LKF / 蘭桂坊
October 29th, 2026 | kobi ansong
They keep interrogation rooms chilly and the fluorescent lights are supposed to mess with your mental. Tell me about Zahid, Special Agent Fields said.
We met on Lan Kwai Fong Street, aka LKF. A cluster of cobblestone alleys that make up Hong Kong’s de facto party district. A belligerent combination of white tourists, mainland Chinese money, and local hustlers. All under neon lights. Most locals avoid LKF at all costs. It’s for outsiders.
I popped into a dim lounge with radioactive goldfish and took a seat at the bar. I caught the Patek first, then the unibrow. Zahid Ahmed. Sup dude, he said.
We bonded over our outsider status. I was a black kid from Atlanta studying abroad. Zahid was an Indian immigrant by way of Norway trying to launch a company. We were 19-year-olds with a hunger for the good life, and we refused to be kept out. Only difference--Zahid was making big moves. The guy invented a solar panel iPhone charger.
We sent a bottle of champagne to a group of Australian girls and partied with them the all night. The guy's a consummate name-dropper. As soon as the DJ dropped a Drake record, he goes, You know...I met Aubrey one time? The girls thought he was cringe, but he swiped for everything so it was chill.
The next day we caught the train to Shenzhen, where the forecast is always gray skies with a good chance of depression. The atmosphere was poisoned from the factories. If it says MADE IN CHINA, they made it in Shenzhen. We pulled up to Foxconn, a sprawling dystopian city with checkpoints, armed guards, and lab coats everywhere. This is where Apple makes the iPhone. After we signed a hundred NDAs, we noticed yellow nets fastened to the buildings. One of the lab coats calls them safety measures. Last year they had 14 worker suicides–they all jumped.
Why they don’t do it at home? It’s cleaner, more polite, no? Zahid asked.
Special Agent Fields stirred his coffee and stared. After China, you two keep in touch? We did. I helped him pick out designer clothes and taught him proper Instagram DM etiquette for girls. In a few months, Zahid’s success exploded. The Scandinavian press called him Norwegian Mark Zuckerberg. He raised crazy tech money and dived into high society with a vengeance. He even finessed a White House Clean Energy ambassador role.
One day in Atlanta, he scooped me in a yellow Porsche. He had a crush on the Princess of Jordan, and wanted to send her ten dozen roses. I told him to calm down. He zig-zagged down Northside Drive with F1 precision. Life’s a video game and Zahid just knew how to play. I told him I wanted in on whatever he did next. He told me a story.
At age eleven, his family moved to Norway from India. Zahid’s father abandoned a heart surgeon career to run a small shop outside of Oslo. Zahid couldn’t speak English or Norwegian. They taunted him at school: brown boy, brown boy. He forged an application and got accepted into a top boarding school. They asked why he lied? Thirteen-year-old Zahid said, I don’t lie, I win.
Weeks later, he sent me a sixty page business plan. An old professor said it was legit, so I made an investment. A bit of cash I stashed from student loan refunds and flipping sneakers.
Wait, you gave him money? Special Agent Fields asked.
That's when I learned about Zahid's transatlantic fraud. He scammed tens of millions from some of the world’s most powerful people. I’ll never get my four G’s back. I was last in a long line of well-capitalized white men and Saudi royals. They sentenced him to fourteen years. The federal prison is somewhere in South Georgia.