger to pull it off, but the guy knew how to put a look together. One day, Rachel walked up to him and started a conversation. She might as well have given a glass of water to a man dying of thirst.
The two of them hit it off almost instantly. They just clicked. They could talk for hours about their favorite clothes and the celebrities who wore them. They liked the same movies, watched the same TV shows, read the same magazines and surfed the same websites. They even shared the same dreams. One day, they were both going to be big fashion designers. They would have their own high-end brands and the biggest stars would wear their clothes when they were strutting on the red carpet or club hopping on the Sunset Strip.
But they were different in nearly as many ways as they were alike, almost as if they were two sides to the same coin. Where Nick was the inward-looking wallflower, scared of his own shadow, Rachel was the extroverted wild child who wasn’t afraid of the devil. Nick seemed to obsess over his problems and insecurities, no matter how big or how small, while Rachel did her best to ignore hers. She was so confident and together—the kind of girl who could set the world on fire. It was hard to see why she was even at Indian Hills in the first place.
Like most troubled kids, Rachel’s issues started at home. Her parents were divorced—her father lived in Las Vegas and her mother was a successful businesswoman in Calabasas. Her mom had recently gotten remarried, and Rachel did not like her stepfather. No, that would be putting it too kindly. She hated him. She wanted him out of their lives. She was vocal with her disapproval too, but no matter how much she complained, it didn’t do any good. She wanted to be taken seriously. She wanted her opinion to matter.
And just as Nick found what he needed in her, she must have found what she needed in him, too. The more they learned about each other, the stronger the ties between them became. And with every moment Rachel shared with him, with every secret she confided and every fashion tip she gave, Nick was, in his own way, falling deeply in love with her. It was a platonic love, like the love a brother has for a sister, but it was also passionate, even obsessive. She had given him what he wanted most in the world—she had given him friendship, and there was nothing he wouldn’t give her in return. He would follow her anywhere. Do anything for her.
Anywhere. Anything. Anytime.
It all started with Nick.
He was never the leader though, no matter what the media would eventually say about him. A leader has to have followers and nobody had ever followed Nick Prugo anywhere. Not even on Twitter.
No, it was Rachel who was always the leader. It was Rachel who came up with the idea. It was Rachel who called the shots. It was Rachel who masterminded a multi-million dollar criminal conspiracy that saw its rise and fall before she was even old enough to (legally) buy a drink.
But it all started with Nick.
And it ended with him, too.
Chapter1: Indian Hills
Calabasas, California is like its own little world. It’s a quiet, sterile suburb on the outskirts of L.A. county, nestled snugly in the Santa Monica Mountains right between Malibu and nowhere, populated mostly by people with more money than God. There’s no homelessness in Calabasas, no poverty or struggle—it’s a community that has sheltered itself from that sort of ugliness. One of those places where the air is fresher, the grass is greener and the streets are safer, a place that by all rights should be immune to problems of any kind. But problems always find a way of springing up in spite of our best efforts. So in wealthy bedroom communities like Calabasas, it’s important to identify those problems early, then cut them out like cancerous tumors and toss them in the garbage can.
Indian Hills High School was one of these garbage cans. Located in the nearby and nearly as affluent Agoura Hills, it was sometimes labeled an “alternative” or “continuation” school, but that sort of thing has never fooled anyone. It was a school for losers. It was a place where kids were sent when adults didn’t know what else to do with them. The student body was made up of less than a hundred kids, all of them weeds that had been pulled from the lawns of their discriminating society before their anger issues and bad attitudes could contaminate the future politicians, CEOs and studio executives that populated the classrooms of the “normal” schools. If you ended up at Indian Hills, you either took it as the wake-up call you needed to buckle down and start getting your stuff together, or you just gave up and decided to go ahead and prove that everyone was right about you.
Nick Prugo found himself at Indian Hills in 2006, after being kicked out of Calabasas High. Nick was a shy and quirky kid, lacking in any form of self-esteem or confidence. He was one of those kids who somehow managed to stand out and blend into the background at the same time. He just came off as kind of weird, and high school can be a hard place when you’re kind of weird.
His parents did their best to medicate him into the appearance of normalcy. He was put on Zoloft for his anxiety issues and Concerta for his ADHD. But there’s no cure for teen angst and if anything, the pills probably just made it worse. Nick was withdrawing from the world, retreating further into his shell, becoming more and more isolated with each passing day.
It would have been one thing if he’d been a loner by choice, but he wanted friends. He wanted a social life. He wanted people to sit with at lunch, people to talk to in the halls between classes, people to get high with on the beach after school and to party with on the weekends. He wanted those things very much, but he just didn’t know how to go about getting them. And even if he did, it was almost a given that he would fail, so he just didn’t bother. He sat by himself day in and day out, quietly envying everyone around him.
After a while, it must have gotten to be too hard. When every single day feels like another losing battle, sooner or later, you just get tired of fighting. So Nick surrendered and stopped showing up for school. It didn’t take long for his absences to add up to unacceptable levels, and the administration expelled him, which at that point was pretty redundant.
Nick’s parents weren’t very well off, at least not by Calabasas standards. His father was an executive at IM Global, a small film distribution company, and his mother ran a dog-walking business. Instead of driving a new BMW or Lincoln Navigator like all the other kids in the neighborhood, Nick was stuck with a crummy little Honda. They weren’t exactly keeping up with the Joneses as it was, and they sure as hell couldn’t afford to send Nick off to a private school, even if there was one willing to take him, which was highly doubtful. It was Indian Hills or nothing.
And it was at Indian Hills where Nick met Rachel Lee.
# # #
Rachel was a fun and outgoing Korean-American beauty who, just like Nick, had been booted out of Calabasas High for her refusal to go. But at Indian Hills, she was thriving. She was one of the most popular girls in school. She had looks (a prerequisite for popularity) and brains (optional), but the thing that made her stand out the most was her sense of fashion. She was always dressed in the newest, the latest, always wearing the cutest shoes and carrying the perfect handbag. If she didn’t win the “Best Dressed” award every year, the fix had to have been in. She was the premier authority on clothes and accessories and she had taken notice of Nick. The new kid in the school of misfits had a knack for keeping up with the most current trends set by the most current celebrities, taking pieces of their styles and incorporating them into his own. Okay, so maybe he didn’t quite have the swagger to pull it off, but the guy knew how to put a look together. One day, Rachel walked up to him and started a conversation. She might as well have given a glass of water to a man dying of thirst.
The two of them hit it off almost instantly. They just clicked. They could talk for hours about their favorite clothes and the celebrities who wore them. They liked the same movies, watched the same TV shows, read the same magazines and surfed the same websites. They even shared the same dreams. One day, they were both going to be big fashion designers. They would have their own high-end brands and the biggest stars would wear their clothes when they were strutting on the red carpet or club hopping on the Sunset Strip.
But they were different in nearly as many ways as they were alike, almost as if they were two sides to the same coin. Where Nick was the inward-looking wallflower, scared of his own shadow, Rachel was the extroverted wild child who wasn’t afraid of the devil. Nick seemed to obsess over his problems and insecurities, no matter how big or how small, while Rachel did her best to ignore hers. She was so confident and together—the kind of girl who could set the world on fire. It was hard to see why she was even at Indian Hills in the first place.
Like most troubled kids, Rachel’s issues started at home. Her parents were divorced—her father lived in Las Vegas and her mother was a successful businesswoman in Calabasas. Her mom had recently gotten remarried, and Rachel did not like her stepfather. No, that would be putting it too kindly. She hated him. She wanted him out of their lives. She was vocal with her disapproval too, but no matter how much she complained, it didn’t do any good. She wanted to be taken seriously. She wanted her opinion to matter.
And just as Nick found what he needed in her, she must have found what she needed in him, too. The more they learned about each other, the stronger the ties between them became. And with every moment Rachel shared with him, with every secret she confided and every fashion tip she gave, Nick was, in his own way, falling deeply in love with her. It was a platonic love, like the love a brother has for a sister, but it was also passionate, even obsessive. She had given him what he wanted most in the world—she had given him friendship, and there was nothing he wouldn’t give her in return. He would follow her anywhere. Do anything for her.
Anywhere. Anything. Anytime.
