system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[DC] How much does the public know of Lex Luthor's crimes and what are they?

Is him being a supervillain common knowledge.
gpt
Depends.

Pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Lex Luthor was pretty much always a famous evil scientist/engineer, and proudly proclaimed himself a 'criminal mastermind'.

When he was reinvented into a billionaire industrialist post-Crisis on Infinite Earth, he became a Machiavellian schemer on top of all that, with an a fairly ironclad public persona that effectively obscured all of the underhanded things he constantly did to enrich himself and attack Superman, endangering or killing many many others in the processes.

There were various stories where he was 'exposed' and temporarily went to jail or was brought to trial, but managed to weasel out of the charges somehow, and rebuild his reputation. Most notably, he managed to run for President and win during a story arc from almost a couple decades ago, despite being a suspected criminal/ mass murderer/ accessory to mass murder several times over by that point.

In the current Post-New 52 Continuity, Lex started as a respected industrialist like in Post-COIE continuity, but was exposed as a criminal fairly quickly, and is now basically trying to rehabilitate his legacy by acting a defender of Earth on his own terms.