Aaron Schock could not stop talking about the gold. He returned from a trip to Caracas in early 2025 telling a confidant that Venezuela’s vice president had promised him a gold mine — an honest-to-god gold mine — if he could get U.S. sanctions lifted on the country.
No one around Schock could know whether the agreement was real. Like many things in Schock’s life, it could have been a gilded mirage distracting from a more complicated truth. But for much of the year, those who interacted with him saw a man animated by the promise of gold, part of a supposedly eight-figure payday that Schock told business associate Benjamin Papermaster awaited…
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