Meet the Monopoly Man Who Photobombed Equifax CEO
The Monopoly man dropped the ultimate photobomb on Washington this week.
Amanda Werner of Americans for Financial Reform and Public Citizen blew up the internet on Wednesday by slipping on a black top hat and a bushy white mustache and sitting two rows behind Equifax disgraced ex-CEO Richard Smith during his Senate Banking Committee testimony on Wednesday.
The costume is immediately recognizable as Rich Uncle Pennybags from the board game Monopoly — always a powerful image of wealth and pomposity begging to be punctured.
Werner, who uses the gender pronoun "they" instead of "he" or "she," used the monocle and dabbed forehead sweat with giant paper money bags — accessories they purchased on Amazon.
“I don’t know if he noticed me, but his representatives from Equifax noticed me,” Werner told Newsweek. “I got a lot of dirty looks and I think they tried to kick me out but they couldn’t because I wasn’t doing anything illegal.”
Smith was testifying about his company's data breach, which compromised information of more than 145 million people. He said he claimed "full responsibility," but that didn't prevent Werner, an activist for Americans for Financial Reform and Public Citizen, from making a larger stand against fine print in contracts that corporations exploit to limit consumers' rights.
Werner says that, “as silly as it was,” their photobombing and "Get out of jail free" cards brought more attention to the cause.
“I definitely want to make sure that if folks know that if they were amused by the Monopoly man to call their senators and urge them to vote no” on forced arbitration and to “support the arbitration rule,” Werner said.
They also showed up in the costume outside the same hearing room Tuesday, when the banking committee was updated about last year's fake accounts scandal at Wells Fargo.
Even if Smith didn’t notice, CSPAN caught it on camera and Twitter made use of the footage.
The stunt blew up on social media, with tweets calling attention to the activist.
"The Monopoly Man who is wiping his brow with money and twirling his mustache is magical," @AltlandCarolyn tweeted.
Werner's channeling of the fictional Pennybags was reminiscent of the Billionaires for Bush, a similarly garbed group of activists who took to the streets to satirically support George W. Bush, drawing particular attention to policies that would benefit corporations and the upper class.
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