Extra Credit: The Rise and Fall of a Frat House Ponzi Scheme

Summary

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Chameleon: Extra Credit – The Rise and Fall of a Frat House Ponzi Scheme

Podcast: Chameleon
Host: Josh Dean
Episode: Extra Credit: The Rise and Fall of a Frat House Ponzi Scheme
Date: March 12, 2026

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Episode Overview

This gripping episode of Chameleon takes a deep dive into the incredible true story of Syed Arbab—a once-promising college student at the University of Georgia who orchestrated a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme out of his frat house. Host Josh Dean and journalist Ashley Flowers explore Arbab’s unlikely path from math whiz and first-generation immigrant to campus scammer, his repeated cons—even while awaiting prison—and how his story reflects America’s “golden age of deception.” Through extensive interviews with Arbab, victims, and insiders, the episode draws out themes of ambition, belonging, hubris, and the seductive allure of fast money.

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Key Topics & Discussion Points

1. The Tip-Off and Early Curiosity

• [01:53] Ashley Flowers first hears about the scam from a student while speaking at the University of Georgia. Intrigued, she digs deeper, doubting Arbab would agree to speak.

  • “There was a kid who told me that there was a frat guy who had run a multimillion dollar Ponzi scheme out of his frat house, and I thought, wow, that sounds pretty crazy.” — Ashley Flowers

• [03:08] To her surprise, Syed Arbab quickly agrees to share his side of the story.

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2. Origins: Childhood and Assimilation

• [04:35] Arbab is introduced as the son of Bangladeshi scientists, growing up in a small Michigan town post-9/11.

  • “He arrives in this white bred Midwestern small town and he's pudgy and he loves math and he loves to study and there is nothing more satisfying to say than numbers and patterns.” — Ashley Flowers [04:55]

• Math prodigy & “pie contest” story

• Struggle to belong:

  • "It's a classic immigrant kid story, wanting desperately to assimilate and be part of the cool crowd." — Ashley Flowers [05:53]

• Early hustling: Selling vape pens, weed, to fit in and afford “cool” material goods his parents wouldn't buy [06:25–07:00].

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3. Move to Georgia & Introduction to Frat Life

• [08:04] Syed’s father restricts him from attending the University of Michigan, sending him instead to the “supposedly safer” University of Georgia, not knowing its legendary party reputation.

• Adopts the “Southern preppy” look:

  • “He’s initially reluctant to join a frat, but he realizes, look, that's how you sort of get in here. So he pledges Phi Kappa Tau...” — Ashley Flowers [08:38]

• Fraternity rituals: Cigarette walrus, Edward 40 Hands [08:51]

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4. From Day Trading Club to Financial Whiz (and Fraud)

• [09:19] Syed launches a “day trading club” called “The Wolves of Broad Street,” which quickly amasses over 800 members.

  • “And so they start to see him as this stock whiz, this trading whiz.” — Ashley Flowers [09:56]

• Legend grows after a well-timed gold bet:

  • Syed bets his entire portfolio on a Fed rate hike, triples his account, and is cheered as a genius [10:15–11:30].
  • “I, like, walked into the room and everyone just started giving me a standing ovation.” — Syed Arbab [11:39]

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5. Building the Ponzi Scheme: Artist Proficio

• [12:01] Syed claims to have started a hedge fund, “artist proficio,” offering guaranteed returns up to 15% and later as high as 57%, and begins soliciting investments from students, their parents, and others.

  • Red flags:
    • Riddled contracts, lying about being in an MBA program, receiving funds via Venmo/Zelle [12:28–12:58]
    • “It was like the United Nations of red flags.” — Ashley Flowers [12:28]

• Investors receive bogus spreadsheets, not actual account statements; most are too dazzled by reported returns to question it immediately [13:17].

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6. The Scheme Unravels

• [14:13] Arbab extracts increasingly large sums; one investor gives $100k, expecting fast returns.

  • Syed spends lavishly: Vegas trips, luxury goods, cocaine, a red Corvette [14:49–15:37].

• Downward spiral:

  • As losses mount, Syed sells drugs, takes desperate gambling risks in Vegas, persists in “making it back” [15:58–16:19].
  • “Just crazy, crazy, like, desperation that I was convincing myself would work, because I'm like, yeah, you know, it's worked in the past.” — Syed Arbab [16:19]

• Ponzi mechanics exposed:

  • Starts using new investor money to pay off older ones directly via person-to-person transfers [16:53–17:19].
  • One of Syed’s friends recognizes the Ponzi arrangement, reports him to the SEC [17:53–18:14].

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7. Aftermath: The Bust & Prosecution

• [18:32] Syed is interviewed by the SEC, lies brazenly, claiming all the money was “gifts,” maintains he’s doing nothing wrong.

  • “At this point, I have such a huge ego that I think that I'm so much smarter than everyone, even government officials that have already done the investigation.” — Syed Arbab [18:32]

• Charges: One count of securities fraud (Oct 2019), detailing outlandish promises (15% and up to 57% “guaranteed” returns) [20:11].

  • “It boggles my mind how people could fall for it, but I think that just speaks to what they perceived as his charm and his expertise...” — Ashley Flowers [20:11]

• Sentencing:

  • Pleads guilty in Sept 2020, gets 60 months (5 years) in federal prison, ordered to pay over $500,000 restitution to 117 victims [21:11–21:27].
  • “He thought that he had charmed the court and that there was no way they were gonna really throw the max at him. But that's what they did.” — Ashley Flowers [21:27]

• COVID and delay: Cites a heart condition, spends a year under house arrest, during which he scams again [21:56–22:31].

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8. Second Scam: “Free Riding” Brokerage Fraud

• [24:36] Even before sentencing and during “semi-freedom,” Syed gets friends to exploit instant-deposit features of online brokerages (“free riding”)—trading with digital money before deposits clear, never backing the trades with real funds.

  • “They're stealing money from brokerages.” — Ashley Flowers [25:48]

• Continues even in prison:

  • At his initial, less-stringent facility, Syed scams brokerages and posts taunting photos on Instagram [26:42–27:11].
  • “Like, oh, you thought I went to prison? Does this look like I'm in prison, bitch?” — Ashley Flowers [27:08]

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9. Maximum Security & Reflection

• [27:41] Feds notice his bad behavior in prison and transfer Syed to a notorious high-security facility, “Gitmo North” in Marion, IL [27:41–28:11].

  • “He just stopped caring about stuff that he used to care about, things like money and drugs and showing them off on social media.” — Ashley Flowers [28:18]

• Turns to education:

  • Pursues an MBA, applies for PhD programs, scores highly on the GRE [28:50–29:16].
  • “I took the GRE. I got in the 99th percentile for the quantitative section and then the 90th percentile in the verbal.” — Syed Arbab [28:59]

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10. Release, Rehabilitation, and Ongoing Ambition

• [29:28] Early prison release to halfway house; then accepted to Howard University for graduate school; now enrolled, living in D.C. suburbs [29:28–30:05].

• Lingering isolation:

  • “I was a social person. I'm not anymore. ...the only people that I really talk to are, like, people that I make money with.” — Syed Arbab [30:05]

• Relationship & future:

  • Meets girlfriend through a Muslim dating app, honest about his record; ends first year of PhD with a 4.0 GPA [30:40–31:26].

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11. Hubris, Contrition, and Future Prospects

• Mixed public statements:

  • Syed is frequently defensive, sometimes blames his parents’ strict upbringing for his choices [32:14–33:04].
  • “Parents think that it's a protective mechanism that they're enforcing, right? But this inevitably amplifies the disobedience of the children. As you see, for myself, I fucking went to prison.” — Syed Arbab [33:04]

• Victims’ perspective:

  • Many remain angry, awaiting restitution. Some find it galling that his father tried to pay back losses personally [33:36].

• Self-awareness or performance?

  • Syed describes himself as a “degenerate,” says he regrets defrauding friends, but Ashley Flowers isn’t entirely convinced [33:59–35:14].
  • “Of course he's going to come across as somebody who is sorry, I hope it's genuine, but I wouldn't gamble on it.” — Ashley Flowers [35:14]

• Current activities:

  • Consulting in private equity, cannabis industry, “independent contracting”—still “hustling,” but in less shady ways [35:39–36:08].

• Dreams of fame:

  • Sends Ashley a draft TV treatment, “In the Red,” casting himself as a misunderstood prodigy immigrant [36:20–37:13].

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• [11:39] Syed Arbab:
  “I, like, walked into the room and everyone just started giving me a standing ovation.”
• [12:28] Ashley Flowers:
  “It was like the United nations of red flags.”
• [16:19] Syed Arbab:
  “Just crazy, crazy, like, desperation that I was convincing myself would work, because I'm like, yeah, you know, it's worked in the past.”
• [18:32] Syed Arbab:
  “At this point, I have such a huge ego that I think that I'm so much smarter than everyone, even government officials...”
• [21:27] Ashley Flowers:
  “He thought that he had charmed the court and that there was no way they were gonna really throw the max at him. But that's what they did.”
• [27:08] Ashley Flowers:
  “Does this look like I'm in prison, bitch?”
• [30:05] Syed Arbab:
  “I was a social person. I'm not anymore. ...the only people that I really talk to are, like, people that I make money with.”
• [33:04] Syed Arbab:
  “As you see, for myself, I fucking went to prison.”
• [35:14] Ashley Flowers:
  “Of course he's going to come across as somebody who is sorry, I hope it's genuine, but I wouldn't gamble on it.”

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Important Timestamps

• 01:53 — The initial tip-off about the frat house Ponzi scheme
• 04:35–06:25 — Syed's upbringing and struggle for acceptance
• 08:04–09:38 — University of Georgia, frat life, and campus integration
• 10:15–11:39 — Syed’s gold-betting legend is born
• 12:01–13:32 — “Hedge fund” Artist Proficio, gathering investors
• 13:41–15:33 — Scheme escalation, spending spree, and social media brags
• 16:19–17:53 — Outright Ponzi mechanics and unraveling
• 18:32–21:27 — SEC intervention, prosecution, and sentencing
• 24:36–26:11 — The “free riding” brokerage scam
• 26:42–27:41 — Social media stunting from prison; consequences
• 27:54–28:50 — Focus shifts to education in high security prison
• 29:28–31:26 — Reentry, grad school, relationship, continued ambition
• 33:04–33:36 — Immigrant family implications and parental heartbreak
• 35:39–36:42 — Present-day hustling and TV ambitions

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Episode Tone & Final Thoughts

Chameleon brings a darkly fascinating, even cautionary, tone to Syed Arbab’s rise and fall—a mix of sharp journalistic skepticism and human empathy for both the victims and Arbab himself. Through personal interviews and narrative, the episode explores the intersection of cultural identity, American hustle culture, youthful recklessness, and the magnetic lure of “easy money.” It ends on an ambiguous note: Syed’s intelligence, drive, and self-mythology could lead to real redemption—or more spectacular trouble.

“America is, as they say, the land of opportunity. Syed Arbab certainly could reinvent himself. People do it all the time. He could also not change at all and make a fortune all over again. That could be a movie or a whole new scheme. Stay tuned.” — Josh Dean [38:05]

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For fans of true crime, finance, and psychological profiles, this episode serves as a classic tale of ambition gone awry—and a stark reminder that the line between ingenuity and deception is easily blurred in the age of hustle.

Transcript

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[Ashley Flowers]

There was a kid who told me that there was a frat guy who had run a multimillion dollar Ponzi scheme out of his frat house, and I thought, wow, that sounds pretty crazy.

[Josh Dean]

Ashley made a mental note of it and later, when she had some time, did some poking around to see if this frat guy Ponzi scheme had been covered.

[Ashley Flowers]

There had been some scant media coverage of it, but I really wanted to dive in deep and I honestly thought, there is no way in hell that I'm gonna be able to reach this guy.

[Josh Dean]

The guy in question was named Syed Arbab, and by this point he had been charged, convicted and already served his term for the crime of taking more than $1 million from 117 victims in a scheme where he claimed to be investing their money in a hedge fund, but he was actually spending it on his own relatively lavish lifestyle.

[Ashley Flowers]

He's fresh by that point out of federal prison and there's no way he's going to talk to a reporter

[Josh Dean]

on that point. Ashley was wrong. She found Zayed's number and texted him, told him that she'd heard about his case and wanted to hear his side of the story.

[Ashley Flowers]

He immediately said, yeah, just hit me up, send me a link. Let's talk.

[Josh Dean]

This is Camellia, the weekly show about people who pretend to be something they aren't, and I'm Josh Dean. This week a gifted student gets creat caught red handed and doesn't learn his lesson as quickly as he probably should have.

[Ashley Flowers (Podcast Promo)]

Some cases fade from headlines, some never made it there to begin with. I'm Ashley Flowers and on my podcast the Deck, I tell you the stories of cold cases featured on playing cards distributed in prisons designed to spark new leads and bring long overdue justice. Because these stories deserve to be heard and the loved ones of these victims still deserve answers. Are you ready to be dealt in? Listen to the Deck now. Wherever you get your podcasts, your new

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[Josh Dean]

You're listening to Chameleon the weekly Syed Arbab is The son of two Bangladeshi scientists who immigrated to the US shortly after September 11, 2001, probably the single most difficult time for a family of Muslims to arrive on our shores. They settled in a Michigan town called Ken.

[Ashley Flowers]

He arrives in this white bred Midwestern small town and he's pudgy and he loves math and he loves to study and there is nothing more satisfying to say than numbers and patterns. And there's a contest at his elementary school and it's called the pie Contest. It's how many digits of PI can you memorize? And the person who memorizes the most digits wins an actual pie.

[Josh Dean]

Syed won that pie. He later claimed in an interview to have gotten to the 360th decimal, as if to prove himself. Syed even did a version of this party trick off the cuff for Ashley. When they first talked, he gave me

[Ashley Flowers]

about 48 of the first digits.

[Josh Dean]

Syed was obviously very smart. He was also a talented pianist. But what he really wanted as a kid, Ashley says, was to be popular, to belong.

[Ashley Flowers]

It's a classic immigrant kid story, wanting desperately to assimilate and be part of the cool crowd.

[Josh Dean]

Honestly, it's a classic teenage story, period. You don't have to be an immigrant to feel awkward and desperate to belong in high school. It's just magnified when you're also from a very different culture. Unfortunately for Syed, his parents weren't helping. They were very strict and forbid not just drinking, but also going to parties and dating girls, which only made Syed want those things more.

[Ashley Flowers]

He would sneak to the public library to make out with his girlfriend in the stacks. He started entrepreneurship very early and started selling, you know, vape pens at parties and selling some weed. And what becomes very important to Sayid is the material things that you can get with money that his parents are not providing for him.

[Josh Dean]

Things like a cell phone.

[Ashley Flowers]

He is learning that if I have money, I can buy things. People see me with those things and think that I'm cool. I'm one of them.

[Josh Dean]

Syed is a rebel, but he also loves his parents. He wants to win his father's respect in particular. And one of the few times he'd felt that respect was when he made him some money on an investment as a numbers guy. Syed started to dabble in investing early in high school. In fact, he opened an online brokerage account and started looking around for how he could make his money work for him.

[Ashley Flowers]

He's looking at these girls in the tight Lululemon yoga pants. So that's what's spinning in his head when he tells his dad, hey, you should really invest in some Lululemon. So his dad does, according to Saeed, invest in Lululemon and sees his stock portfolio increase. And then that prompts said to get more and more interested in stocks and in trading and the market.

[Josh Dean]

Syed's parents knew their son his desire to have fun and chase girls. So when his dad got a job in Georgia, he told Syed that he could not attend the college he wanted to attend, the University of Michigan. That was, according to his dad, just too much of a party school.

[Ashley Flowers]

You're coming to Georgia with me, and you're going to go to the University of Georgia, and you're going to straighten up.

[Josh Dean]

What Syed's dad obviously didn't know at that point is that the University of Georgia isn't exactly a safe alternative. It's a legendary party school itself.

[Ashley Flowers]

There's more bars than you can think of. It's frat life. It is party, party, party there. And he does a couple Google searches about the University of Georgia and is like, score, cool. I'm down with that.

[Josh Dean]

Once on campus, Syed traded his Michigan look for a Southern preppy aesthetic.

[Ashley Flowers]

He's initially reluctant to join a frat, but he realizes, look, that's how you sort of get in here. So he pledges Phi Kappa Tau, complete

[Josh Dean]

with the traditional American pledging experience.

[Ashley Flowers]

I don't know if you know what a cigarette walrus is, but that's one of the initiations they do where you stick like 10 cigarettes up your nose and do pushups. And then there's also something called the Edward 40 Hands.

[Josh Dean]

This one I'm aware of. Basically, someone affixes a 40 ounce bottle of malt liquor to each of your hands and you have to finish them both before being freed.

[Ashley Flowers]

So he's well on his way to being a good boy like his parents want him to be.

[Josh Dean]

Once he was settled in the frat, Syed started a day trading club, just some friends experimenting with investing small amounts of money. This is the spring of 2017, which

[Ashley Flowers]

is essentially a group chat, and they call themselves the Wolves of Broad Street.

[Josh Dean]

Broad street being the main party drag in Athens and the street where the Phi Capital frat house was. Very quickly, word of the group spread across campus. More than 800 people joined up, and Syed was the ringleader, calling out trades he was making that seemed to be paying off.

[Ashley Flowers]

And so they start to see him as this stock whiz, this trading whiz.

[Josh Dean]

Many of Syed's early picks seemed pretty obvious. Amazon, Microsoft, et cetera, your blue chips. But he had an eye for risk, too. One day, he made a bold announcement to the group.

[Ashley Flowers]

He tells everybody that he's gonna bet his entire portfolio, which is about $30,000, on Janet Yellen, the Fed chairwoman, increasing rates.

[Josh Dean]

Interest rates, she means.

[Ashley Flowers]

At that time, Janet Yellen was not expected to increase rates. It was not expected to happen at all. And so he gathers up all of his friends, people who were in the Wolves abroad street chat show up to the frat house.

[Josh Dean]

Syed was so confident in his prediction that he used his entire account balance to buy up gold. Because of the interest rate went up gold. Gold prices would also spike, he surmised.

[Ashley Flowers]

It's like two o', clock, spring day, 2017. You got all these kids packed into the frat house and they're Ready to watch what Janet Yellen does at a press conference.

[Josh Dean]

Everyone was crowded around two screens. One showing the Fed announcement, the other Syed's account.

[Ashley Flowers]

So she announces that she is raising rates and Gold went crazy, and he immediately tripled his account. And so all of these kids are just jumping up and going, oh, my

[Ashley Flowers (Podcast Promo)]

God, you did it.

[Ashley Flowers]

This is brilliant. You are a genius.

[Josh Dean]

Saeed Syed's legend as an investment genius was born that day on a single lucky pick. Syed himself remembers it well.

[Syed Arbab]

I, like, walked into the room and everyone just started giving me a standing ovation.

[Josh Dean]

Ashley actually ended up speaking to Syed a lot over a series of months, and she recorded the conversations. This is what you're hearing here and elsewhere when you hear Syed. After his frat house heroics, Syed kept the momentum going.

[Ashley Flowers]

So he starts telling people that he has created a hedge fund which he calls artist proficio or artistic profits. And it spreads like wildfire. And people start sending him money.

[Josh Dean]

Students mostly, but not only students. Some of the parents of those students invested money with Syed, too, after he reached out in search of larger dollar amounts, guaranteeing 15% returns.

[Ashley Flowers]

There is no such thing as a guaranteed return when you invest. It was like the United nations of red flags. He sends a contract to these investors that it's riddled with spelling errors. He lies in the contract saying that he's in an MBA program. He's an undergraduate studying biology. He's asking people to send him money via Venmo and Zell, and then taking that money and putting it into his personal bank of America account.

[Josh Dean]

Anyone who's invested in a fund of any kind knows that you get regular statements these days. You can check those accounts daily online, but at a minimum, your fund sends you monthly and quarterly accounting of how your investments are doing. Syed primarily communicated with his investors via mobile phone, text message.

[Ashley Flowers]

And he would send a spreadsheet that just had a bunch of bogus numbers on them. Nobody was really questioning it, not at first anyway. They were excited to watch the numbers go up.

[Josh Dean]

For about a year, from May 2018 to May 2019, Syed recruited investors. Here's how he explained it to Ashley.

[Syed Arbab]

We did spectacular. Like, I was on an all time high. Like, at one point, the portfolio value went up to almost like $6 million, you know, so no one really gave a shit about, like, the structure of it because everyone was just making money.

[Josh Dean]

He was clearly a talented salesman, and once he had a good mark on the hook, he was especially good at getting that person to keep investing. There was always some urgent trade, some moment the investor couldn't possibly miss.

[Ashley Flowers]

He is incredibly persistent. When he sees that someone is a sieve for money, he is going to be texting them relentlessly, saying, I'm about to make you some easy cash. Send me another 10k.

[Josh Dean]

Most of these investors were giving Syed a few hundred bucks at a time, maybe a couple thousand. But one woman, a cashier from a local supermarket whose brother went to the University of Georgia, invested $48,000. Another guy, a former student, gave him $100,000. An incredible score that came with some unfortunate strings.

[Ashley Flowers]

That investor wanted their money back pretty quickly, and of course, he didn't have that, because meanwhile, what we're talking about is he is bawling at the mall with other people's cash. So he goes on lavish spending trips to Las Vegas. Meanwhile, while he's in Las Vegas, he's tweeting pics of him winning, presumably at games, wads of cash he puts on Instagram. MGM has put him on security alert because he's clearing them out. And all of his investors are seeing this, that he's going to Vegas and he's spending this kind of money. So he spent money on clothes, parties, shoes, ton of liquor, adult entertainment, even

[Josh Dean]

a red Corvette, which he featured prominently on his Instagram.

[Ashley Flowers]

He's also buying drugs and he's also using cocaine. So it is a downward spiral if ever there was one.

[Josh Dean]

Syed was buying lots of stuff and partying more than ever, probably to escape the mounting pressure of people actually wanting to see some of the money he was supposedly earning for them.

[Syed Arbab]

And at some point, I started making riskier and riskier bets on the market. I remember portfolio value had, like, dropped, like, almost a hundred thousand dollars. It was just, like, crazy.

[Ashley Flowers]

The walls are closing in and he needs to start paying people back, but he no longer has the money.

[Syed Arbab]

So what I did was I started selling drugs. I took riskier and riskier bets on the market, even, like, going to Vegas to try to gamble, to make some of the earnings back. Just crazy, crazy, like, desperation that I was convincing myself would work, because I'm like, yeah, you know, it's worked in the past.

[Josh Dean]

It was, as you're probably imagining, a towering house of cards that was about to collapse on Syed's head. And this pressure from investors, especially from the guy who gave him 100 grand, is where the Ponzi scheme came in.

[Ashley Flowers]

He starts to get one investor to send money to another investor to start

[Josh Dean]

paying them off in, like, the sloppiest way possible. Asking one person to send funds via the Smartphone banking app Zelle directly to another person with some half assed explanation about why this sloppy method was above board. It was one of Syed's oldest high school friends from Michigan who caught on first after he ended up in direct contact with a guy who was owed 100 grand. Together they went to the SEC and laid it all out for an investigator who confirmed what they already suspected. What Syed was doing was definitely not a hedge fund. When Syed found out that I was affiliated with going to the sec, he goes, how could you do this to me, man? I've known you since we were 14. You're screwing me over like my life is ruined. I said to him, if you did nothing wrong and you were actually investing our money, then you have nothing to worry about. He made it seem like he was a victim and that I had put him in this terrible situation. He was going off on like, I hope you're happy. I'm never gonna be able to get a job. I spent all this money at school for nothing. I'm not gonna go to med school. I'm gonna go to prison. Couldn't believe that someone so, you know, crazy in such a situation could actually think the way he thought at that time.

[Syed Arbab]

It's unbelievable.

[Ashley Flowers]

It did not exist in real life. It was taking other people's money and putting it in his personal bank account,

[Josh Dean]

which is also illegal. The SEC called Syed in for an interview, and as he tells it, he went willingly. He wasn't worried at all.

[Syed Arbab]

Everything's gonna be okay. I'm just gonna have to lie to them and just like hide a bunch of stuff from them. At this point, I have such a huge ego that I think that I'm so much smarter than everyone, even government officials that have already done the investigation.

[Josh Dean]

And that's exactly what he did. Syed flat out lied to the SEC investigators who had been studying him for months.

[Ashley Flowers]

I read the transcript. You can almost hear the enforcement officers who are questioning him laughing at this 19 year old kid sitting in front of them, lying through his teeth, saying, all the money that these people gave me were gifts. And sure, I did use some of the money for operating expenses.

[Josh Dean]

That wasn't it either.

[Ashley Flowers]

He lies to them and says that he is getting his mba. He tells them he's been accepted to the University of Michigan when he hasn't for graduate school. They say, saeed, what is it that you ultimately want to do? And he says, oh, I want to start a biotech company. Cool as a cucumber. Exits that interview, goes to class.

[Josh Dean]

This tactic did not Work. The US government froze his assets and agents searched his parents home in nearby Augusta, terrifying his poor mother in the process. Process. Ultimately, a so called bill of information, basically the equivalent of an indictment written by a prosecutor without first going to a grand jury, was filed against 22 year old Syed Arbab in October of 2019.

[Ashley Flowers]

They charge him with one count of securities fraud. And that document is interesting because it says that not only was he promising some of his investors 15% guaranteed return, he was promising some of them 57 guaranteed return. It boggles my mind how people could fall for it, but I think that just speaks to what they perceived as his charm and his expertise and how we want to believe there's some genius young person that we've just discovered.

[Josh Dean]

There's something to that. The combination of a truly charming and self assured person speaking with confidence and the belief most of us have that we will on occasion stumble into amazing opportunities is quite a cocktail. It didn't work on the feds, unfortunately. In September of 2020, Sayed pled guilty and was sentenced to 60 months in prison.

[Syed Arbab]

I didn't even comprehend what he said at first when he said 60 months. Like I didn't actually do the math right. And then after he said the 60 months, I was like, he gave me the full five years and I was just in shock.

[Ashley Flowers]

He thought that he had charmed the court and that there was no way they were gonna really throw the max at him. But that's what they did. He got five years. He was 23 years old. He was ordered to pay more than half a million dollars in restitution to those 117 defrauded victims. But the story in no way ends there. He doesn't just go off to prison because it's 2020 and Covid is raging and Saeed tells his attorney that he

[Josh Dean]

has a heart problem, a heart condition that Ashley could not confirm. But whether or not it was actually real, the claim bought Syed a year of quasi freedom, a kind of house arrest, because it was deemed too risky to send a guy with a heart problem to jail during COVID And instead

[Ashley Flowers]

of spending that time with his family, who are utterly heartbroken about this, he holes up with his girlfriend in Atlanta at her place. And incredibly, he pulls another financial scam.

[Josh Dean]

Syed arbab, awaiting a federal prison term on financial fraud charges, went right back to scamming. That story is after the break.

[Ashley Flowers (Podcast Promo)]

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[Josh Dean]

Welcome back to Chameleon. Syed Arbab's second financial scam didn't become apparent until later, but it actually predates his sentencing. It began in May of 2019, right about the time when the Ponzi scheme was blowing up in his face.

[Ashley Flowers]

Said convinced several of his friends to participate in this scam called Free Riding. It means that they deposited funds into brokerage accounts from bank accounts that they knew lacked sufficient funds.

[Josh Dean]

This is a little complicated, but basically some online brokerages will give customers what's called instant deposit credit. You are given digital funds to invest the minute you make a deposit, long before that deposit has actually cleared.

[Ashley Flowers]

So now this band of young men uses that credit to buy and sell securities. So securities are tradable financial assets. Basically what they're doing is they're exploiting a period of time when if you say you're giving money to a brokerage, they're giving you credit and they're taking

[Josh Dean]

that money, taking that free money from the brokerage and putting it into stocks that are then sold before the initial deposit clears. They use the proceeds from those sales, provided it's a win, to pay for the original trade while keeping the profits. But they never spent their own money to begin with those deposits would not have cleared because the bank accounts weren't funded. It's a sham from the jump.

[Ashley Flowers]

They're stealing money from brokerages.

[Josh Dean]

According to the Feds, this scam went on from May of 2019 to sometime in 2021, which means that it was ongoing as the Ponzi scheme case proceeded through the legal system. So there's a new case developing right on top of the original one. When Syed finally reports to prison, it's to a relatively cushy federal prison in

[Ashley Flowers]

the Atlanta area, which, by the way, is the same one that Carlo Ponzi himself was held in many years ago.

[Josh Dean]

Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebaldo Ponzi, to give his full name. Because, yeah, there was a real person behind this term we now use so freely. Charles Ponzi, as he was better known, was an Italian who scammed North American investors out of millions in the 1920s with a postal coupon. Arbitrage, swindle.

[Ashley Flowers]

All you need to do to ride out this type of place is put on your Crocs, your sweatpants, get your instant noodles, watch whatever's on the television, and just ride out your five years. But that is not Saeed. He immediately gets a phone. He starts continuing the free riding scam. He is posting on Instagram, taunting his victims. You know, like, oh, you thought I went to prison? Does this look like I'm in prison, bitch?

[Josh Dean]

Probably not the wisest of ideas.

[Syed Arbab]

I was just, like, trying to show people, like, hey, look, I'm not in trouble. Like, I'm still enjoying my life. I'm in prison. Like, trying to convince myself at the same time and try and think that this is all a joke, right?

[Josh Dean]

Like the first interview with the sec. This belies a naivete or an arrogance or both. Regardless, actions have consequences. This bad behavior did not go unnoticed by the Feds. They pulled Syed out of the Kushi Prison and sent him to a far worse place.

[Ashley Flowers]

One of the most dangerous, notorious prisons in the United States, which is known as Gitmo North. It's in Marion, Illinois.

[Josh Dean]

The proper name is the Federal Correctional Institution, Marion.

[Ashley Flowers]

It's where Muhammad Salameh, the Palestinian who was convicted of the 93 World Trade center bombing, is held. It's where Russian arms dealer Victor Boot is. Daniel Hale, the NSA leaker. Just sort of a cast of characters.

[Josh Dean]

The infamous mob boss John Gotti served his time and died there.

[Ashley Flowers]

As he put it, he's like, when I was in Gitmo north, you know, he just stopped caring about stuff that he used to care about things like

[Josh Dean]

money and drugs and showing them off on social media. Of course, there was more to sayed than that and it started to come out.

[Syed Arbab]

I used that time to start focusing back on my education and start focusing on the things that I loved, including my parents and myself just being able to hold my name at a respectable level.

[Josh Dean]

Syed worked on his MBA while in Marion and applied to PhD programs in economics. His intelligence has never been in question.

[Syed Arbab]

I took the GRE. I got in the 99th percentile for the quantitative section and then the 90th percentile in the verbal. So I was a top candidate. I mean, obviously if I didn't get incarcerated, I would have been a top candidate for any university.

[Ashley Flowers]

He had the gall, one might say, to apply to uga. The University of Georgia did reject him, but he did apply to Howard University.

[Josh Dean]

Syed must have behaved himself because he was released early in late 2023, sent to a halfway house in Georgia, and not long after, he was a free man. Syed accepted that offer from Howard University in Washington, D.C. and after requesting and being granted permission from his parole officer to leave Georgia, started attending graduate school there. He's still enrolled and lives in the D.C. suburbs. He was getting his life together, but he also sounded lonely. This is the version of Syed arbab that Ashley Fonts encountered when she reached out.

[Syed Arbab]

I was a social person. I'm not anymore. It's a fear of being social that comes and, like, hits the back of my head. Like, there's a voice inside my head that tells me, like, no, you can't make friends because they will eventually turn their back on you. So what's the point of even making friends unless it's for business purposes? So, like, the only people that I really talk to are, like, people that I make money with.

[Josh Dean]

Speaking of loneliness, he did meet someone on a Muslim dating app.

[Syed Arbab]

I was very upfront about myself, you know, like, hey, like, I just got out of prison, you know, this is why I went to prison. This is what I have on the table. This is what I plan on doing with my life. If you'd like to be a part of my life, I would more than, more than willing to accept you and would love your presence and what I can offer to build yourself up too. And she was, she was pretty candid with her life situations as well. She had gone through her own struggles, so she helped me build myself up. I've helped build herself up. And yeah, I mean, now the first year of my PhD program ended. I got a 4.0 and then now, just waiting for what's next to come.

[Josh Dean]

Syed's Achilles heel seems to be hubris. He likes attention. And there are plenty of examples out there of him appearing to be not very contrite about his crimes. Like, there was an episode of the HBO anthology series Generation Hustle, recorded before his first prison term, in which he told the story of his schemes, sounding apologetic, but not very enthusiastically apologetic, and also quite defensive. Like when he explained why, after he was indicted, he posted a picture of himself dressed up as Jordan Belfort. Belfort being the real life financial scammer played by Leo DiCaprio in Wolf of Wall Street.

[Syed Arbab]

Or I try to find a funny situation where people don't think there is. You know, it's. I always like to have, like, a light side. On a serious note, there was also

[Josh Dean]

the interview he did on the podcast Locked in with Ian Bick, another guy who'd been charged with financial crimes as a young man. In the interview, you can hear a difference in how he speaks with this guy, one of his peers, compared to Ashley, a journalist. He's broing it out with Bick, like when he told this story about getting served.

[Syed Arbab]

This super hot girl comes to my door, right? And she knocks and I open it, and she's like, hey, are you Syed? I was like, yes, I am. She's like, hey, here's your paperwork. You're indicted. I'm like, what the fuck? They sent a hot girl to serve me paperwork. And it was just extremely crushing.

[Josh Dean]

Syed spent a good chunk of the interview seeming to blame his strict immigrant parents for his crimes, saying their rules kept him from learning the difference between right and wrong.

[Syed Arbab]

They had made strict boundaries. And I would always ask why, right? A lot of Southeast Asian kids face this diaspora, and just a lot of immigrant kids in general, because they don't understand why they have these boundaries. Because it seems like it's a punishment, but in reality, parents think that it's a protective mechanism that they're enforcing, right? But this inevitably amplifies the disobedience of the children. As you see, for myself, I fucking went to prison.

[Ashley Flowers]

My heart really breaks for his parents. His dad started calling people, he said, on his own, offering to give them just straight money. So his dad was trying to bail him out, which I find even more heartbreaking.

[Josh Dean]

In his conversations with Ashley, Syed seemed to have recognized the gravity of his actions.

[Ashley Flowers]

He kept calling himself a degenerate, that he had no ethics, no morals, that he has no friends. He regrets what he did to his victims. He said that he's trying to pay them restitution. At least the ones that I was able to talk to said that they haven't received much at all.

[Josh Dean]

But maybe this is just a facade. It is, after all, in his best interest to come across in his interactions with the journalist as a man who recognizes the error of his ways. That's the cynical take, the more generous one. People grow up.

[Syed Arbab]

I still have to accomplish a lot, especially by making my victims whole. But you know, I am strident towards these goals and I have a pretty clear pathway into achieve them that are very discreet. Nothing is unrealistic. Everything has a pathway and it's very strategic and I just love the way that I'm living life right now and I'm glad that I was able to have that reset time.

[Josh Dean]

However, in her conversations, Ashley also saw a lot of the Syed from the story you've just heard, the person who scammed his friends and their families and just kept going.

[Ashley Flowers]

There were definite moments of selfishness. He's just extremely braggadocious. I would say there were moments in our interviews where he is trying very hard to convince me that he is a stock genius, that he is an options trading genius. But yeah, of course he's going to come across as somebody who is. Sorry, I hope it's genuine, but I wouldn't gamble on it.

[Josh Dean]

So what is Syed doing now? He's still in grad school. He's also, he says, working on the side.

[Ashley Flowers]

He told me that he's doing what he called independent contracting or just consulting on structure of businesses and just brokering deals, mainly in private equity. He's working with a cannabis company. He said he wouldn't tell me the name of the cannabis company. He's also working at a sort of like a almost like a secretarial job.

[Josh Dean]

In other words, he's still hustling, just in a different, definitely healthier way. One thing hasn't changed though. Syed is still dreaming big.

[Ashley Flowers]

Maybe our third interview, he sent me a treatment for what he envisions as the multi episodic television series about his life and it definitely portrays him as kind of like a misunderstood genius. The title, it's called in the Red.

[Josh Dean]

Ashley pulled up the document Syed had shared with her.

[Ashley Flowers]

It says this limited series follows the rise and fall of Saeed Arbab, a gifted but prideful Bengali American student at Georgia Tech. Saeed's journey is more than wealth and status. It is a search for belonging, validation and peace. Said represents a tragic figure in the immigrant experience where the weight of inherited and self made dreams threatens to crush him.

[Josh Dean]

Syed is still young. Time will tell what he does with his life from here.

[Ashley Flowers]

I can honestly say I do wish said turns his life around and I hear nothing but great things about him and I certainly wish no ill will on him. The victims I talk to are extremely pissed off and want their money back. I mean, there's one side of me that believes everyone deserves a second chance. And he was young and made all the heinous mistakes you can make when you're young and then some. So I hope that he really does change his ways. But I also wouldn't be shocked if we learn in a couple years that he's been charged again.

[Josh Dean]

America is, as they say, the land of opportunity. Syed Arbab certainly could reinvent himself. People do it all the time. He could also not change at all and make a fortune all over again. That could be a movie or a whole new scheme. Stay tuned. Chameleon is a production of Campside Media and Audio Chuck. It's hosted by me, Josh Dean. This episode was written and reported by me and Emma Simonoff. Our producer is Joe Barrett. Our associate producer is Emma Siminoff. Sound design and mix by Tiffany Dimmack. Themed by Ewin lytramuin and Mark McAdam. Our production manager is Ashley Warren. Campside's executive producers are Vanessa Gregoriadis, Matt Sher and me, Josh Dean. And finally, if I can ask a few favors before sending you on your way today, please rate, follow and review Chameleon on your favorite podcast platforms to help spread the word. I know everyone says this, but it's true. Ratings and reviews really do help, and if you have any feedback, tips or story ideas, you can email [e-mail] or leave us a message at a special number we've set up. 201-743-8368. Add a plus one if you're outside North America. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.

[Ashley Flowers (Podcast Promo)]

I think Chuck would approve.

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