Hollywood Con Man

Summary

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Crime Scene – “Hollywood Con Man” (June 11, 2026)

Podcast by Sony Music Entertainment | Hosts: Jonathan Hirsch & Cooper Maul

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Jonathan Hirsch and investigative reporter Cooper Maul unravel the saga of Joseph Medawar, a fringe Hollywood producer who engineered a multi-million-dollar affinity scam by selling a fake Homeland Security-themed television show. They explore how Medawar leveraged political connections, Hollywood credibility, and the power of community trust to prey on everyday investors—particularly churchgoers—before ultimately being caught and sentenced. The episode examines both the allure and dangers of storytelling, the failure of safeguards, and the enduring vulnerability of institutions and individuals to a convincing con.

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Key Discussion Points

Storytelling as Scam: The Anatomy of a Hollywood Con

[02:00–04:41]

• Hirsch introduces Joseph Medawar, setting up the dichotomy between the art and the business of storytelling—and how con artists exploit the blurred line.

• Medawar leverages his Hollywood credentials and connections, making the fraudulent “DHS: The Series” appear legitimate.

• Quote, Jonathan Hirsch [02:30]:
  "This is a story about kind of the difference between the art of telling stories and the business of telling stories... it shows you how we tend to treat storytellers almost like magicians."

• Medawar takes to national radio (WNYC’s “On the Media”) to hype his TV series, alongside his business partner/co-star Allison Heruth Waterberry—despite the show’s nonexistence.

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From B-Movies to Beltway Connections

[05:12–10:30]

• Medawar’s background in B and “B-minus” movies (with cult classics and failed ventures) gave him enough industry knowledge to seem plausible.
• He gained legitimacy by leveraging high-level political connections:
  • Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (after optioning Rohrabacher’s unrelated screenplay)
  • Access and photo ops with President George W. Bush, First Lady Laura Bush, Karl Rove, Tom Ridge, Ariel Sharon
  • Meetings with Homeland Security Committee staffers
• He used every connection and photo opp to bolster the illusion for investors—despite explicit denial from DHS about any involvement.
• Quote, Jonathan Hirsch [05:18]:
  "Medawar obviously made some friends in some very high places."

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Hollywood Hustle Becomes Affinity Fraud

[16:42–21:09]

• Medawar pivots from schmoozing industry insiders to targeting vulnerable investors—especially church congregations in Southern California.
• He touts Steeple Entertainment as being worth $200 million, on the verge of IPO, and implicitly/improperly endorsed by political and government figures.
• Investors are promised a risk-free tenfold return; some even take out loans or risk their homes.
  • "One church pastor took out $57,000 in an equity loan on her home to invest... and lost her house."
• Classic “affinity fraud”: Medawar exploits tight-knit communities who trust internal recommendations, making his pitch more convincing and self-sustaining.
• Quote, Jonathan Hirsch [17:16]:
  "This is where the story begins to take a turn... this is where the scheme goes from jockeying for influence among power brokers in Hollywood and D.C. to something that feels predatory."
• Over 70 victims, $5.5 million stolen.

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The Investigators Close In

[21:09–24:45]

• IRS agent Walt Finnegan and FBI agent Paul Bertrand (described as a “70s buddy cop duo”) start tracking misappropriated investor funds.
• Inside Steeple Entertainment, CFO Jeffrey Rosenberg becomes a whistleblower, cooperating with federal prosecutors after being ordered to falsify documents and witnessing brazen misrepresentations.
• Federal and state regulators (including the California Dept. of Corporations) step in as Medawar’s promises and schemes become unsustainable.

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Arrests, Prosecution, and the Broken System

[24:45–29:55]

• Medawar and Waterberry are arrested in 2005 on charges of mail and wire fraud, money laundering, and obstruction.
• Medawar initially faces a maximum sentence of 375 years; prosecutors recommend around five years, his lawyers request less—but Judge Manuel Real sentences him to only one year and a day (and later reductions).
• Quote, Jonathan Hirsch [30:28]:
  "No explanation. The victims in the courtroom were totally shattered... This had to be the most surprising piece of this story for me, beyond the spinning of the yarn and how he pulled off the con."
• Judge Real, known for his unpredictability and leniency, is later overruled after appellate review. Medawar ultimately serves a nearly four-year term for probation violations after being repeatedly found falsifying community service and defying court orders.
• Memorable Judicial Quote [32:20]:
  "Mr. Medawar was and is a scam performer. He scammed people from whom he took money and he scammed this court."

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Institutional Failure and Vulnerability

[36:34–37:30]

• Even media skeptics like Brooke Gladstone and “On the Media” are duped twice by Medawar, with Gladstone later publicly admitting on air:
  • Brooke Gladstone, “On the Media” [36:22]:
    "I was had."
• Maul and Hirsch highlight how every gatekeeper—journalists, politicians, law enforcement, judges—failed to detect or act swiftly enough.
• Quote, Cooper Maul [37:09]:
  "A sitting congressman, SEC Chairman, right. Federal Law Enforcement Agency, a national journalist and a judge, twice... every one of the people and institutions that are supposed to hold the line... all just let this guy pass."
• The hosts frame the episode not just as a tale about one con man, but an indictment of the structures and culture that allowed, even encouraged, his success.
• Jonathan Hirsch [37:42]:
  "This is about a country where a guy with a trailer and a photo op can walk into these rooms most people will never see, where the credential is sort of your costume... almost nothing under the costume gets checked."

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Reflection: The Real Costs of Fraud

[24:48, 25:57, 26:05, 26:13]

• Beyond financial theft, the community is left with a crisis of trust and faith, with relationships and the social fabric disrupted.
• Key Exchange:
  • "That's the real theft. Right, because sometimes you can claw money back, but relationships and trust, that's a lot harder to rebuild." (Cooper Maul [26:05])

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• "He isn't like a random hustler...he came up inside of this industry." – Jonathan Hirsch [11:19]
• "He's what I'd call like a credentialed con man, if you will. Right. So everything he does that is actually fake looks real, right?" – Cooper Maul [12:22]
• "Fraud is just the job... 90% of the time with people like this, what someone like Medawar is doing on any given day just resembles the legitimate business." – Cooper Maul [13:10]
• "In affinity fraud... the community sort of builds this whole thing for him." – Jonathan Hirsch [23:49]
• "The next Medawar is already in a room somewhere... about to think this guy's the real thing." – Cooper Maul [38:19]

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Key Timestamps

• 02:00–04:41 – Medawar pitches DHS TV show, NPR appearance, Hollywood connections
• 05:12–10:30 – Medawar’s background in film, securing political connections
• 16:42–21:09 – Targeting churchgoers, the shift to affinity fraud, promises to vulnerable investors
• 21:09–24:45 – FBI and IRS pursue the case, CFO becomes whistleblower, investigation ramps up
• 24:45–29:55 – Arrest, legal process, outrageously lenient sentencing and judicial failures
• 30:28–32:20 – Repeated judicial leniency, eventual prison sentence, scamming the system itself
• 36:22–37:42 – National media duped, failure of institutions, Gladstone’s admission: “I was had.”
• 38:19–End – Big-picture reflections: the persisting vulnerability to cons, and how anyone can fall for a well-told story

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Conclusion

This episode deftly exposes the mechanics, psychology, and consequences of the Hollywood con that was “DHS: The Series.” Medawar’s scam, leveraging both showbiz razzle-dazzle and the soft underbelly of community trust, left a trail of ruined lives and institutions stripped of credibility. In their signature narrative style, Hirsch and Maul show how even experts and oversight bodies can be seduced by the trappings of authority and the power of a compelling story. Their call to skepticism is sobering—and a timely reminder that the next Medawar is always just around the corner.

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Transcript

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[Jonathan Hirsch]

A post 911 action drama about the Department of Homeland Security, filmed at real government agencies with real political backings, supported by some of the most powerful people in Washington. The credits transition to a montage of flashy images and moody music. The Pentagon swimming in grainy blue light. The words, how do we know we're truly safe? Flash on the screen. Then a high speed chase the floor of the stock market. Osama bin bin Laden. It looked real, sounded real. And when investors were invited to get on the ground floor, they said yes. Dozens of them. The only problem was none of it was true. Welcome to Crime Scene, the show where we tell the stories behind the world's most unforgettable crimes. This week on the show, the story of Joseph Medawar, the B movie producer who turned a classic Hollywood hustle into the blockbuster grift of a lifetime. From Sony, podcasts and the Binge, this is the story of the Hollywood con man. Hey, y'.

[Narrator/Storyteller]

All.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Welcome to Crime Scene. My name is Jonathan Hirsch, and each week over three acts, we will dive into the most shocking and complex true crime stories of our era. And each week, I'm joined by my friend and fellow documentarian, Cooper Maul.

[Cooper Maul]

Hey, Jonathan.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Hi. Don't forget, this show is a part of the Binge, the true crime network. I head up where you'll hear Cooper from time to time. And each month we bring you a new limited crime series. So go to getthebinge.com to find out more. All right, Cooper, this one really, I think it gets close to the bone here for you and I as crime storytellers. This is a story about kind of the difference between the art of telling stories and the business of telling stories. It's really an iconic scam. It shows you how we tend to treat storytellers almost like magicians that they can envision a world, a business, an opportunity through the lens of a story. Then they can convince you to do anything.

[Cooper Maul]

That's the mechanisms behind some of the greatest cons, right?

[Jonathan Hirsch]

You're absolutely right. And I. I've got a pitch deck for you.

[Cooper Maul]

Let's get into it.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

All right. It's March 5, 2004 and two guests have called into the program on the media. It's a radio show and podcast from the public media radio station wnyc, one of my all time favorites. They are the producers of a hotel new TV program called DHS the Series.

[Narrator/Storyteller]

No other television series has ever had such access and clearance at the highest levels of real life counterterrorism agencies including the White House, the FBI, the EPA, and of course the DHS itself. Joseph Medawar is the show's executive producer. Alison Haruth Waterberry is another producer and the show's co star. Welcome to the show.

[Allison Heruth Waterberry]

Thank you. Thank you for inviting us. Thank you.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Brooke Gladstone is one of my personal heroes and she's there on the mic grilling the show's representation of the DHS at this time in history when this fiercely debated new government agency was coming up against a lot of criticism. She argues that the DHS and its critics might be swept under the rug through the power of fiction, that the show might glamorize a part of the government that didn't have the most stellar reputation in the press. Alison Heweth Waterbury was one of the stars of the show and she tries to sort of allay that concern.

[Allison Heruth Waterberry]

We have every intention of bringing those things to the air. You've merely seen a two to three minute trailer and you don't have our storyline and you know that is changing every day.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

The man behind this ambitious project, a guy named Joseph Medawar, he pitched the show as the most timely patriotic television series in the country right on the heels of 9 11. It was a brilliant idea and it attracted a lot of attention. I mean, obviously he found himself talking about it on national broadcast radio programs. But it wasn't just that it was a good idea. It was also a series that had the backing of some very important people.

[Narrator/Storyteller]

The President.

[Allison Heruth Waterberry]

Yeah, we met with him for a photo op and we briefly ran it by him with the little time that we had.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Medawar obviously made some friends in some very high places. He mentions chit chatting with Karl Rove and later joshing DHS Secretary Tom Ridge about who might play him on the show. Former California governor Gray Davis is mentioned. Ariel Sharon. They clearly come across as connected. Medawar is bragging about rubbing elbows with the commander in chief in one of the largest radio stations in the country. This program was a platform for them and they volleyed a number of questions at them about the optics of the show when the agency was perceived to be under fire. But there was one very significant question that nobody asked that day whether or not this TV show existed at all. Okay, so who was this Medawar guy at the center of this? Joseph Medawar, before DHS was hustling mostly working in films that hovered below the mainstream. B movies like Pretty Smart. It's this dramedy that takes place in a boarding school. It's basically like Patricia Arquette's first film. These two girls find out that the headmaster of their school is trafficking drugs and spying on the teenagers. Then there's Slaughterhouse Rock, a horror movie in which these kids visit Alcatraz island and have recurring nightmares of a rock band being murdered there. Do you get it? Rock band on the rock. Then he launched a company that distributed a number of other titles. A boxing documentary, the Stephen King story, Sleepwalkers, which ended up being distributed by Columbia Pictures. So he, he's right on the precipice of Hollywood. It seemed these were like not B movies per se, I would say more like B. It does also seem that Medawar was pretty tied into the financing and distribution part of the movie business. And at one point he launches a joint venture with backing from the Prince of Monaco. And then there's the idea for dhs, the series. He builds a website incorporating as a new business called Steeple. They produce that snazzy trailer for the show that we saw and heard, pitch materials. He arranges to film action scenes at the Orange County Sheriff's Department headquarters. And they have these high action security operations center there, which gives the whole thing this visual feel of legitimacy. And to be honest, I'm not sure if at this part in the story there's really any indication of scammy behavior necessarily. Because the truth of the matter is most people trying to bootstrap in Hollywood then and now they're building the plane while they fly it. As they say, they're selling a dream. It's an idea. One thing is for sure though, Medawar had learned how to play this game. The congressman from his district he got linked up with in Southern California, Dana Rohrabacher. He was a full throated supporter of this project. That was of course, after Medawar optioned a screenplay that the Congressman wrote for $23,000. The script was called Baja and it was like a movie about a military veteran on an archeological dig in Mexico, completely unrelated to dhs. But it did get him in front of his local congressman. And it wasn't really the point. Medawar was now in business with a sitting U.S. congressman and from his standpoint, this was an exciting project from a guy who had a history of getting projects made. No harm there. It was a great idea, and he told me that we're gonna do a pilot movie and then a TV series. Through Rohrabacher, Medawar is introduced to Congressman Christopher Cox. He would go on to be the chairman of the sec. And Cox and Rohrabacher facilitate meetings with the House Homeland Security Committee staffers who advise Medawar's purported lead actress, Allison, on how to make the show more realistic. So now he has a congressman's money, access to SEC level political figures, and a meeting with actual Homeland Security staffers. This is no longer looking like a shoestring operation. At least the optics of it aren't. Medawar and Allison hereth Waterbury are like a team in this. They're moving seamlessly from media appearances to D.C. fundraisers promoting the project. And at one point, they attend a political fundraiser with marquee players in attendance. The President George Bush, and also the first lady, Laura Bush. They get a photo snapped, which of course makes its way into their pitch materials that the potential investors might see. Medawar tells them the President personally endorses the show, that the DHS has approved the use of its name and official seal. In reality, DHS had explicitly told Medawar he did not have permission to use their name or seal. In fact, he wasn't using investors money to make the movie at all. But Medawar is on his way at this point. He had a compelling story, apparent credentials. Now he just needed to raise the money that he claimed he was going to use to make this film or maybe just to make him rich. All right, let's take a break here. Cooper, something I wanted to talk about before we go any further. This guy isn't like a random hustler who, like, watched a YouTube video on Wire fraud. He came up inside of this industry.

[Cooper Maul]

Yeah. I mean, we often think of, like, con men like this as outsiders sneaking in. Right. But I think when you read a lot of indictments of people like this, a lot of the worst ones started inside whatever, you know, industry they're kind of lurking in. Right.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Medawar is a perfect example of that. He knows the vocabulary of Hollywood. He had the contacts and sort of the muscle memory about how deals actually get made to make the whole thing feel believable.

[Cooper Maul]

Yeah. And think about what fraud actually has to look like to be believable. Right. It has to survive things like a due diligence call. It has to Survive your entertainment lawyers or your IP lawyers reading in this case a term sheet has to just survive. Even just a CFO calling up and asking a really random question on a Tuesday afternoon that might catch you off guard. Like a lot of things need to be in place here for this to look legit.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

And Medawar had the exact kind of experience to sort of pass under the radar of those kinds of sensors. He wasn't going to quote some rate for some service that didn't exist. He knew how these budgets were assembled. He knew how like money was raised for these kinds of events. He wasn't going to throw something out of the blue that seemed off.

[Cooper Maul]

He's what I'd call like a credentialed con man, if you will. Right. I mean, so everything he does that is actually fake looks real, right?

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right. And you know, his credentials flips the whole dynamic. The victim becomes flattered by what the con man knows. And so this, this guy clearly had the ability to do that. And another thing that's worth saying is that you know something? Every reporter who covers these kinds of scams encounters at some point is that these guys didn't wake up one morning and go, oh, I should be a criminal today. There's usually some kind of drift. Do you know what I mean? Like a deal that goes sideways or client and like sort of make it out of the situation whole.

[Cooper Maul]

And then, yeah, by the time, it's fraud. Fraud is just the job. Right? Like, and I think that's why investigators and victims both get fooled here. Because 90% of the time with people like this, what someone like Medar is doing on any given day just resembles the legitimate business which he runs to run.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Yeah. So that's really bizarre and unsettling when you think about it. In retrospect, you wonder if you could have seen something that appeared normal differently. It's very hard to see. Coming up, the money is flowing in. The investors are believers. But where is it actually?

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[Cooper Maul]

So just to catch us up, Joseph Medawar is this producer, Hollywood executive. He spent, you know, about a decade making movies that are, you know, not exactly blockbusters but not bottom of the barrel. And he's been rubbing elbows with Hollywood types, D.C. elites, politicians, what have you. And people are believing this guy. He doesn't seem like a full scammer to me just yet, if you know what I mean. But he is trying to get this

[Jonathan Hirsch]

movie made and that's kind of the way of Hollywood, right? You know, you build the plane while you fly it, like we were saying. So this is where the story begins to take a turn, though Medawar isn't just hobnobbing with rich people at this point. He's taking this film to pitch to everyday people and asking them to buy into this spectacular new business opportunity. People who know him by his nickname, JoJo. So JoJo is telling people who have absolutely no idea what goes on in the movie business that they need to get in on the ground level of this thing. Churchgoers. So Medawar starts attending services at local churches throughout Southern California. He's telling them about this new company, Steeple Entertainment, and he's making this new, important series about dhs. And if they want to get in on this, they gotta invest in the company before it goes public. It's such an easy win. I mean, the government's on board. So if you invest now, you'll make your money back tenfold. So some of the things he said. Steeple Entertainment was worth $200 million and on the verge of an IPO. A major investment bank was preparing to IPO this business at a share price that was so much higher than what investors were going to get right now. That dhs, the series had the personal endorsement of President George W. Bush, that the Department of Homeland Security had approved the show and permitted the use of its name and official seal, which again, they had explicitly refused. And that 26 episodes of this show were already in post production. This is where the scheme goes from jockeying for influence among power brokers in Hollywood and D.C. to something that feels predatory. I almost see those other people as peers to Medawar. But in this situation, he convinced 70 people to invest in the business to the tune of $5.5 million. And these folks have no idea what they're getting themselves into. One church pastor took out $57,000 in an equity loan on her home to invest in this thing. And when the scheme collapsed, she lost her house. At one point, two investigators start to get suspicious of Medawar and they team up. One's an FBI agent, Paul Bertrand, early career guy, had glasses, had sort of a professor vibe. The other is an IRS agent named Walt Finnegan. He's a career investigator, very serious looking. Bertrand would go on to have many jobs at the FBI, but at this point, he investigates securities fraud. He's retired now, by the way, he grows grapes for wine. But back then he was a hard nose investigator and Finnegan was an expert in criminal tax fraud. And he'd been on the job a little bit longer anyway, so the two of them figure out that Medawar was consuming investor capital almost as fast as it came in. He's not putting it aside for his TV show though. Medawar and his business partner Allison here at Waterbury, they're living the fine life, spending thousands at Beverly Hills boutiques, even shelling out 40,000 per month for rent on a Beverly Hills mansion for Allison here with Waterbury. And this all looks very fishy to Bertrand and Finnegan, who by the way, excellent 70s buddy cop duo names. They keep building their case and Medawar is not slowing down at this point. He's escalating his recruitment. More churches, more community contacts.

[Cooper Maul]

Joseph was at the church every Sunday. He was always there.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Sitting on the front row for two years. Medawar is scamming churchgoers out of their funds, promising an IPO if they invest in his business, promising them riches as soon as DHS comes out. This is not a scam that can go on much longer before people really start to get restless. There's actually a state agency in California that monitors this whole stock issue with corporations. It's called the California Department of Corporations. And they eventually catch on to him and he's ordered to stop selling stock in his company. Inside of Steeple Entertainment, the cfo, Jeffrey Rosenberg, he has been watching all of this and he's starting to get restless too. Rosenberg has been backdating stock certificates on Medawar's orders. He's heard Medawar make fake representations about additional TV projects, real estate, merchandising, music production, all designed to keep investors from asking questions or going to the authorities. And ultimately, Jeffrey Rosenberg is the one who turns. He enters into a cooperation agreement with the federal prosecutors. September 23, 2005. It's early morning. We're in Rancho Palos Verides, California. This is a breezy coastal suburb in the southern part of Los Angeles County. FBI special agents and IRS criminal investigators pull up to a well kept house in a nice neighborhood. They're there for a Lebanese American man named Joseph Michael Medawar. They approach the door and Joseph is there. He is arrested without incident and held without bond. Medawar is ultimately indicted on mail and wire fraud, money laundering and two counts of obstruction of a federal investigation. The hammer comes down. The maximum sentence if convicted on all counts, 375 years in federal prison. After that, Medawar's co conspirator, Allison Ann Heerith Waterbury is arrested in Minnesota. This is fascinating, Seth Cooper, and right up your alley.

[Cooper Maul]

So up my alley, yes.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

This is the kind of fraud that is like different than like a regular con job. It's what they sometimes refer to as affinity fraud. And that's when you ask people, you know, to invest in a scheme. And it's in these kinds of situations, like at the churches, where this tight knit web kind of builds a circle of trust around the criminal activity.

[Allison Heruth Waterberry]

Right.

[Cooper Maul]

Because normally a con man has to kind of convince every new victim from scratch, brick by brick, right?

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Yeah. And in affinity fraud, he doesn't have to do any of that work. Like, the community sort of, like, builds this whole thing for him. He's not like, trying to, like, sell the whole con. Every single time. Over and over again, people start telling each other their cousin tells their partner, their partner tells their business partner, and before you know it, everybody at Sunday services is signed up to be an investor in Steeple Entertainment.

[Cooper Maul]

And the recommendation carries the whole weight of whatever the relationship is behind it. Right. When your friend comes to you with a recommendation to invest in something, buy something, watch something, whatever, you are more inclined to do it because you trust this person. Right?

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Yeah. I mean, it makes perfect sense. So money's already moving in in the Medawar situation, but he's almost kind of like stepping back and letting in the residuals.

[Cooper Maul]

It's just like working for him behind the scenes.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Yeah. This is kind of, I think, something that sort of what you're pointing out there, gets missed in these financial con cases. And the coverage of it, which is the money is oftentimes the headline number, and that's what shows up in these indictments. But the money isn't the worst thing. It's like he strips the community, I think, of some of their rights. It kind of reminds me of one of the very first limited series that we did on the binge. It was called Fake Priest. It's a podcast about this guy named Father Ryan Scott who pretended to be a man of the cloth. He abused his followers, and then he would enrich himself on their money. So he kind of, like, came to these towns and pretended to be this, like, Catholic priest that he absolutely was

[Cooper Maul]

not in an affinity fraud. Right. It's not just one person who's being affected. Right. It's like this would create something like a crisis of faith. Right. I mean, in community. Right. Like, I'm sure Medawar's victims felt a complicated kind of grief after all of this came apart. Because it didn't just come apart for them. He disrupted the fabric of an entire community. Right.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Have to ask themselves questions about whether or not the community has gone too far and trusting its own.

[Cooper Maul]

Exactly.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Which is, I mean, super destabilizing.

[Cooper Maul]

And to me, that's the real theft, Right, because sometimes you can claw money back, but relationships and trust, that's a lot harder to rebuild.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Right? That takes time. So in May of 2006, Medawar pleads guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and tax evasion. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison and up to $9 million in government fines. So this is already starting to shrink down in terms of the scope of what's possible for a sentencing and $3.4 million in restitution to the victims. The government sentencing Recommendation is like 57 months, so about 5 years. That's sort of consistent with the federal guidelines. His own attorneys suggested 33 months. But what the judge actually sentences Joseph Medawar to is one year and a day. Coming up, the man who spun the great Hollywood yarn is about to face consequences. But the system doesn't really have an answer for this guy.

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[Cooper Maul]

now we've watched Joseph Medawar build one of the most audacious investor fraud schemes in post 911 Los Angeles. Yes, he's claimed 70 victims, five and a half million dollars, a fake TV show, a congressman's money. He's got photos with the president. But he's also now pled guilty. And the government wants nearly five years. But when it came down to the judge, he only gets one year and a day.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Yeah, no explanation. The victims in the courtroom were totally shattered. Manuel Lozano had invested $120,000 and he told the court, I was looking for justice. I was expecting more. And he describes another investor, a man with lung cancer who had put $1,000 into this business, hoping that steeples IPO as a windfall would fund a medical procedure. And he died waiting for the money to show up. This had to be the most surprising piece of this story for me, beyond the spinning of the yarn and how he pulled off the con. I've covered a lot of these sentencings and this just didn't feel right. You know, particularly striking was not just that it was so lenient, but it was lenient without explanation. There is actually a responsibility that a federal judge has to explain the reasoned basis for any substantial departure from sentencing guidelines. It's part of the Sentencing Reform Act. And Judge Manuel Real provides none of this to the court. And it's really disturbing and you know, when you start to look into it a little bit. This judge, who was 82 years old at the time, had already been the subject of intense scrutiny. The Los Angeles Times had described him as a lightning rod for criticism. May they never describe me that way. And he was also known to be preemptory and cantankerous in his temperament. According to the Times, after Medar serves a portion of this one year sentence, he actually goes back to the judge who takes even more prison time off of the table. Medawar gets supervised probation. There's no appeal, there's no new evidence. It's just because then In March of 2008 there's a unanimous three judge panel in the Ninth Circuit that reverses this sentence. And the panel finds that he very clearly deviated from the guidelines without any justification. So the case is remanded for sentencing. And that same month CNBC aired an episode of American Greed that covered this called dhs, the Department of Hollywood Scams. And it's good turn of her phrase there brings national attention to this fraud and you know, to the extraordinary leniency of the sentence itself. DHS is becoming the, the focus of our company Steeple distributions. But I'm sorry to say the judge re sentences Medawar to supervised probation only at this point. Again, I mean, come on, he pairs it with 3,000 hours of community service and a $2.6 million restitution order. So at least now there's some financial remunerations attached to this. Medawar's attorney argues that keeping his client free and working is sort of the best way to get victims paid back, which is like sounds like a Medawar line at this point because he's paid nobody any money at this point. But instead of doing his community service, what do we think Medawar is doing? He's logging hours that he's never worked, he's falsifying records. Federal authorities audit those logs and discover that he was going to the movies, going to the gym, clocking paid hours at a family jewelry business. This guy. So finally, January 18, 2011, the judge imposes a 45 month federal prison sentence for probation violations. And in delivering the sentence, apparently the judge had come to a realization that seemingly everybody else had before him, which was that Mr. And this is what he said. Mr. Medawar was and is a scam performer. You think, quote, he scammed people from whom he took money and he scammed this court. It's quite remarkable how far this whole thing went. And it's one of the reasons we had this story on Crime Scene. By the time of this re sentencing, he's paid back $21,000 of the 2.6 million, less than 1%. And more than four years after this original conviction, he's now ordered to surrender himself to the U.S. marshals and to serve his Sentence. It's shocking. You know, it took a decade of Medawar scheming, scamming, ultimately defying the court before finally winding up behind bars. This guy really knew how to spin a yarn. And what's amazing is that the people he duped weren't just unwitting churchgoers. It was Hollywood execs, cabinet members in the US Government, even shrewd media journalists like the producers that on the Media. And it's wild. And perhaps the most unbelievable part of this whole story, Cooper, is what happened with on the Media, the first feature on Medawar. Sure, we heard that. You could see how that happened. But there was a second they had to admit that they'd been scammed.

[Narrator/Storyteller]

And now for an important update. I was had. In our March 5, 2004 show, I did an interview with Joseph Medawar and Allison Heruth Waterberry. The former was executive producer and the latter a producer and co star of the upcoming TV show dhs. The series supposedly a drama based on daring do inside the Department of Homeland Security. We will, of course, continue to update you on all criminal investigations involving our former guests.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

So you just heard Brooke Gladstone on her show on National Public Radio, the same show you heard at the top say the words. I was had.

[Cooper Maul]

It's unbelievable. Right.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

And I want to sit with that for a second because it's, I think, kind of the key to this whole story.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Right.

[Cooper Maul]

Because Brooke Gladstone is not a mark. And on the Media is a show whose, like, whole job is being skeptical of how stories get told. Right. And she's one of the most careful interviewers in American journalism. She had Medawar in the chair, and she still didn't catch his lies.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Yeah. And she wasn't alone in that chair. Like, the list of people who didn't catch up is, like, amazing.

[Cooper Maul]

Yeah. A sitting congressman, SEC Chairman. Right. Federal Law Enforcement Agency, a national journalist and a judge twice. Yeah.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Yeah. So every one of the people and institutions that are supposed to sort of hold the line for us in this story, one by one, all just let this guy pass.

[Cooper Maul]

Yeah. So I think, like, when people ask me what this story is about, I don't necessarily think it's about Medawar the man. It's kind of more about what made his con possible. Right?

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. This is about a country where a guy with a trailer and a photo op can walk into these rooms most people will never see, where the credential is sort of your costume. The emperor and his clothes, and he's wearing it, but almost nothing under the costume gets checked. Brooke Gladstone didn't get fooled because she's careless. She got fooled because the whole apparatus around him was telling her it was real.

[Cooper Maul]

Yeah. And I think the scary thing about this is that apparatus is, like, still very much here. The next Medawar is already in a room somewhere. You know, listening to this podcast, sitting across from someone, smile, taking notes. Yeah. Who's about to think this guy's the real thing.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

So, okay, y', all, if someone walked into your community with a government logo and congressman's name and a photo with the president, how much would you have to hear them out before you started to question the story? Like, what's your line in the sand where you stop trusting people when they're trying to pitch you on a business opportunity?

[Cooper Maul]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Let us know and tell us if you've ever been scammed by somebody who spun a yarn like that. We'd love to talk about that and maybe even share it on the show.

[Cooper Maul]

Okay, Jonathan, before we go.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Yeah.

[Cooper Maul]

I gotta say, I am still totally locked into. You are next.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

It's. It's a crazy one.

[Cooper Maul]

This story escalates quickly.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Yeah. All you have to do is sign up for the binge. You can hear the whole series ad free all at once. If you go to Apple Podcasts or on Patreon. If you listen on Spotify, you can just head to getthebinge.com that'll take you straight to our signup page. The link's also in the show notes. Trust us, you do not want to wait to listen to this one week by week. Like, listen to the whole thing and drop us a line. You guys know where to find us. The toll that this story takes on the folks involved in it is it's just, like, unlike anything we've ever covered before. So please go ahead and sign up now and we'll see you on the other side.

[Cooper Maul]

Yeah, listen along and let us know what you think.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Hey, y', all, thank you so much for joining us on Crime Scene. Just a reminder here, you can watch or listen to us on, on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. This show is a production of Sony Podcasts and the binge. Thank you to everybody who makes this happen week in and week out. Also, we're journalists. We love journalism. These stories have been deeply reported, the ones that you hear on the show. And you can find an extensive bibliography by going to the show notes of this episode and to every episode to learn more about the reporting that informed all of the great stories you hear on crime scene. And just one last note, you can get exclusive content from us and the binge over 60 jaw dropping true crime stories bingeable and ad free right now by signing up for our [e-mail] so go to getthebinge.com to get access to our entire cast catalog of stories, but also to get behind the scenes access to all of the stories that Cooper and I are working on. To join us in the conversation about these cases, go to getthebinge.com to learn more.

[Co-host/Commentator]

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