Your Independent Journal from the Heartland
Little did I know just what I was in for when I clicked onto the Apple TV doc “The Big Conn.” The nefariousness of con men fascinates me, even the one I so loathe who has turned the POTUS executive chambers into the Offal Office.
This four-episode documentary is about a flamboyant attorney by, in this case, the apropos name of Eric C. Conn in Eastern Kentucky who cooked up a Social Security disability scam that fleeced the Feds for some $550 million. With billboards and ads galore, Conn became a local personality who sold himself as an effective advocate for the hardscrabble coal country populace.
Its story is a fast-paced ride that’s breezy and entertaining as hell, yet dead-on in delivering facts as well as the colorful local context as the story unfolds as truth that’s in some ways stranger than fiction. Plus some genuine laugh-out-loud moments at the absurdities and all too frequently human weirdness that pepper the incident and its telling.
Conn managed to ally with a judge who rubber-stamped the disability cases Conn handled. In one example, he approved granting Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits for a rare intellectual condition at a rate that would indicate that it affected some 80% of the population.
For a while, they managed to pull it off rather smoothly. Conn lived the high and somewhat reckless life. And kept snaring new clients with more flashy billboards and vivid TV ads, along with his manipulated success rate. He became a local celebrity. The doc spotlights what a unique and fulsome character he was; for instance, the man serial married so much he was unsure if it was 15 or 16 times. It’s hard not to find Conn funny and even charming in an over-the-top way.
Hence the doc plays in some ways like a feature movie. But the scam (and Conn himself) was too audacious to not at some point start unraveling. And the film’s documentary factuality comes into play with aspects of the story that spotlight important matters that have to do with bureaucracy and power.
Eventually, two workers in the nearby SSI office in West Virginia begin to notice the unusually high approval rate for SSI applications by one judge. And how so many applications read with cut and paste similarity.
A Wall Street Journal reporter sniffs out the situation and publishes a page one story. And this is where you might think, okay, the jig is up.
Guess again. The Social Security whistleblowers are frustrated at how unresponsive their superiors are to their concerns. They eventually suffer retaliation. Bureaucrats would rather bury the screw-up.
The obvious crime isn’t immediately taken up by prosecutors in Kentucky. because Conn and his judge cohort have local stature, influence and power. This isn’t neatly plotted-out crime entertainment. It’s instead how life really works. By the same token, the film superbly captures the humanity and personalities
It’s a story with more twists and turns than a two-lane highway winding through the Kentucky hills, rather more fun and boffo entertainment than your average documentary. It has both the spoonful of sugar to make it a delight to watch while delivering as well the medicine message that government programs and the justice system can and should do better.
“The Big Conn” is available on Apple TV+
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Rob Patterson is a music and entertainment writer in Austin, Texas.
Email robpatterson054@gmail.com.
