Judging History’s Greatest Scams

Summary

Lemonade Stand – “Judging History’s Greatest Scams”

A Podcast by Aiden, Atrioc, and DougDoug | Vox Media Podcast Network
Episode date: April 22, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this installment, the Lemonade Stand hosts transform into playful, makeshift judges and lawyers to “try” a curated list of history’s most notorious (and sometimes glamorous) business scams. Each host brings three personal favorites to the “Lemonade Stand courtroom”—not to defend the scams, but to dissect them and debate if they were truly as infamous as their legends suggest. From global industrial deceptions to personal fraudsters and Ponzi kings, the episode strolls through nine scam stories with irreverent banter, mock legal proceedings, and a trove of sharp-witted analysis and memorable punchlines.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

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[00:27] – [20:13] SCAM #1: Volkswagen “Dieselgate” Emissions Scandal

Summary:
Atrioc, acting as defense attorney, presents the infamous VW Dieselgate scandal, where VW cheated emissions tests by rigging software to only minimize pollution during official tests, not during regular use.

Key Points:

• VW’s ad campaign promoted “clean diesel” (which wasn’t actually clean) to compete with hybrid leaders like Toyota (03:03–03:58).
• The “clean diesel” branding was so successful it duped both environmental groups and consumers—until independent testing exposed cars as 40x more polluting than claimed (12:09–12:31).
• The company responded with recalls and eventual buybacks, leading to giant car “graveyards” (13:53–14:07).
• Executives were fined and jailed; VW stock crashed.

Notable Quotes:

• “Their plan to handle this desire for clean energy is they rebrand invade France normally. Their plan for almost every—”
  (C, 04:41)
• “What if we only do [urea injection] during the test?... So they fake it. That is their biggest innovation.”
  (B, 09:19–09:38)

Judgment Parody:
Despite the clear fraud, the hosts struggle to hand down harsh judgment, invoking “the Lance Armstrong defense”—everyone was doing it (17:08), so is it really fair to single VW out?

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[20:38] – [34:14] SCAM #2: OneCoin and the “Queen of Crypto,” Ruja Ignatova

Summary:
Atrioc defends Ruja Ignatova, head of OneCoin. Unlike other crypto, OneCoin was just a number in a SQL database, not an actual blockchain—making it both efficient and, well, not real.

Key Points:

• OneCoin sold “crypto” centrally managed via a spreadsheet, not on a blockchain (23:57–24:19).
• It was essentially a pyramid scheme targeting poor rural communities worldwide (27:07–27:12).
• When the ruse collapsed, Ignatova disappeared with billions, becoming an international fugitive as investors lost their life savings.
• The hosts escalate the farcical courtroom: “No blockchain, no crime,” quips B (32:59).

Notable Quotes:

• “What you really want out of a blockchain product is for it to be centralized under one company that can ensure the prices stay.” (C, 23:22)
• “No blockchain, no crime. I believe it was Johnny Cochran who said that.” (B, 32:59)

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[36:40] – [48:22] SCAM #3: Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi Scheme

Summary:
DougDoug takes on the Madoff case, describing his investment firm’s decades-long, unbroken success as “just good business”—ignoring the telltale Ponzi mechanics beneath the surface.

Key Points:

• Madoff started in the 1960s, running the world’s largest-ever Ponzi scheme for nearly 50 years (40:11).
• Warned multiple times, regulators failed to catch on until 2008 when economic panic caused everyone to try to withdraw at once—exposing that the money wasn’t there.
• Madoff admitted everything, was sentenced to 150 years, and died in prison.

Notable Quotes:

• “I ask you about the question. If you can successfully run a Ponzi scheme from the 1960s until 2008, that’s just a good business.” (D, 40:28)
• “And although...he solely took responsibility for everything. Even though it’s extraordinarily unlikely that his partners from early on...had no idea.” (D, 47:21)

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[49:03] – [61:41] SCAM #4: Rita Crundwell’s “Horse Show” Municipal Fraud

Summary:
B relates the tale of Rita Crundwell, Dixon, Illinois’ city comptroller, who embezzled over $50 million by siphoning tax money into a secret account, spending it on horses, luxury RVs, and show events for over 20 years.

Key Points:

• Made up fake, boringly-named accounts so no one would check them (Reserve Sewer Capital Development Account—RSCDA).
• Funds “appropriated” by slow increments, then larger amounts (sometimes 7 of a $13 million budget!).
• The town endured years of cutbacks and deficits, finally learning the truth from a co-worker who stumbled upon the fraud during Crundwell’s vacation.

Notable Quotes:

• “She looks after every tax dollar as if it was her own. Which is true. Judges. Which is true.” (B, 56:47)
• “I do have to ask. Judge. I'm looking over the details...It's no harm, no foul. At the end of the day it seems.” (D, 61:05)

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[63:02] – [69:51] SCAM #5: South Sea Bubble (1711–1720)

Summary:
Doug paints this colonial scam as little more than smart investing in a “company” that was supposed to monopolize trade with South America—a land it could never legally access. The Bubble’s burst devastated prominent Britons, including Isaac Newton.

Key Points:

• South Sea Company bribed parliament for a debt-for-stock deal then made fortunes on speculation (65:26–66:54).
• After the collapse, the famed “Bubble Act” restricted share issues for a century.
• Judges argue you can’t be prosecuted for breaking a law that didn’t exist yet: “This is the Air Bud defense.” (B, 69:18)

Notable Quotes:

• “You can’t be charged for a crime that didn’t exist yet.” (B, 68:49)
• “If the government hasn’t created a rule about me abusing the finances of poor people...I should be able to do it.” (D, 69:16)

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[72:22] – [79:32] SCAM #6: Bre-X Gold Mine Fraud

Summary:
D defends Canadian mining hopefuls Bre-X, whose “gold discovery” in Borneo was just salted samples. The geologist conveniently dies in a helicopter fall.

Key Points:

• Bre-X fizzed for lack of actual gold; their geologist was likely complicit, but no conviction stuck.
• Some speculate he faked his own death or was murdered.

Notable Quotes:

• “He’s guilty of being clumsy, David, and of being Canadian.” (C, 77:19)
• “I think this is a simple case of we all make shit up sometimes.” (D, 79:14)

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[79:38] – [92:32] SCAM #7: Gregor MacGregor and the Country that Never Was

Summary:
A tragi-comic romp: Scottish “war hero” MacGregor invents the South American country of Poyais, selling bonds and convincing people to move there—only for settlers to find disease and disaster.

Key Points:

• MacGregor forges travel guides and bonds, runs the scam in Britain, France, and even after being discovered, tries again in various countries.
• Most duped emigrants die, but MacGregor avoids serious consequences, dying a war “hero” in Venezuela.

Notable Quotes:

• “He loves LARPing, which is not a crime.” (B, 83:45)
• “He does the same thing. The Return of the King.” (C, 90:21)

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[92:38] – [103:48] SCAM #8: Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes

Summary:
Atrioc summarizes the story of Silicon Valley’s boldest blood-testing fraud. Holmes, channeling Steve Jobs, promises revolutionary healthcare tech that never materializes.

Key Points:

• The “Edison” product is never real; results faked with existing machines.
• High-profile investors and board members add to the illusion.
• Ultimately, real patient harm occurs—and Holmes is convicted in 2022.

Notable Quotes:

• “Why can’t women do what Nintendo does all the time?” (D, 99:09)
• “The difference is...she, from day one said, ‘I have this technology’. It does work, and sold off that.” (C, 99:49)

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[104:17] – [112:45] SCAM #9: Wirecard's Phantom Profits

Summary:
D recounts Germany’s pride and fintech darling, Wirecard, exposed for totally fabricated revenue, phantom accounts in the Philippines, and executives who flee to Russia.

Key Points:

• Wirecard enjoys years of blue-chip status while growth is driven by wholly imaginary foreign office income.
• Journalists and auditors discover the “assets” don’t exist; company implodes, one exec flees.
• “Having to live in Russia is punishment enough.” says B (112:45).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “This is the Air Bud defense: there’s nothing in the rulebook you can’t create other than bribing all of Parliament...” (B, 69:18)
• “No blockchain, no crime.” (B, 32:59)
• “The court does like how this sounds. Has the word clean in it.” (C, 05:29)
• “He loves LARPing, which is not a crime. He loves the idea of, like, making up...He’s like a JRR Tolkien of his time.” (B, 83:45)
• “I want to be clear, with a CEO getting out there and making it happen, had fake data and fake labs and were selling this story for 15 years. So from 2003 up to 2018, it continues to grow.” (C, 96:21)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Case | Key Focus | |------------|-----------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------| | 00:27 | VW Dieselgate | Clean Diesel, emissions cheating | | 20:38 | OneCoin / Ruja Ignatova | “Queen of Crypto” & pyramid scheme | | 36:40 | Bernie Madoff | Ponzi king’s decades of deception | | 49:03 | Rita Crundwell (Dixon, IL) | Town embezzlement for horse pageantry | | 63:02 | South Sea Bubble | Early 1700s stock mania | | 72:22 | Bre-X Gold Mine | The Borneo gold that wasn’t | | 79:38 | Gregor MacGregor (Poyais) | Inventing a country for profit | | 92:38 | Theranos | Blood-test unicorn implosion | | 104:17 | Wirecard | Phantom profits and international flight|

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Tone & Language

• The episode is unapologetically satirical, with each host playing both judge and lawyer in mock-courtroom gags, parodying real legal reasoning.
• Language is informal, densely packed with quips (“No blockchain, no crime”), pop culture nods, and deliberate exaggerations (“Let us know who you think is the most awful scammer of all time...next week, join us, we will be putting Aiden's dead grandparents on trial.” (C, 113:24)).
• Jokes often riff on moral relativism around business, blurring lines between “visionary” and “fraudster.”

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Final Thoughts / Wrap-Up

• Ultimately, the hosts acquit nearly every “defendant” (“Not guilty!”), often for absurd reasons—be it shared guilt, law that didn’t exist, or simple inability to prove intent.
• The tone lampoons both the scammers and an inept “justice” system, offering a tongue-in-cheek morality tale about capitalism, hype, and human gullibility.
• The closing invites listeners to weigh in: Who was history’s worst scammer? And...did any of the judgments feel truly fair?

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For more, listen wherever you get podcasts. Or, if you “want an extra 60 minutes”...consider the Patreon (which the hosts mock as “the real scam”).

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“Thanks for watching – Case Closed.” – (B, 113:53)

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Scams. They're all around us. And today we're gonna look at the greatest and most influential scams of all time to see are they really that bad? Do they really commit the crimes we have put into history?

[C]

I don't think so. It's gonna take a legal process to figure this out. We've hired two of the top judges from our friend group on Lemonade Stand to really dive into digging whether these things are legal or not.

[D]

Aiden,

[C]

Your tie is ready.

[B]

Is so ready.

[D]

I'm ready for business.

[C]

We've each brought three of our favorite scams. Favorite meaning favorite that we want to be brought to justice.

[B]

To justice.

[C]

Unless we agree it's not really that big of a deal.

[B]

We're going to unpack the facts of nine of the world's greatest so called scams.

[C]

Scams.

[B]

And we're going to have a really, really authentic community.

[C]

Note this please.

[B]

Judicial process scams in quotes to determine whether or not they were really as bad as people say.

[C]

So let's get to our first one now. Hear ye, hear ye. Welcome back to the Lemonade Stand courtroom. Today we have on trial. Who. Who are we? Enron? Nope. VW.

[B]

The company VW.

[C]

And the plaintiff, Mr. Branding Atriok Ewing has supposedly put together a little case. Supposedly guilty.

[B]

We play golf together, Lord Edington, in

[C]

between rounds of polo.

[D]

Do not bring.

[B]

Listen to the facts, judges. Listen to the facts. I know you've heard tell in your lifetimes of this so called diesel gate scandal from VW Cars. Please, Perry, bring up the reservation. Vw an iconic beloved brand. Now this is an interesting story to me that I wanted to get a deeper dive on. And it's because my uncle Jack Ewing actually wrote the book on this. What Best yout Hire Farther.

[C]

Wait, what? Hold on.

[B]

No, this is.

[C]

Put your hand on the gold Bible and swear this is real.

[D]

He's actually.

[B]

Psych. Nope. Scammed again.

[C]

Fucking guilty.

[D]

He's looking guiltier by the minute.

[B]

Oh, you guys already got scammed. This guy Jack Ewing is not my uncle, but he did write the book. And Jack Ewing didn't really get the facts right around this VW so called admissions gate scandal. So I want to. I want to take you back in time. It's the 2000s.

[C]

Judges really like being pranked during the courtroom case, by the way.

[B]

Well, we're boys. We play golf together. We're boys.

[D]

Don't bring up the revolving door.

[B]

It's the 2000. You got your ipods, you got your Grand Theft Auto, you got your Osama bin Laden. Okay, you remember when you were playing with your samas and you're watching Smash Mouth and. Yeah, yeah, it's that time I was

[D]

playing my Osama action figure. I made him fight Darth Maul. It was great.

[B]

And a big trend in the early 2000s kicked off by Al Gore in the movie Inconvenient Truth is climate change

[C]

is real, which is a scam. Guilty,

[D]

which we all.

[B]

It's a big movement around the early 2000s. It's like, holy crap, Climate change is real. Cars are the biggest culprit here and we need to reign in their emissions because the two biggest auto dealing countries at the time are Japan and Germany, and both sell primarily to the American market. They need to figure out how to crack this case. The consumer wants more climate friendly cars. So there ends up being a bit of a battle between Germany and Japan. They both go different directions on this new impetus. Japan leans into hybrids and Toyota invents the Toyota Prius. And this comes out with much fanfare. Leonardo DiCaprio drives one to the Oscars and all of a sudden it's a sensation. It's doing rather well. They seem to be ahead of the game really quick.

[C]

Does Leonardo DiCaprio wear shirts that say Leo?

[B]

That is the same question I had when I got this photo.

[C]

That guy, maybe he's the guilty one.

[B]

I'm guilty. Leo's wearing a Leo shirt.

[C]

That's a second charge that we'll be adding on top of this. Yes, go on.

[B]

Germany says hybrids are gross. We're gonna do something different. And their plan to handle this desire for clean energy is they rebrand invade France normally. Their plan for almost every.

[C]

Wait, when was this again?

[D]

Invade Poland.

[B]

No, these are all good German ideas, but they decided to mix it up together. They rebrand Diesel into Clean Diesel. Ooh. This is Germany's mid-2000s plan. Clean diesel. Okay? Now when people think of diesel, they think of thick black smoke coming out of trucks, because that's normally what diesel was used for. But they do a full ad blitz, including super bowl commercials. They sponsor environmentalist groups. They're sponsoring nascent online blogs and it's clean diesel. Like really clean diesel. They are just pointing out how they're. They have solved diesel and made it clean.

[C]

The court does like how this sounds. Has the word clean in it.

[B]

Exactly. And you can tell it's clean.

[D]

Oh, it's probably like clean coal.

[B]

This commercial, by the way, is old women holding up their scarves to the diesel exhaust pipe and it doesn't get dirty. And they go, wow, that's really clean. That's the test. You know, they're putting clean diesel on their cars. Stickers everywhere.

[C]

Not a okay, the car has big printed letters that says not a concept car. That's what really inspires my car.

[B]

There's greenery on it.

[C]

You have to.

[B]

How could this be?

[C]

A dirty car is a car.

[D]

And I'll tell you what, this marketing campaign, it did wonders because Aiden McCaig's family, who's a guy I don't know, owned not one, but two of these Volkswagen vehicles.

[C]

Genuinely well.

[B]

They were doing their part. And I think you should remember that you are kind of part of the conspiracy in that way. And so don't throw, you know, when you're making your judgment anyway. The only problem with this clean diesel campaign is that it wasn't real, is that there was no cleanliness to the diesel. In 2005, scientists at Volkswagen realized they had four key goals for their vehicles. They wanted to be powerful, fuel efficient, cheap. And then the fourth one was to pass emissions tests. And they realized they could not do all four of these trying to do with diesel. If they try to do any of the three, it's fine. When they add the fourth, particularly cheap. It became too expensive.

[D]

And if I could say, the appeal of having a diesel vehicle at all is that it is inherently more fuel efficient. Right, right.

[B]

It is fuel efficient. And. And you know, it was cheap. It was cheap. And so they wanted to be able to attract. The consumer wants the three things on the left and the government wants the thing on the right. And so their scientists kept trying to crack this problem all throughout 2005.

[D]

Sounds like some government over

[B]

wig fluffing. And may I say, what a wonderful wig judge. You look.

[D]

I appreciate that.

[B]

You look incredible.

[C]

Self absorbed libertarian judge.

[B]

The key problem that these brilliant Volkswagen scientists can bring into is nitrogen dioxide, which is a byproduct that irritates the eyes, nose and throat, contributes to smog and forms acid rain. A couple small byproducts.

[D]

This sounds like something Al Gore made up.

[B]

Yeah. And we're not sure this is real, but I'm Gonna include it for legal.

[C]

Another charge against alcohol. Good point.

[B]

Anyway, this is the big problem is that it's very, very common when you burn diesel hot, which is how they did it. And they couldn't figure out how to get rid of it. And so it's a problem. And then they did figure out a way, which is this innovation called a urea injection system, which I thought. Which I thought was pissing on it, but it turns out it's this ad blue thing here where you can inject something into the engine as it's working and it reduces the nitrogen dioxide byproduct.

[C]

So that yellow liquid that's turning blue is not piss. What's going on?

[B]

I thought it was piss, but apparently urea ejection has nothing to do with piss anyway.

[D]

Okay, okay.

[B]

So so far so good. And this actually works. And some cars, like Mercedes, actually use this. And it does reduce your emissions. And it's. Here's the problem. Here's what the German scientists were sad about. They were quite upset because it's very, very expensive. And it requires you as the customer to constantly buy a new blue bottle thing and refill this separate tank, which is not consumer friendly. And so they're frustrated until finally they realize there's a different solution. And they finally crack it. And they smile the biggest a German has ever smiled. And they realize, what if we only do this during the test? What if we don't do this during the actual running of the car, but only during the test? Because you see all these emissions tests are done on these benches here where it is hooked up. It is running forwards a certain amount of time. Running reverse certain amount of time. There's a thing on the exhaust pipe. It's exactly the same every time. The steering wheel is fixed in place. So they install a little bit of software that checks. Is the steering wheel fixed in place? Am I going forward at this exact speed? Am I going reverse at this exact speed? If so, cut the emissions. So they fake it. That is their biggest innovation that they keep desperately secret internally.

[C]

Okay, wait, so this is the condition. So if the steering wheel isn't moving, the acceleration is moving in a predictable pattern. If the engine temperature is specific of the duration and the wheels are spinning in a certain way. Okay, okay, that's good.

[B]

Because here's the thing. These tests are run the exact same way every time. Exactly. So if your steering wheel moves at all or does anything else, it's chugging out exhaust. But when it's doing this, there's none.

[C]

It's clean as can be seeing a lie here. Did they ever explicitly say that it's clean outside of the emissions tests or all the time? Okay, that is a problem then.

[D]

I didn't hear that. And, Mr. Ewing, the explanation you're giving here is that the company pass the test.

[B]

They did pass. And that. And that happens. Judge Aiden, I'm getting my cigar on.

[C]

Are you aware that your uncle Jack was doing this as a child?

[B]

And I think he's at vault. Anyway, they start winning. They start winning awards. Left, right, and center. This is working. They passed the test with flying colors. The car is cheap. The car is seemingly fuel efficient and doing quite well. They win green car of the year, the first clean diesel car to win the award. Somehow all the other clean diesel cars can't figure it out. But they figured it out. So they're winning awards. They're selling a lot to Aiden's family, and they're doing incredible. And it's going so well internally. This is a big year for Volkswagen. They start rolling it out to all their other brands. So Porsche and Audi and VW all are using this new clean diesel fake technology until one day. And this goes on for years, by the way. Years of incredible car sales, incredible awards. They're seen as a green forward company. Then the international council of Clean Transportation.

[D]

Boo.

[B]

Amen. Are on their side.

[C]

Ooh. Yeah.

[B]

They are trying to do a study that proves how great VW is to convince Europe to have the same stringent environmental laws that America does.

[C]

Environmental laws. Boo.

[D]

Boo.

[B]

What's weird is, in the mid-2000s, America actually has more strict environmental laws on cars than Europe does. And so this international council's like, America's doing something right. They have great clean diesel, and we haven't cracked it. Let's figure out why. The laws are where they live. So they start studying the cars, and their test is a little bit different because it's not in an isolated area on a treadmill. They just hook something up to a car and just watch it as it goes in its normal daily business.

[C]

So they're doing a study to try to prove that Volkswagen is clean?

[B]

Yes.

[D]

Okay.

[B]

They are trying to just do a perfunctory study so they can say this is the best car on the market, and it's crushing. And all their data comes back that it's 40 times more pollutant than any other car. And they're like, this can't be right. Even if it were polluting a little more than we thought. This is 40 times. This is egregious. This car's been selling for years now.

[D]

Somebody's collecting the data wrong.

[B]

That's what they think. So they run this study a bunch of times and they flag it to the epa who runs their own study. And everybody comes back, this is 40x worse. That's a bit of a problem. And so Volkswagen comes out and goes, guys, I'm sure your data's a little wrong. You're doing the study wrong. But just to be polite, we're gonna recall some of the more recent cars and we'll do a software patch to update it internally. They're freaking out a bit because this can't be fixed with the software patches. This is deeply embedded. And so they try and try and try. It finally comes out and the stock crashes. Oh, this becomes a major news story. And VW is forced not only to pay billions in fines, which by the way, we're gonna make a job creator pay billions in fines.

[D]

Doesn't make any sense.

[B]

It doesn't make any sense.

[D]

Doesn't make any sense.

[B]

But they also have to buy back a lot of the cars and they don't have nowhere to put them. So they create these gigantic car graveyards in like Nevada.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

Some of which I think still exist and they're just filled with rotting cars they can't do anything with.

[D]

This is where my parents car went when the scandal broke. They brought it to a dealership and the car was purchased back.

[C]

How much did you get?

[D]

I don't, I don't remember what they got at the time. I ended up having a TDI Jetta, which is what I sold to buy the CS knife.

[B]

Famously, TDI Jetta is like the worst one I think that they produced of the Jetta.

[D]

Tdi.

[B]

Yeah. The most pollutant car.

[D]

Yes. I was one of the biggest polluters on the road. Sue me.

[B]

And then in a real crime against a hard working executive, they actually arrested people. The CEO. Well, the CEO got fired. He didn't get arrested. But then a bunch of executives from the company were actually jailed. Sorry. We'll cut this down. In this diesel scandal, which I think feels really out of line. They already lost money, now they have to go to jail.

[D]

They paid so much to get the cars back. Is that not enough?

[B]

I like what this judge is thinking.

[D]

And you know what I've been meaning to say, it's like, do you have any more interesting, maybe cases about like minor marijuana possession or something?

[B]

Thank you. Thank you. You guys are good at your job

[D]

because frankly I haven't seen very many mistakes. So far.

[C]

So you don't make a mistake in a business anymore.

[B]

Yeah, you can't, you can't. Everybody's gonna be perfect.

[C]

You can't trust. You can't shoot for the moon and

[D]

land a two stars are the let LLC at the end of Volkswagen. Does that mean anything to us anymore?

[B]

Going up to his personal life. He can't go to his daughter's birthday. He's in jail.

[C]

All because apparently sell her private island in the Caymans.

[B]

All because apparently this pollution killed people and defrauded customers over the period of a decade, which is like. And this is only in the uk, apparently in America, obviously way greater. But I only have the study from the uk. But listen, I mean, we're getting caught down in the facts here. Let's focus on two things.

[C]

Yeah, it's a good point.

[B]

Two things that I want you guys to really hone in on.

[C]

Move on from the facts.

[B]

Here's some facts that you should wrap your head around, Judge. Fact number one. People think of VW when they think of this diesel gate scandal. They're always talking about vw. But it turns out after this blows up and VW stock tanks quietly, the EPA begins investigating a lot of their competitors. And they notice that everybody internally at other companies realized what VW was doing and often all copied it. This is popular cars from the year where this came out. You'll notice that Fiat Chrysler is the most pollutant. Hyundai, Subaru, Nissan, Ford, Daimler, Honda, Toyota, everybody. The red line is where it's supposed to be based on the emissions scandal. And the green bar is where they actually polluted. So this is a much more widespread problem. But VW gets all the blame.

[C]

So in defense of your client, you're saying if everybody was committing horrific crime, no one should be held accountable?

[B]

It's what I call the Lance Armstrong defense.

[C]

He's got a point, Aiden.

[D]

Why does Lance get all the bad press?

[B]

Lance gets all the bad press. But there was like 40 Frenchmen doing steroids.

[D]

Exactly.

[B]

And blood doping. Secondly, Elon Musk here. So a shocking byproduct of the VW emissions scandal that people don't know is that after it came out, governments were so embarrassed, especially governments in Europe, that they began deeply, deeply cracking down on emissions and putting up huge carbon credit subsidies to get not just hybrids anymore. They needed full electric vehicles. This created the economic conditions for Tesla. In the mid-2010s, Tesla rode the wave of these new wave of carbon credits from America and Europe to get off the ground and become to make money when they couldn't make money for the first like 10 years. And so they inherently create like VW because they did this kind of pushed forward EV adoption by 10 years. Oh, interesting when you think about it like that. Finally, third thing, this is really the worst thing VW has ever done. We're really gonna get mad about the emissions. They got away with this. And we're gonna get mad about the emissions.

[C]

So there's a picture of Hitler looking at a VW here.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

If I understand your argument here, we should be lenient to your client because at one point Hitler existed.

[B]

I rest my case.

[D]

Now I gotta be honest. I've been deliberating during your presentation.

[B]

Okay, great.

[D]

And it feels like there were, there were some missteps, maybe some mismanagement here. And could you clarify for me? The people went to jail, which seems to imply that the executives knew absolutely what they were doing when they made these decisions to get around nobody. Nobody was like, yeah, this is actually fine. This is actually a legal argument. They were like, no, we're blowing by.

[B]

Here's what I'll say. Our great CEO at VW didn't go to jail.

[D]

Okay?

[B]

Okay. He just stepped down because he was ashamed at the stock price performance. He's a man who cares about the shareholders. A lot of mid level managers who are close to the problem and had paperwork with their names on it that could obviously not avoid being tied to it, they did go to jail. And that means the problem is done. It is cleaned up. All right? This company culture is fixed. We really need to spend time harassing the executives over and over. Bro, they, the stock is down. Did I not mention that? They've already been harassed enough which they

[D]

probably paid the price. And I mean, I can't even imagine them knowing anything about it.

[C]

No further humiliation you can do to a man. Look at how low the stock got.

[D]

It's, it's just. And that is the most humiliating.

[B]

And they're paid in stock.

[D]

Paid in stock.

[B]

Think about that.

[D]

So I'm going to go out here and I say I appreciate your honesty presenting this all to us. And I feel like you can, I think you just need to move on and be a better person.

[B]

Thank you, Judge. That really.

[C]

We will though be giving you a six month ban from all car manufacturing and business. After that you will receive a hefty subsidy.

[B]

You're firm but fair, Judge Deal. Case number two. I'm Honorable Judge Atrioc presiding. Pleasure to meet you.

[C]

You look familiar.

[A]

Hmm.

[C]

Judges today I'm here to defend my client, Mrs. Ruja Ignatova, who you might actually know as the Queen of Crypto. Okay, now, have you heard of a little thing called cryptocurrency?

[D]

Crypto.

[C]

Wait, judges, what are you guys. What are you guys holding?

[B]

Some Monero?

[D]

I'm long on litecoin right now. For one, the altcoin Shiba Nar. Big on shows mostly. That's how I pay to watch beheadings on the Internet. So that's been keeping a lot that sogged up. But what I do in my own time is really.

[B]

Yeah, it's really none of your business, Judge J.

[C]

Don't you hate how hard it is to spend your litecoin to purchase those beheading videos? Don't you hate how the price. The price fluctuates constantly?

[D]

Hate that.

[C]

Don't you hate how sometimes the price will go down? Could you blame a woman for dreaming? What's the most important part of crypto?

[D]

Dreaming dreams or that it goes up?

[C]

The community, as they say. Crypto is nothing without its community.

[B]

Right?

[C]

So, Ruja Ignatova. Everybody talks about these small two bit scams. Like, what's that guy who scammed, like $8 billion out of people? SB, FB, whoever, nobody cares about him.

[B]

SPF, nobody cares about him.

[C]

Logan, Paul, none of these things are substantial. No, this is the Queen of Crypt. Ten years ago, in 2014, she.

[B]

Are you bragging?

[C]

No, look, what I'm trying to do

[B]

here, I'm just trying. The lawyer bragging.

[C]

I'm saying that SBF didn't dream very big.

[D]

Okay, I see. He dreams small.

[C]

He dreamed small. He had small little dreams for a small man.

[B]

He was guilty.

[D]

He stayed in bronze after a lot of games.

[B]

That's why I put him guilty, remember? That's right. Murder.

[C]

That's wrong. Murder is you kill someone with intent. There's nothing wrong with manslaughter, which is where you accidentally kill someone without intending on doing it.

[D]

No, you can't go to jail for that. We don't prosecute.

[B]

Is there nothing wrong with manslaughter I have not brushed up on?

[D]

What you brushed up. It's because you've been. Yeah, you've been.

[B]

I've been in Ibiza.

[D]

You've been doing a lot of jaywalking cases, too. You've been doing a lot of jaywalking. Manslaughter. Clean now.

[B]

Okay.

[D]

Can't go to jail for.

[B]

All right, cool, cool, cool. Yeah. All right. I don't know enough about the law to dispute it, but it sounds right.

[C]

We can all Agree. A couple problems with Bitcoin. This is 2014. You know, Ethereum's doing well now. Maybe salon is starting to come up. I don't know. I didn't look into that. But bitcoin is the big boy on the block. But this is still in the stage where people don't really know if bitcoin's a big thing. Right. All there. Back then, we know it was like, oh, bitcoin, it was like $500 at the time. But there's problems. The price is fluctuating. You don't feel like you have considered. What you really want out of a blockchain product is for it to be centralized under one company that can ensure.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

That the prices stay.

[B]

I believe the core promise of crypto is centralization.

[C]

So I think we can all agree.

[D]

Centralized the decentralized asset, then that probably rounds out.

[B]

You could run through some kind of agency or one point of failure.

[C]

That way people have security. They know what's going to happen. Right. And so. So in 2014, Ruja Ignatova launched OneCoin. Okay. This is gonna be the bitcoin killer. And it's the only thing she didn't do, the only thing is that it's in a SQL database in her company's offices.

[B]

Don't speak like a nerd. I know what that means.

[C]

It's. It's like an Excel spreadsheet instead of a blockchain. So when you buy coins, it's not going onto a blockchain with cryptography. It's going into my Excel spreadsheet and it says, aiden has five coins. And then I can change the number anytime I want.

[B]

Sounds more efficient.

[D]

This sounds like it's much more efficient.

[B]

That sounds more efficient.

[D]

You don't want to hear something Matt Zeb was doing at smash G 8

[B]

years ago that sounds like paper brackets.

[C]

What do people want about crypto? They want to feel like they have crypto. So there's. I got a question.

[B]

I got a question. Yeah, this sounds better for the environment because you have to go with all the energy of, like, doing the. Exactly. The token process.

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

Is a little bad in that. Okay, so that's part one. First off, we save energy by. There's no blockchain at all. We keep calling it crypto, but to be clear, no centralization. It's. It's a. It's a database on my. On my servers. Um, and then the other thing is that they came up with a really smart marketing idea, which is that if I convince you guys to Purchase into the company and buy some crypto. I will get some crypto in return as a payment. And then if you guys convinced your friends to buy in.

[B]

Wait a minute.

[C]

Well, then you'll get paid back some of the crypto, and so will I for having brought you guys in as recruiters.

[B]

I'm thinking about this. The weird thing is there's absolutely zero red flags.

[D]

I think what I was thinking about is, like, if I pull in people, right, And I get more people than just me, it's like they form a larger sort of base around me, right? And then they build another tier below them. So you have.

[C]

It's like a Kumbaya circle.

[B]

It sounds like it's very stable, but

[D]

it sounds like it's hard to knock down.

[B]

Yeah, hard to knock down. I can't move very easily. Okay, you're winning me over, but keep going, because this still is the queen of crypto. A famous.

[D]

So far, sir, I don't even know why you're in court with us.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[C]

That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. So in 2014, we start our crypto company. We're the future. We're going to be the new Bitcoin. As she says, no one will even remember what bitcoin is by the time we're done in this incredible presentation. So 2015, they start growing. They start getting this marketing stuff going. And look again, we want friends to encourage friends. Nothing wrong with having a pyramid of friends build a structure upwards with, of course, the company taking 5%.

[B]

This guy.

[C]

And because there's no crypto, technically, right. It's not real. We can issue fake coins back to people, which is the rewards they get. And then you can only through us, you can't sell it openly. You can sell your coins for real money as long as our exchange is open and we limit how much you can sell. But that's good, because that way there can't be a run on the. It's solving all of the core problems with cryptography. And this keeps Growing in 2015, right? This is before the big craze in 2020, during the COVID era. This is the big one that they start launching. And by 2015, it's growing. Lots of companies, lots of customers, Right? And they really go for people who could benefit, like poor rural farmers in East Africa and Asia and Eastern Europe, right, who are selling, like cows in order to buy in. Like, they're selling their life savings. But this is the Future.

[B]

You know what I'm saying? It's noble.

[D]

Well, you want to give them opportunity. Opportunity through the one coin.

[B]

I feel like in our ivory tower, sometimes we own we have access to financial products that regular people don't. So this is like democratizing.

[C]

Democratizing, yeah. In my Excel spreadsheet. And so we hit the peak in 2016. Okay. And I want you to take a look at this quick video. She goes to Wembley Stadium in the uk. I can't even show you the intro because it looks more like a WWE intro and not a financial conference. But she comes out and talks about the future of OneCoin. At this point, they have over 50% of the market cap of Bitcoin. They've successfully grown this massively. It's global. Perry, pull up this video. And this is one of the big

[D]

highlights of this speech on the new one. And for you.

[C]

She announces as existing members doing a

[D]

new people who supported a new blockchain. Because we're moving into a huge phase two now. Whatever coins you have on your account or in the mining, if you have 1,000 coins on your account and 1,000

[C]

in the mining, what we will do

[D]

as a company, we will double the coins on your account.

[C]

90,000 people. So she comes up with a solution to double the amount of money that you have and then says that they're doing this on October 1, 2016, and you have to buy in before then. So I want you to look me in the mouth and tell me if you would put behind bars a woman who wants to double the wealth of every single person. Which, by the way, makes no sense because that's not how decentralized currency works. And if every single person who bought in suddenly has double the amount of coins, it's all worth exactly the same amount of money. But other than that, she is helping the people. She's helping them. Also, it's not an open market because nobody can buy or sell them.

[B]

Lawyer Doug, this sounds like an incredible woman, a hero. Can I ask a quick question?

[C]

Right.

[B]

Did she do this?

[C]

So the only problem little after this, this is 2016. They tried to recruit a Norwegian blockchain expert to build them an actual blockchain.

[B]

Right. Because they don't have one yet.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Well, miners.

[C]

Yeah. And he looks at what they're doing and realizes they it's a SQL database. And so then he becomes a key whistleblower on top of multiple regulators looking at this, because it's very obviously not crypto, even though millions and millions of people have bought in.

[B]

Wait, so Let me get this straight.

[C]

And then one minor detail. In January 2017, they also stop allowing people to take money out. You can put it in still, but you can't sell anything.

[D]

So far. I want to charge a Norwegian man for snitching.

[B]

They hire a man, they pay him a real salary.

[C]

No, no, no. They try to recruit him and he says no. They offer him 2.5 million and he says no because he.

[B]

They offer him real cash to do a job and in return, narcs.

[D]

It's unbelievable.

[B]

It's it. You can't trust anyone in the world.

[D]

What's his name? This is the real villain in the story.

[C]

I believe his name is some Norwegian blockchain expert.

[D]

That's Norwegian. Names are crazy.

[B]

They're so weird out there.

[C]

Judges a tear might nominate.

[B]

Determinism, though is crazy. Like

[D]

he was. As soon as my child was born, I kn. I knew what he was gonna do.

[B]

He was destined for that role. That's so wild.

[C]

And after this kid who would ruin any playground recess, regulators start looking. 2017, they stop letting the customers of their crypto coin sell. And soon, in 2018, the co founder is arrested. And actually a couple months after the regulation really starts Kicking off in October 27, Ignatova, our beloved founder, flees to somewhere. We don't actually know where. At first I think she went to South Africa, but it's not actually clear. By 2019, the new CEO is arrested. Basically all the executives are arrested for money laundering and fraud. They confirm that $4 billion has been taken from average people that was either paid out in small chunks as MLM like repayments, or taken by the owners or laundered offshore accounts. A lot of it went to a Bulgarian drug lord. So that's cool. They recover $40 million of it and everyone goes to jail. And the question is, where is Ignatova now? My client, she may have been murdered by a Bulgarian drug lord. That's a rumor. She may be hiding in South Africa, someone said somewhere in Germany. Frankfurt, Russia is a possibility. There was a $50 million transaction on her behalf from Dubai at some point a few years ago. So she maybe is alive and still has at least $50 million on her. The FBI has a $5 million reward for this person and says she travels with bodyguards and changed her whole face with plastic surgery. And so what I want to say to you is that my client's life has already been ruined. She only has $50 million left to her name. She probably looks like some sort of hot freak. And can you really blame A woman for doubling the money of the people.

[D]

Where. Where was this company based again before she fled Bulgaria? Oh, it was based in Bulgaria, Yeah. But they had.

[C]

They had offices everywhere.

[D]

It is interesting because I want to

[C]

point out, just real quick, this. Yet another absolution for my client, ftx, sbf. This whole, you know, the biggest crypto thing that everyone knows about, like, they had a blockchain here, right?

[D]

They.

[C]

They had a functioning blockchain. They just took user deposits and used it for Alameda. Right? That was the crime. And with this one, there is no blockchain.

[B]

No blockchain, no crime, no crime. I believe it was Johnny Cochran who said that.

[D]

And it's like, we don't even. This is. Doug. This is ridiculous. This is America. And it's like, I'm. What am I supposed to do? Bulgarian woman. What am I supposed to do?

[B]

She's alive. We don't even know if she's alive.

[D]

And. And she's already suffered so much, probably. And. And probably so much more than any of the people that lost money along the way, right? And I.

[B]

They have to get plastic surgery. I don't think so.

[C]

Yes.

[D]

If they had enough money to put into this, then they probably could afford all the plastic surgery they want.

[C]

Finally, if you have enough cows that you can sell a couple to buy one coin, you can surely sell the other cows for plastic surgery.

[D]

Exactly. Yeah.

[B]

And most importantly is that at the beginning of this, you asked if we had crypto, and we do. And like, if we start snooping around and then we get all the legal team involved, like we could. I lost a lot of money in ftx and I regret us sensing that guy to be guilty. So if we just kind of.

[D]

We just call this a wash.

[B]

Call this a wash. Yeah. Not guilty.

[C]

Thank you, Judge

[B]

Por for lemonade stand comes from quo.

[D]

I've got. Okay. I've got this new business and people, I've just have all this gold. I have so much gold, and people have been calling me and texting me, emailing me, and they just want. They want my gold and I want to give it to them, but it's hard to track all the requests for it.

[B]

I want your gold. I want your gold. I want your gold.

[C]

You want your business to miss a phone call?

[D]

I wouldn't want to miss an opportunity to give this gold away, which is my business model. So if I just had a platform that like, maybe put all the notifications that people are giving me, I'm calling that hold. Dude, it's because you don't don't call me yet. I need to set up quo to have all the things go to one place so it's easier to check up and track on so I can give people. Then I'll give you the gold.

[B]

Oh, great.

[C]

Everybody make this the year where no opportunity and no customer slips away. Aiden, track Quo for free. Get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com lemonade that's Q-U-O.com lemonade quo. No missed calls. No missed customers.

[D]

Hate to lose customers on this. I want to give it away.

[B]

Free gold.

[A]

I'm Mitch. First two time indwisl champion, championship MVP and forward for the US Women's national team. Before I went pro, I graduated from Harvard with a degree in psychology, which comes in handy more than you think. Any athlete pursuing greatness knows there's a certain mentality you have to have. What people don't know is what that costs. In my podcast, Confessions of an Elite Athlete, I sit down with the best athletes in the world and explore the psychology, mindset, and unseen battles on the path to greatness. So take a seat and learn from the Confessions of an elite athlete on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Maria Sharapova, and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Follow Pretty Tough wherever you get your podcasts.

[C]

Court is now in session.

[B]

Case number three.

[D]

I'm here to represent my client, who you may already know, you know, for his dashing good looks. Speaking of good looks, his charisma.

[C]

I'm not on trial here, Aiden.

[D]

You're not my client. You're not my client.

[B]

But you've been looking good.

[D]

You've been looking good.

[B]

Thank you.

[D]

And Bernie Madoff. And he is simply the owner of a private fund that produced incredible returns over decades. Almost fixed with almost no falls ever. Somebody who never failed to deliver for his clients. I would argue his job. And in December 2008, he was arrested and charged with securities fraud, which. And as I will explain, I'm not even sure if that makes sense. He, his firm claimed to create incredible turns off of. Off of trading.

[B]

Okay.

[D]

And the little asterisk on the trading is that there weren't really Many trades at all. He mostly accumulated the returns by, say, getting investment from one party and then using that investment to pay out other investors and so on, and continue to raise money through more and more people.

[B]

Can I break that down? He's taking money, investment. That sounds legal.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

He's paying out the people that want payment. Yeah, that sounds legal.

[D]

Yeah. It's interesting.

[B]

I'm not seeing a problem here.

[D]

So you're noticing that nobody. Nobody seems unhappy.

[B]

Nobody seems.

[D]

Everybody's earning on their money.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

For example, I get. Doug puts money into my company. He puts some investment in. Right. A million dollars. And I go to you. I go to you, judge, and you give me 1.5 million. You invest well.

[B]

I don't want Doug to have a

[D]

better car than me. Incredible returns for my overall fund. I have $2.5 million now, and Doug. I showed Doug that growth, and he's like, let me get 300k of my money out. No problem. Doug, I've got money in the pool. I pay you out. I'm getting more clients. And the fund just continues to grow somehow overcoming a lot of the larger recessions and economic circumstances of.

[B]

You said 2008, 2001.

[D]

Judge, you're getting ahead of yourself there. And I have to maybe clarify for some people listening. Some people have called this a Ponzi scheme, which is where the returns of a fund are based solely on new funds being brought in by other investors that are used to increase the performance of the fund and pay out other old investors. Some people have called it that.

[B]

That.

[C]

Okay, but what's the problem? If you keep getting new investors, it can go forever.

[D]

Well, what. Exactly. Exactly. And it lasted, I think, Doug, an interesting thing about Bernie Madoff, my client, that a lot of people don't know is the amount of time that this lasted. I grew. I think this is one of the first big news stories that I grew up with as a child where I was. I was clocked into what was happening. This big scandal broke, and I was old enough to understand that, like, kind of the gravity of what it was. But I think I've always passively assumed that he'd been doing this for, like, 10 years. Dude, he started this in the 60s.

[C]

What?

[D]

Isn't that insane? Think about how long this Ponzi scheme ran. And I read the FBI report.

[B]

Alleged Ponzi scheme. Sorry,

[C]

hold on, hold on. Innocent until proven guilty.

[D]

I asked you about the question. If you can successfully run a Ponzi scheme from the 1960s until 2008, that's

[B]

just a Good business.

[D]

Is it really a Ponzi scheme?

[B]

Real business that didn't last that long, dude.

[C]

How old is he when he started? I feel so unaccomplished now, dude.

[D]

He was, he was a young man. This is, this is how it reportedly started. This is a quote from Supervisory Special Agent Paul Roberts from the FBI. He didn't want to own up to the fact that he had lost all the money from his father in law's friends when he started this fund in the 60s initially. So he started covering it up with all these other fake trades, and it just snowballed from there. That's how the Ponzi scheme began. He wanted to hide the shame of, like, not performing for his. His father gave him an opportunity to get investment from friends. He knew he fucked it up and he started covering it.

[B]

So he tried trading like once as a young man, was horrible at it and said, fuck.

[D]

I kind of assumed that this guy had an actual. Keep in mind, this is a guy who eventually became chairman of the nasdaq. What his son, like, as a separate job, became the chairsman of the NASDAQ index and the building.

[B]

That's almost inspiring.

[C]

Yeah, I, I just. In humble beginnings in Silicon Valley, this is called a pivot. Yeah, you don't, you don't punish someone. It's like Bill Gates dropped out of

[B]

college, you know, Steve Jobs in a garage.

[C]

Bernie Madoff lost all his.

[B]

Bernie Madoff lost his father in law's money.

[C]

Let's scam. Yeah.

[D]

He built from the ground up, I would say. And this goes on. So this goes on for decades. He's getting a ton of individual investors that he's networked with who would then like, recommend friends of theirs and then eventually some larger, more institutional investors. Like, the largest of which was the Fairfield Greenwich Group, a Connecticut firm that had invested seven and a half billion dollars with Madoff. And what's interesting also is that the SEC was warned about my client many times for years because people eventually, like other performers or other, like other people on Wall street, looked into the returns of Madoff's fund and were like, this guy's batting near a thousand. How is this, how is this possible? His fund doesn't go down at all when the rest of the market declines.

[C]

Okay, riddle means what sort of trades

[D]

is this guy doing?

[C]

Shohei Ohtani, greatest all time. Pretty sure he bats close to a thousand.

[D]

He could. And that's the thing, Doug, it's not even close to 1,000. And then early public accusations actually surface around 2001 in like published articles that heavily implied what Madoff and his firm are doing is fraudulent, I guess. And they begin warding off audits and oversight by falsifying trade documents. So they would get audited by like, like the SEC would come in and then they would create fake documentation of trades that had taken place within the firm to show where the returns and the money had come from so that they. To value the strategy. And I beg the judges. And I know this sounds bad. I know this sounds bad.

[B]

Well, counterpoint. Every YouTube commenter on a finance video does the same thing.

[C]

True.

[B]

They always got in at the low point and they've always sold at the high. So like, what makes him any different?

[D]

And keep in mind throughout, we're talking 30, 40 years of delivering for his clients.

[C]

Everybody's enjoying it, right?

[D]

Everybody's enjoying it. Until a little thing comes along. The 2008 financial crisis couldn't have blamed it.

[C]

I don't think you can blame him for that.

[D]

And we all agree that my client did not cause the 2008 financial crisis.

[C]

Follow up question, can we.

[B]

No, he did not cause it.

[C]

Thanks, Judge Ewing.

[D]

And so, as you can imagine, ultimately people say. I wouldn't say it about my client, but people say that the worst time to operate a Ponzi scheme is when everybody wants their money back at the same time.

[B]

This is just advice on running a Ponzi scheme.

[D]

And what's interesting.

[B]

Taking notes.

[D]

What's interesting is like all the egg. Economic crises before this. Madoff's fund did not go down during the crisis at all, miraculously. And they tried to assure investors that their accounts in Madoff's fund were doing well. But many still wanted to withdraw their money anyway. And Madoff did not have enough cash to cover the demanded 1.5 billion in withdrawals. They only had 300 million in cash at the time.

[B]

Time.

[D]

And. And upon being backed into this corner by his own words, which. And I'm realizing that in a court setting this might play tough.

[B]

You're laughing a lot for the lawyer.

[D]

But my client did say on the record to the FBI and the sec, there is no innocent explanation. I've been running a massive Ponzi scheme.

[C]

Hold on.

[B]

That's inadmissible. That's inadmissible.

[C]

We're not going to get unlike.

[B]

Strike that from the record.

[C]

Previous two clients. My client didn't. By the way. I'm the lawyer. I guess now my client. My client fled the country. Okay. Your client comes out and says, hey, I made a little teeny tiny mistake, okay? I made one little fuck up. It's a long one. It's 50 years. But I made it comes out and admits the truth. All right.

[D]

Nothing illegal against that. What is one can we not be

[B]

month of being a bad guy to 50 years of being a respected Wall street delivering.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

And what's. What's. Well. And my client was punished because he was sentenced to 150 years in prison.

[B]

How old was he?

[D]

He was already like 70.

[C]

We deprived him of his ability to be the next U.S. president.

[D]

And he died. He died. My client has actually already passed away in prison in 2021. Oh, my God. And although. And he notably, in the wake of all of this falling apart, solely took responsibility for everything. Even though it's extraordinarily unlikely that his partners from early on and his sons, among other parties had no idea that this was happening. It's almost assured

[C]

jumps on the grenade.

[D]

But many other people knew a family member took the fall. A family man. And the real. The real consequences of this for people were he had people's like tens of millions of dollars by like family of their retirement. There were like, pension funds that he carried for like certain, like, I think like firefighters and things. And overnight, all of this just disappeared. And for the families that had decided to store their retirement in this guy's fund, like thousands and thousands of families, they just lost all of their money with no recourse. There was an effort to sell off his assets in order to like, recover and start paying people back. But the amount where this was in totality a $65 billion fraud. It is the largest Ponzi scheme in history. And I want. And but my question.

[C]

Was it 65 billion at the time it was shut down, or is that like the total amount that was, I

[D]

think, 65 billion in total that he had like, essentially scammed out of people.

[B]

Okay, listen, this guy sounds like a family man. He sounds like a good man. I feel like he's been unfairly maligned here. Maybe he made a mistake and he's dead. But I had. And he's already dead. So I don't think we need to go any further here. I have just one question. I heard a rumor that he also stole from rich people. Is that true?

[D]

He. He did he absolutely guilty.

[B]

Judges, boys. There's one. There's one thing this courtroom loves. Keep it friendly around here.

[C]

Word up to the lawyer.

[D]

One thing, one thing we love.

[C]

Case open.

[D]

7:30 tea time.

[B]

Yay. Other than the green, you know what I'm talking about. We love horses. I know the lemonade stand. Courtroom loves horses. This one's for you, Judge Doug. So today I am bringing you a. Basically, I'll just say it. An innocent woman. An innocent woman named Rita Cronwell.

[C]

By the way, that usually is what the prosecution says.

[D]

Wink.

[C]

No, they don't wink, actually. They just say, my client is innocent. And they don't wink.

[B]

I'm still figuring this whole thing.

[C]

Yeah, you're right. You're right.

[B]

It's a learning process, Doug. Anyway, I'd like you to bring up a woman whose biggest crime is probably just loving horses. Her name's Rita Crundwell. She lived in a small town called Dixon, Illinois. It's true. All American. I'm talking about apple pie, a main street, a diner, a river. You can picture it. You can picture it. By the way, this is the town most famous. For one thing. It's the small town in America that Ronald Reagan grew up in. Think about that, okay? She lived in Dixon, and she's born and raised there. And she went to the high school. And she, upon graduating high school, after doing some volunteer work at the city hall, decides to join the local government. And she becomes its comptroller, which is a job that controls basically the treasury of the small town. They do the budget, they do the finances, they check all that nerdy stuff, all right? But she's good with numbers. She's good at this job. And she decides, I will do it. And I'll tell you guys, she was fantastic at it. She showed up early, she stayed late, she worked hard. People around her were complimentary of her work non stop. And again, this is a small town where everybody in government's a small government. It's like six people total. They're all local. The other finance guy who works at the public high school, the mayor is like a part time real estate guy. And everyone has.

[C]

Her husband's, her brother, her grandfather's, her

[B]

step not in the South. And so she notices a comptroller, and she does this for, I mean, a decade, a great job. So she notices one thing. There's a very simple tax structure here in this small town. They collect the money primarily in this top left bucket sales tax, and then it gets distributed to other accounts for things to be used in the town. And again, there's only one person doing this job. It's her. And so she realizes, what if I add a seventh account, a secret account? And this is where I would say brilliance comes through. Not just a really inspired piece of brilliance. She realizes that nobody will check on this account. If she gives it a really boring name. But it has to be truly boring. So she thinks and she thinks and she comes up with the Reserve Sewer Capital Development account, abbreviated to rscda. And this is such a good, such a boring name that spoiler alert, nobody's going to check for 20 years. So she creates fake invoices that aren't even spelled right, like section is spelled sectin. And she starts billing the other accounts from this account. And basically to anyone who's glancing at it, it looks like money is just being diverted to a, like a sewer fund or to a project or to build roads or whatever. It's just being shuffled around to where it needs to be to do the job the town needs to have it do. And these invoices all seem appropriate except for the misspellings. But they're for massive amounts like 5000-002500-00300,000. And they all just go to the secret account. And then if anyone were to check what the secret account was doing, it was spending money on horses and RVs.

[C]

Are we putting the horses in the sewers?

[B]

That's will be a good follow up, but no. In fact, 179 times over the course of 20 years, she just charges these accounts, puts them in her secret account, and then buys things. Now, they had an auditor. This is their office. It's a nice office. It's Clifton Larson Allen. This is a real auditor. But the auditor just checks both sides of the books. They just check is the amount that went into the first account, the amount that went into the second account. Yep, that's. It adds up. Nobody's changing the numbers. They're not checking whether or not where it's going makes any sense. And so this is where the bad part of this, well, the supposedly bad part of the fraud comes in, which

[C]

is that you got to defend your client better. Speaking as a judge, man, you're doing a terrible job. You're making her sound like a real B word.

[B]

You're going to get to the part that's really beautiful in a second.

[C]

Okay?

[B]

This is the part where all the haters come out of the work. So the haters will tell you that in the first few years of this, this is 1992, this goes till the mid-2010s. She shows a little bit at first. The first year she only steals like $100,000. But the city starts to notice, hey, we are really in a deficit. We don't have the money. So they have to start making budget cuts. So they start cutting overtime for city employees, they start cutting station equipment. And then as the amount she supposedly steals, maybe misappropriates, maybe appropriates to a good cause, gets bigger, the deficit gets bigger, the cuts get bigger. So they start cutting fire department and streets and traffic maintenance and schools and cemeteries. And this keeps going and gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Until 2008. Very remind me of something. And in 2008, unlike that fraud, Bernie

[C]

Madoff, she's the cause of the 2008 financial crisis.

[B]

In 2008, she doesn't see it as like, oh, no, everybody's gonna want their money back. Cause she's not running a Ponzi scheme, okay? She's like, wait a minute. This is a perfect opportunity to explain why this city has no money. I'm gonna steal even more. So instead of stealing less, she starts stealing way more. Until at one point in like 2009, the city's budget is like 13 million. And she stole seven. My God, that year she takes seven. And whenever anyone's like, why are we in such a deficit? She's like, the recession. It's tax receipt.

[C]

Wait, does anybody notice that she suddenly had 80,000 horses in her backyard?

[B]

That's a great question. People do notice a couple of things. They notice that a town next door to them is in a 8 million budget surplus. The town of the same size right down the street somehow is managing their finances. Right. But theirs is massively negative.

[D]

It hit Dixon really hard. People forget that.

[B]

Yeah, in February 2012, they broke down the budget. This is where the budget went, you know, 200k to public affairs, 268 to 3,560k to fire, 1 million to police, 3.2 million directly to her pocket. She is the single biggest line item, year after year, on Dixon's budget.

[C]

Well, let me defend your client. For some reason, the sewer system is the biggest recipient of money. And I am excited to hear about what improvements she did make to the sewer system.

[B]

And we're gonna find out. Okay, this is a really incredible quote. There's only one other guy who could possibly have any insight into the finances and catch her on this or look into this. But he is a part time teacher who does this, like one day a month and barely looks into it. And he, upon his retirement, gives a speech where he says, rita Crundwell is a big asset to the city. She looks after every tax dollar as if it was her own. Which is true. Judges. Which is true.

[D]

She seems attentive.

[B]

Where did the sewer money go? Reliable diamond studded horse outfits, Expensive quarter Horses which can cost up to 250,000 each. Lavish parties. Again, it turns out the horse show industry is all about money. She bought a million dollar plus RV with a luxury interior. Again, each quarter horse can cost 250,000. She bought four of them. So that's a million dollars worth of horses. I'm sorry, I lied. She brought 400 of them. But hear me out.

[C]

So she has 400.

[B]

Yes, 400 horses, multiple ranches. But hear me out.

[D]

No, that means would you rather have

[B]

a sewer system that's like what, gilded, paved with gold? Or would you rather have a woman.

[C]

Shit.

[B]

Who has 400 plus awards in the

[D]

quarter horse, show horse category represent the success of.

[B]

She makes Dixon look good. Now, people do wonder exactly what you're saying, Doug. They wonder why is this woman who grew up here suddenly fabulously wealthy, traveling the country in a giant rv. And the rumor goes around that she is. She had a wealthy inheritance, someone in her family died, and now she's wealthy. But she's just a hard working local Dixon girl who got lucky at one point. This woman who probably should be on trial instead of her because she's a snitch and a narc and a bad friend. This is her friend of 20 years who was her deputy assistant at the comptroller office. And she even on this interview says, I had a really easy job. Rita never made me do anything. Rita never made me check the books or do anything. But unfortunately, Rita was taking more and more vacation to do her show horse business, right? So by 2013 or so, she's taking like 16 weeks a year to go travel the country in her rv. And she gives specific instructions to her deputy to be like, just always call me about everything. Don't handle anything. But she's stressed one day and she just asked the bank to send over all the accounts that the titty's going to. That is a problem. She looks into the account, she's like, wait, there's one account here that is getting so much money consistently for years. It must be a mistake. The FBI is flagged. They investigate for six months, then pull her into a room and it all grumbles.

[D]

I'm noticing a theme here.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Is like, we have someone building their American dream. And then the FBI steps in.

[B]

The FBI and haters. Jealous. Yeah.

[D]

It doesn't make any sense.

[B]

It doesn't make any sense.

[D]

I see a woman who paid a lot of money to have some of the cleanest sewers in the country, and by God, you could lick off the walls of that Sewer. And I'm having a hard time.

[C]

There's an enormous amount of horse feces has been going in there recently.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

But that helps clean up all the.

[B]

It all adds up. They added up. It is the largest municipal fraud in American history. It turns out over the course of her time, she essentially stole $3,500 from every single man, woman and child in Dixon. So she was $55 million personally richer by the end of the process. However, who's really the criminal here? Because.

[C]

Good question.

[B]

They start at your get some give me that horse stuff in you.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Because she's just a horse girl who loves horses. The people start asking, wait a minute. We did have an auditing firm. This is not a complicated scheme. And so the city does sue the auditing firm and in fact wins a settlement. That's about the amount that they lost. Now, they did have less services for 20 years, but the auditing firm really did do no due diligence and kind of signed off on this. And they also did her personal taxes at the same time. And so we're making money from her in other ways. And so the city's whole. They were made all. They got $45 million from the auditing firm basically. And they got the rest from selling her horses. So was there really a crime? It all netted out in the end.

[D]

I do have to ask. Judge. I'm looking over the details. You're the judge, I'm the lawyer. No, I'm looking at my other judge. Please.

[C]

Co judge.

[B]

I'm a part time judge.

[D]

Keep quiet. Now I'm making my decision.

[B]

So I know what it's like. It's a tough job.

[D]

It's no harm, no foul. At the end of the day it seems.

[C]

Oh, you're saying because you got the

[D]

money back because everybody's fine.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, I think ultimately what are you going to remember from this whole story? Right. You're going to remember the 400 horse show first place prizes.

[D]

Yeah. Memorable. That horse looked great. This is a sexy horse.

[B]

I'm going to go with thank you.

[C]

I am going to say that this client of yours should be released from all charges. But that one horse, a little too handsome for Aiden's life. We're gonna say that horse is locked up. Next case. Yes.

[D]

Been a. I mean this is a bit of a long day. I was like, I hope next guy doesn't have like a finance case or something. I want like a dui.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Let's just get it. Let's slam a guilty on a dui.

[D]

Just slam. Just like.

[B]

That's the only fun part of this job.

[D]

I know. I know. I feel like. Anyway, sorry, sir.

[B]

Oh, sorry. You're next.

[D]

Come on. Next case, please.

[B]

Next case.

[C]

Look, bros, you wanted something small. This one is actually pretty small. For 10. $10 million. $10 million.

[D]

10 million pennies.

[C]

It's not even worth our time. I think we can let it go.

[D]

I mean, we could probably say not

[B]

someone in jail over $10 million.

[C]

Come on, that's ridiculous. It's 20, 26.

[D]

Put it on the list.

[B]

Leaderboard.

[C]

$10 million buys you a carton of eggs.

[D]

So far, I think Bernie's winning 65 billion.

[C]

Yeah. Okay, small twist. This is from 1711. It's $5 billion at least when you adjust it. But let's look at raw numbers here. It's $10 million. So 300 years ago, the South.

[B]

We're judging a case from 1711.

[D]

I gotta be honest. I don't know if I know the casework. I don't know if I've read.

[B]

Does the case law apply before?

[D]

What's the statute here?

[B]

Yeah, okay.

[C]

Anyway, let's find out. Gentlemen, you love the sea. The South Sea Company. All right, the time. It's 1711. It's the United Kingdom. And we decide, hey, we're gonna form a little. We're gonna form a little public private partnership with the UK government called the South Sea Company. What we're gonna do. I heard that there's a lot of money in South America. Okay, let's do a company that just does trade. So my company, we're gonna make a deal with government officials that our company, the South Sea Company, is gonna monopolize all of the trade between the UK and South America. Pretty genius on paper. Any problems?

[B]

Them.

[D]

I'm not seeing anything. No issues.

[C]

It's all been colonized by Spain and Portugal. The UK has no ability to do free trade in South America in 1711, 300 years ago.

[B]

Buying questions, though.

[D]

This is just.

[C]

And so if you set up a company that is trying to do trade. For example, if I said I want to own all free trade to China or something, and the government was like, can I invest?

[B]

You're doing, Doug.

[C]

Free trade in China. Oh, you're going to be able to invest in my client if you were 300 years old. Okay, so our company isn't doing that. Great. My client's company. Yeah, for nine years. All right. All we're doing is we're trying to make trade with South America and those Spanish fuckers. Excuse my language. Feel free.

[B]

Overrules.

[D]

Feel free to call them fuckers.

[C]

Yeah. And the Portuguese owning Brazil. We're not making good money. So what do we do? Okay. 1720, my client goes to the United Kingdom government and proposes that me, the South Sea Company, will own all of the United Kingdom's debt. And what we'll do is we'll go to every single bondholder who's currently holding debt for the United Kingdom of oven, and we'll have them swap it with shares of my company. Okay. And so the government loves this, right? Instead of having all these different people they had to lend money to, they just. It's just one company now and all the shares are in that company. That makes it super simple. We can argue for better interest rates. Right? That's fantastic. For me, the company, I love it. There's a lot of people who are

[B]

suddenly getting shares genuinely confused. The United Kingdom gave all of its debt to one company.

[C]

Yeah. They allowed me, the South Sea Company, to go to every single bondholder.

[B]

You're just a random company and.

[C]

Well, don't say random. I'm doing free trade with South America.

[B]

But even if you were doing that, why are you suddenly the folder of all.

[D]

Have you noticed, hold on. Have you noticed this? This is like every story about business and companies in the 17 and 1600s. It's like some guy got a ship and then started a company and now he. And now he owns all the assets of a nation. And I feel like I've actually heard that. And then, and then that guy also happened to kill millions of indigenous people. People like. That's. I've heard that story.

[B]

He's not on trial for that. He's not on trial for that.

[C]

Aiden, first off, my client did not defraud any indigenous people. Only poor people in the United Kingdom.

[B]

Okay, okay.

[D]

An innocent man.

[C]

Secondly, if you were to be a pessimist, you would argue that what my company did was go to a bunch of ministers in parliament and bribe them with company shares. So for them to pass a law to say that me, my company and my company, only with the. With no other competitors, gets to do this bond to share swap and no one else can. And because so many ministers are bribed with my shares, they're also incentivized for the shares to go way up. And now we can get a whole ass little profit going.

[B]

That's called building a team. And it's actually really good in business.

[C]

Exactly. We drop them a bunch of shares, they give me the rights. No other companies can come in, and then the stock starts going up, right? And so if you're in 1711, United Kingdom, whether you're poor or rich, which, you know, not the super hot opportunities for investing until now. In 1711, this happens over the course of one year. In January, my share price gets up to £100. In August, £1,000. This is like the tulip mania of the Netherlands. Everybody is getting in. You know who gets in? A little man named Isaac fucking Newton who puts in £200,000. That's millions of dollars in today's money. Who gets swept up in it? In August it's a thousand. Everything is up. Everybody believes this company is riding off of the incredible success of our trade with South America until, oops, confidence cracks. There's a little bit of realization that there's actually nothing here. There's no business other than trading stocks and getting them higher and higher, that Parliament investigates, realizes that there's massive corruption and we've bribed everybody. And even Isaac Newton quotes, he could calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people. Fortunes are wiped out across Britain. People are ruined and devastated over a company that did nothing. And in fact, by the end of that same year they passed the bubble act of 1720 which restricts basically any company from raising money through shareholders. You like, can't issue shares anymore unless you get a royal decree. And so for 100 years you can no longer run companies and raise capital unless you're doing like a partnership with the monarchy. Now I don't think that my long dead clients should really be held to account for fucking over Isaac Newton, who's a bit, a bit of a prick.

[B]

I'm sorry, are you telling me the Bubble act was passed after the crime?

[C]

Yes.

[B]

You can't be charged for a crime that didn't exist yet.

[C]

They did undo it once the Industrial revolution happened, but. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[D]

It just doesn't make any sense. Nothing's adding up.

[B]

Nothing's adding up. It's.

[D]

How can I be retroactively punished for something that I couldn't have possibly known

[B]

was wrong, how would you know that's wrong? I don't understand. It seems like everybody was on board. The government was on board.

[D]

If the government hasn't created a rule about me abusing the finances of poor people.

[C]

Well, to be clear, I should be

[D]

able to do it.

[B]

I can see this is the air bud defense. There's nothing in the rule book you

[C]

can't create other than bribing all the members of Parliament to make corrupt laws that give my company Special permission and obfuscate the books.

[D]

Wait, was bribery not chill back then?

[B]

We don't know. We can't possibly know.

[D]

It's like I haven't even read the laws about it. So what do you want me to fuck with?

[C]

When the library of Alexandria burned down, we lost that history.

[B]

Based on all I'm hearing, it sounds like the South Sea bubble. Not guilty.

[C]

Pirates are back, baby. So we are 250 years into this amazing American experiment and I'd say it's going okay. I give us like a C. There

[D]

is no perfect past, but there is also no exclusively negative past. Because humans are gonna human. That's what we do. I think the story of America is the struggle of people who have not been included in the promise of America to expand those principles to include more people.

[C]

What's gonna determine the next 250 years of America?

[D]

And how do we write a new

[C]

social contract that can give us the democracy we deserve?

[D]

Okay, so I'm just gonna be a jerk here because I'm a historian. So we have to have a prologue explaining, you know, we the people.

[C]

Okay.

[D]

You know, I do still remember from

[C]

Schoolhouse Rock, we the people. In order to perform a war, perfect union established justice. What is it? Insured domestic trans.

[D]

So you're talking about a foundational document. So I'm building a document that will protect American democracy.

[C]

That's this week on America. Actually

[A]

this week on Net Worth and chill. I'm joined by Tank Sinatra, the meme king. With over 15 million followers across, Tank's good news, influencers in the wild and his personal account, Tank is breaking down what the meme economy really is, how much a single sponsored post pay, why major brands are throwing serious money at jokes, and how meme culture think Preparation H starter packs. And a perfectly timed screenshot is actually reshaping how we think about money and value. Get ready for a conversation that'll change the way you scroll, make you rethink what going viral is really worth, and prove that sometimes the most serious money moves are wrapped in the silliest of jokes. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com YourRichBFF.

[D]

Elon Musk spent most of this week sitting in a courtroom litigating some of the most important moments in the early history of the AI revolution. He didn't do a great job. And the ways in which he didn't do a great job may come back to haunt Elon Musk in a pretty big way. This week on the Vergecast, we're talking about what's going on in Musk vs OpenAI and how it might affect the rest of the tech industry. Plus the most exciting laptop we've seen in a while. And maybe the most exciting game controller we've seen in a while. All that on the Vergecast? Wherever you get podcasts.

[B]

Order, order. Case number six.

[D]

Well, I'm in the courtroom with you. You look at me. What do you think? What's my dog?

[B]

I see my friend at this point.

[D]

Your dog.

[B]

Our. I'm bargaining.

[D]

What else?

[C]

Small framed beta.

[D]

Small frame beta. Well, what. But what else?

[C]

Guy.

[D]

A Canadian.

[C]

Right, right, right.

[D]

A Canadian.

[C]

Right, right, right.

[D]

But he's Canadian. And I'm here to defend a great Canadian company.

[C]

You don't even look it. Like, I wouldn't even.

[B]

Yeah, you totally.

[C]

You're looking great. You're looking great.

[B]

No, it's like. Don't even be embarrassed.

[D]

I'm not ashamed about it. I wouldn't be ashamed to be Canadian.

[B]

You don't look Canadian.

[C]

Nothing wrong with it. So go ahead. Go ahead.

[D]

Bri X a successful Canadian mining company from the 1990s that owned a plot of land in Borneo, Indonesia. They hire a Filipino geologist under the head geologist and the owner of the company that they had at the time to go check out this. This area in the jungle for gold.

[B]

Gold.

[D]

And this geologist comes back, his name, Michael de Guzman, and brings back a sample that shows there's a gigantic gold deposit in this plot of land that BRE x the mining company owns. Just like that. Heavy dab of gold bar. Judge. Sure upon.

[C]

Hey Judge, hand me that gold bar on your desk.

[D]

This small Canadian company that started in 1993. By 1997, they had claimed that this gold deposit could produce potentially over 200 million ounces of gold. Based on the samples that had been collected and for context, the entire world's annual gold production at the time was around 80 million ounces per year.

[B]

They struggit rich. That's awesome.

[D]

The stock price spikes to $500 USD per share in 2026 is money. And in total market cap of money at the time, $6 billion in Canadian money market cap. And upon this gigantic success of the mining company, a separate American mining company, Freeport McMorran, does an independent investigation to look at the gold deposits in Indonesia. This American mining company, they produce samples of their own and they bring them back and they find that the discrepancy in the amount of gold found is impossible. It is not possible that they could have produced any sample with this amount of gold in it. From what we can find, and. And this entire company's evaluation right now is built on fraudulent samples.

[B]

This is one promise.

[D]

And it turns out De Guzman, the geologist that was sent to find out if there was gold in this area, had just shed gold flakes into the sample and mixed it in to show an insane amount of gold in each like deposit of the earth that he brought back.

[C]

Well, he's the expert, right?

[B]

That's what you plant the gold to grow the gold.

[C]

I don't know how gold. I'm going to trust the geologist. Yeah, I judge. What do I know?

[D]

I would start. Judges by my clients clearly retract. And before this comes becomes fully public, Michael De Guzman, the geologist that put the gold like shavings or salted the gold into the samples, falls from a helicopter copter over the Borneo jungle in March of 1996 while flying to the mining.

[B]

Lie to your clients.

[D]

And he's clumsy.

[C]

Yeah, he's a goof.

[B]

He's a goober.

[C]

It's not illegal to be a goober at all.

[D]

The official conclusion is suicide. And his body is reportedly found days later in a state of decomposition in the jungle heat. With mixed. I found mixed reports, by the way. One report saying that his hands and feet had been removed. And then the other one happened when

[C]

you fall, you fall. And he fell into the helicopter rotors. That makes sense.

[D]

The other report claiming that he was identified via his fingerprints, but actually nobody is really sure if this is his body. Like, to this day, there is a conspiracy theory that he faked his death or was killed.

[B]

He's hanging out with the crypto queen.

[D]

But there is no solid evidence in any direction of this. And my clients should not be to blame for his death. His circumstantial death.

[B]

Death.

[C]

By the way, we. I forgot to establish the entire concept. This. Are we. Is your company on trial or is that geologist on trial?

[D]

No, the geologists were throwing him under the bus for sure.

[C]

Okay, okay.

[D]

He fucked. He fucked the company over.

[C]

He's guilty of being clumsy, David, and of being Canadian.

[D]

My. My client, the company owner, David Walsh, immediately fled to the Bahamas like any reasonable man would do.

[B]

Good man.

[C]

Wait, that's the. Hold on. That's the CEO of the company.

[D]

He was the CEO or the owner of the company.

[C]

Okay.

[D]

And he was never extradited and died of a brain aneurysm a year later.

[C]

Later.

[B]

Innocent.

[C]

Awfully coincidental.

[D]

The chief geologist of the company, John Felderhoff, one of my clients, was tried in Canada for insider trading because he sold tens of millions of the stock before the collapse of the company. But he was acquitted in 2007 after a long legal battle. So I ask you if one, if my, one of my clients was acquitted and one of them died after fleeing, can anybody be blamed here? Were they not just tricked by this man who created fake gold samples and created a gigantic multi billion dollar company in Canada?

[B]

Events happen. We can't be persecuting every event.

[C]

And also, can anybody prove

[B]

this is all in the past? We can't be looking back at things and building structures.

[C]

Okay, all right, hold on. If I find the hope diamond, all right, and some other geologist comes over and says you wouldn't find that. I did find the hope diamond. It's real. It's possible that he found the hope gold?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Are we sure? What if it wasn't real?

[B]

Patch of land where there was gold flakes in it and he was so clumsy that he fell out of the helicopter, chopped his hands off, fled the country and lied.

[C]

I appreciate living an awesome life. Handless life in the Bornean jungle.

[B]

And nobody believes him about the goal. But it was real the whole time.

[D]

I'm not 100%, I'm reading conflicting things about that. And it's like the circumstances of his dad drunk.

[B]

They're not important and I'm not on trial for that.

[D]

They're not important. And I think this is a simple case of we all make shit up sometimes. We all to get out of something to maybe overvalue our stock. And it's a mistake that anybody can make.

[B]

I'm trying to get out to lunch

[D]

whether we knew it or not.

[C]

But innocent. You can't be guilty for a little white lie.

[D]

It's been a long day. I'm hoping to close this courtroom out soon. Maybe keep this one snappy.

[B]

Oh, judges, this is open shut case. My guy is innocent. He's as innocent as they come. Let's start with his name. Gregor McGregor. Okay, a manly good name right there. Two first names, second thing, professional mime and rich.

[C]

Okay, how rich are we talking? Give us a number.

[D]

I like that.

[B]

So he's actually, at the time of this photograph, he's a younger man. He's from an upper middle class family, but he strives for great. He's not that rich at this time in Great Britain. He's Scottish, but he moves to Great Britain or moves to London. You could buy an officership in the British military. You can get to do this until 1871, I think. So his family wants him to have a good job. So they just buy him an officership. And he, a young man, is now in charge of parts of the British military. He wants fame and glory and success. Turns out he's not particularly suited for it. It's not really his calling yet. We're gonna find his calling later. So he is yelled at by a commanding officer for a blunder and is kicked out of the military. At which point he is despondent because he wants to be rich and famous. He's wasted his one opportunity. He's, he's not happy. So he decides, okay, here's what I'm going to do. I'm. I'm hearing of an uprising in Venezuela where Simon Bolivar is rebelling against the Spanish. And I'm going to go down there and prove that I'm a really good military guy. I'm going to make my fame and fortune, Right? So he goes to Venezuela. Now what's interesting is as he's traveling, traveling the. The squadron he was in in Britain becomes super famous. They do like a really incredible battle and they invent the phrase die hard because somebody who's about to die goes, we have to die hard, men. And that becomes famous throughout Britain. And his squadron is known as like the super badass guys. He arrives in Venezuela is like, I was part of that squadron. Even though this all happened after he was kicked out.

[D]

I gotta be honest here. You're just. Your client seems like a badass.

[B]

That's what everyone in Venezuela says. So he's given a really high up ranking in Simon Bolivar's revolutionary army. And surprisingly, this is the. I shouldn't say surprisingly not his lawyer. He does a good job. He does a pretty damn good job. He actually leads some successful battles. His only problem is after every successful battle, every city he takes or hill he takes, takes. He stops his troops and gets incredibly drunk and makes no progress until eventually people are so mad that he has to flee. This happens like three different times, Tommy.

[C]

He wins.

[B]

He wins battles.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

And then he works hard and plays hard.

[B]

Yes, yes, judge. He works hard and plays hard.

[D]

Interesting.

[B]

So anyway, after years of doing this, he's actually a celebrated Venezuelan war hero. He has medals and everything.

[D]

Understandable.

[B]

And. But they kind of get fed up with him and he has to leave. So before leaving, he does a bit of drinking with a guy who claims to be the king of the Mosquito Coast. Now this guy, he, he has some land in the area, but there really isn't. There's no territory here. There's no. He has a tribe in the area.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

And he gets drunk, but he doesn't have a way to enforce or own this land.

[C]

Mosquito coast is famously the east coast of modern Nicaragua.

[B]

That's right. Mosquito coast is real.

[D]

And no need to say things that people know,

[C]

particularly on a podcast that people listen to sometimes.

[B]

The Mosquito Coast. So he's drinking with this guy and he's like, you know what? If I give you some of my rum and some of my jewels, will you give me land on the Mosquito Coast? And the guy who has no real claim to it anyway goes, yeah, of course.

[C]

Makes sense.

[B]

So he gives him a dude to thousands of acres of land in the Mosquito Coast.

[D]

Yeah, of course. You have the deed to the Mosquito Coast. You give it to your friend.

[B]

So, Simon Bolivar.

[C]

Sorry.

[B]

So. So Gregor MacGregor has kind of been scammed himself, but he owns this land in paper.

[D]

So your client is a victim.

[B]

He's a victim.

[C]

Victim.

[B]

He's a victim. So he goes back also, my client loves LARPing, which is not a crime. He loves the idea of, like, making up. He's like a JRR Tolkien of his time. He likes writing fancy ideas and drawing ideas. He goes back to London and he,

[C]

I'm sorry, it's not larp. He's in the Mosquito Coast. This is just real. Orcs in the Lord of the Ring are not larping. They just are in it.

[B]

And I love that you said that this particular photo is fake. And when he gets back to London, he commissions a fake guidebook of a fake country that he's created in the Mosquito coast called Poyay Poirier. And so he walks around claiming he is the cazique of Poirier. What does that sound like to you? Like a prince or a king?

[D]

A cazique?

[C]

Yeah, some sort of mosquito queen.

[B]

That's what he wants you to think, because it's a fake word that he has made up. He's actually made up a bunch of language of Poirier. He's made of a banking system. He's made up a town that has 20,000 fake people and has a opera hall and a main street.

[D]

He also, if Poirier is made up, where did my grandma used to summer?

[B]

That's what people in London are asking themselves, because he also says it's filled with many exhausted Londoners who went out to enjoy the great weather. And he also tells everybody that the natives there are unique in that they love the British. The natives are so grateful and happy. For the British, it's a true blessed paradise where they're thankful and so everybody in London is like, this place sounds bomb as bomb.com, as they used to say back then in the 1800s. And because he's such a good larper, he commissions, he writes this whole thing himself, this entire fake guidebook to the territory that has like flora and fauna all made up, natives and land and maps. He makes this whole thing up and he puts it under a fake name called Thomas Strangeways. And this goes kind of viral in 1800s London. So everybody wants to either move there or invest there. And so he.

[C]

I just want. Could you go back? Yeah. One. So in this pamphlet, which is made up to promote his made up country.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

They're still calling it the Mosquito Shore. Why wouldn't you call it like calling it Virustown is not good marketing. And if he's lying about everything anyways, call it a different fucking name.

[B]

It's extra funny because there's a page in this guidebook where they specify, specify how there's zero mosquitoes, zero diseases. Zero diseases.

[C]

Oh, in the book there's saying there's no mosquitoes.

[B]

There is plenty of mosquitoes, but in

[D]

the book there's zero mosquitoes.

[B]

Paradise. It is like a spa. It is so beautiful. He also creates a fake currency. So there's two parts of this. One is at this time, largely because of events like the South Sea bubble. Honestly, people are in Great Britain really tired of investing in British government bonds.

[C]

What year is this again?

[B]

This is the mid-1800s. I don't know the fact.

[C]

So that would have been after the ramifications of my.

[B]

It's probably after. But it's British government bonds at the time only offer like 2, 3%. So everyone's like, I need a better return than that.

[D]

Of course.

[B]

What's poppin? South America. That's what everyone's hearing about South America is like blowing up and Poirier is offering like 15% return on its bond. 15%, and it's a paradise that it's doing well, they say the ground is so fertile, crops grow twice as fast. So everybody starts investing in poi bonds.

[D]

Of course.

[B]

Now if this was just the scam, that would be, I think, no harm, no foul. Okay, what's. What's the problem with who doesn't want

[D]

to bond from the bank of Poya?

[B]

Yeah, it's cool on its own. The problem is people want to move there. And Gregor McGregor does nothing to dissuade the them of this idea and he actually encourages it and in fact says, you know what, when you get there, you're Going to need Poi a dollars. So give me all your London money, I'll convert it to Poya dollars and then when you arrive, you'll be able to do that.

[C]

And this is one of the worst ones. He's like sending people across the world to the Mosquito Coast. Okay, Excuse me, people, try to stay objective here.

[B]

Yeah, stay objective here. You're sounding really.

[C]

No, you're right.

[B]

Like a class trader. So people quit their jobs. Like some guy quits his job as a cobbler to become the official royal cobbler of Poya. Converts all of his life savings into Poi a dollars and they all get on a boat, hundreds of people, and they sail. And when they arrive, they find a lot of mosquitoes and empty land and natives that hate them and death and disease and decay. And the second they land, the ship captain realizes they've been had. He nopes the hell out of there instantly, leaving everyone stranded. Of the hundreds of people that were sent, 50 make it back alive. Everyone else gets hit with disease and dies. And one person kills themselves because they've been had and they lost all their savings. Let's not go into the details because I think it paints the wrong image of my client, Gregor McGregor, who is really a good man, because I feel

[D]

like maybe he did do something wrong here. So maybe dig that. Dig yourself out of this hole.

[B]

Okay, so they get back to London and they're complaining. He gave them a free trip, basically. But they saw the world and they get back and they complain. And it becomes a big viral sensation in London. People have all been scammed. Nobody's getting interest paid on their bonds. Everyone that went is newspapers. So my man, Gregor McGregor realizes they don't want me here. Okay, you don't want my talents, fine. So he moves to France where he immediately starts selling Poirier bonds and running the same scam.

[C]

And to be fair to him, now he's not lying. There's people living there.

[B]

There's a settlement of some, a few people. He's in France. He runs the exact same scam twice. It's slightly less successful because a few people have heard and there's a little bit of suspicion. Plus the South America thing is fading. And eventually they arrest him and make this cartoon showing him as the so called cazique of Poirier. And being arrested, by the way, he was like, again, every step of the way, he's writing thousands of pages of fan fiction. He was like giving people green crosses that represent honor. And he was like, you're in the order of The Green Cross he really created. He would have been a great writer. At which point he flees France, goes back to London, and it has now been so long since the first scam that few people remember it and nobody remembers his face. So he does the same thing.

[D]

No way, dude.

[C]

The Return of the King.

[B]

He does it a third time.

[D]

That is crazy.

[B]

Markedly less successful, but still enough to live off of. When they finally do catch him, he goes to Scotland, does it a fourth time to buy a house and pay off his debts. He sells bonds a fourth time, at which point it's all been burnt. Everyone is. Has figured out his scam. He runs out of money. His wife dies, and he says, you know what? I'm going back to Venezuela. He goes back to Venezuela.

[D]

How old is he at this point?

[B]

At this point, he's an old man. He's like in his 60s. He goes back to Venezuela and he says, hey, I was a war hero here. And a few people kind of remember him.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

And so they go, he was. And they give him a full pension, military honors, and he dies a hero. Dies a hero. They give him like a parade, like no one else is around that really remembers the battles. So he kind of pulled off scam after scam his whole life and ended up.

[D]

Why am I the most mad about this one? It's like. I think it's just something about being like. You just live in an era where you can truly quintuple down, dude.

[B]

No one can call you out. Nobody has photographs, nobody has masks because you just.

[D]

Like, you could. You can't do this anymore. Not in the same way. It has to be different now. But this was just the time where, like, nobody had the technology to quickly communicate about scams or people or photos. So you. You could just. You could keep running that shit. That's. That's so funny.

[B]

Yeah. And so is it really a crime to do something? You're rewarded and double down. That's just human nature. We do what works and see that

[D]

your client, I. I have to reward him for his resilience, for one.

[C]

And credit to him, mo. Like, the vast majority of people who went to Poirier have been there forever.

[B]

Oh, dude, he's guilty, bro.

[C]

He's fucking. This guy's an utter piece of garbage.

[D]

Close this out. I have a CVS theft case to get to.

[B]

Case number eight, Theranos.

[C]

This one's a little interesting because my client, alive, still and currently in jail, serving jail time, and there's an argument just maybe should be let out. She's certainly making that argument. Okay, now there are no, I'm gonna assume most of the people listening have heard of this. It's one of the most infamous cases of fraud in the entire tech industry. You seem like you're about to slam the gavel.

[D]

No, I'm just prepared.

[C]

I was just prepared.

[B]

Innocent.

[C]

Let me give you a quick overview. Elizabeth Holmes is the Steve Jobs esque founder. Now all of the great stories that you hear about the tech industry usually involve an eccentric leader who has a vision and is able to burst through just like Steve Jobs. She, Elizabeth Holmes recognizes this. As a young Stanford student, she realizes I can tell an incredible story. The story of how with a single drop of blood I could have hundreds of different tests that tell you about your health from just a drop. It's me, a powerful woman fighting against the sort of, you know, genuinely misogynistic tech sphere. And finally we have like a powerful leader. She starts talking like Steve Jobs, she starts wearing black turtlene and as a 19 year old drops out of Stanford and says I have invented this technology that can take a drop of blood and get hundreds of tests.

[D]

Drops out of Stanford and drops her voice a few octaves.

[B]

I love that.

[C]

Literally starts using a fake lowered voice to sound like Steve Jobs. And from the beginning in 2003 is telling people, I, Elizabeth Holmes, have invented a machine that can do hundreds of tests off a single drop of blood. And just to be clear, at no point during the next 15 years of this scam did she ever have technology that could do that. But what she did have is storytelling, right? A powerful story. And that story is that I have this thing that she will never show to anybody. Over the next 10, 15 years she builds more investors who start to buy into this story and it spirals like we've heard many times. You get in investors, you get them excited, you tell them, well, it's trade secrets. I can't show you exactly what it is, but you get, give them obfuscated results and sort of like really, really sketchy, like you know, you're seeing through a window in a laboratory. There is an incredible book called Bad Blood by John Carreyrou who's one of the key figures and exposing this whole thing that I highly, highly, highly recommend reading if you just want like some of the best drama. This goes on for a number of years. At no point they have a product. They continue to bring in investors, but the investors get more high end profile. So they never get like real scientists or people who can verify anything. They get people like Like Rupert Murdoch, the Walton family, and then big, big, like, elder statesmen, Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, James Mattis. These are people who were like, what

[B]

a great blunt rotation.

[C]

You know, like, basically led US Foreign policy like George Schultz was under Reagan, I believe. And so they keep bringing this credibility. They build up this investor pool that's just insane, right? That they can use to say, look at how amazing our product is. And then you just kind of change, show fake results about what's going on. Literally all faked. And then at the same time, builds an incredibly powerful legal team that threatens intense legal action against anyone who tries to speak up against anything. Any former employee starts talking to anyone in any way, they're getting, like, tons of lawsuits at them and threats from big firms that are credibly going to destroy these people's lives.

[B]

That's called being a girl boss.

[C]

First of all, she indeed was a girl boss. Yeah. Yes.

[B]

And there's nothing wrong with that.

[D]

Why can't women do what Nintendo does all the time?

[B]

These are different.

[C]

These are the same.

[B]

I want to be clear, with a CEO getting out there and making it

[C]

happen had fake data and fake labs and were selling this story for 15 years. So from 2003 up to 2018, it continues to grow. They continue to raise more investor money.

[D]

Finally.

[C]

Finally, though, after whatever it's like a decade, I forget the exact year, they start to get actual clients. They get Safeway and Walgreens, both major pharmacy providers who. The idea is in their stores. They're gonna have a Theranos system, the Edison, where you can get the drop of blood and you get all the tests. So they start finally getting a real customer. And the problem is that since the machines don't work, they have to, like, mail the blood samples to Theranos lab. But then Theranos lab doesn't have working machines, so they have Siemens machines in their labs that do the testing.

[B]

Semen machines.

[C]

They have semen machines. You mix the blood and the semen machine together. Now, semens.

[B]

What's the crime with that?

[C]

The German. Well, so the crime is if you tell everyone and invest money and get Walgreens and Safeway to give you massive.

[B]

Henry King would not invest in something bad.

[C]

Ooh.

[B]

First of all. Ooh.

[D]

Ooh.

[B]

Okay.

[D]

God doesn't let you live to 100 if you do live in.

[B]

Right.

[C]

It's. It's a wild story where basically, for the last several years, they.

[D]

They.

[C]

What really gets bad is at first, it's just invest. Scamming investors for a long Period. But then there is this long period where they get Walgreens and Safeway to put these into their, into their pharmacies. Right, right. And the blood results, the machines they have aren't very good. And they are able to do a couple of lab results badly. And the rest of them, they have the Siemens machines do, but say, oh yeah, we're doing all of this. So it's not just all the lying. It's. They genuinely have bad machines that don't give good results and sent those to real patients in America and said, this is your health. And it was wrong. And the nurses were trying to speak to up threatened all over the place. Former employees were threatened with legal stuff. Finally, a journalist, John Carreyrou, amongst other, is talking to some people. It's like heroic story, which we won't get into. But finally someone has the conviction to go through and make this public and to be a whistleblower. The story drops by the Wall Street Journal and that just blows the whole thing open. The Wall Street Journal was threatened immensely that they were going to basically try to destroy the Wall Street Journal. And they had to debate whether they were even going to post the story. It was that intense with legal threats.

[D]

Doug, I'm having a hard time here because it seems like your client set an ambitious goal that needed to be fulfilled in order to create a great product. And sometimes that vision needs to come first. Much like when Steve Jobs told Steve Wozniak that the Macintosh could only be this big and then he needed to fit all the parts. No different. I don't even know why you're, why you're giving this case to us.

[B]

Elon Musk every year tells engineers, we're going to have self driving by the end of the year. And that's a goal. It'll necessarily hit it, but it's a goal.

[D]

We're going to have driving machines that take up. We're going to prick your blood and do all of the tests you could ever ask for. And did it do that? No, but it's. It's a vision.

[B]

Is that even her fault? It feels like it's the employee's fault for not following through on the CEO's mission.

[D]

Thank you.

[B]

They should be on trial and they'd be guilty.

[C]

If I was a lawyer, I would

[B]

say you are a lawyer and a judge.

[C]

If I was in a courtroom, you are in a courtroom, I would say that. The difference is that she, from day one said, I have this technology. It does work, and sold off of that. And that's different than Elon saying, we will have this stuff in a couple years. We don't have it yet.

[D]

I don't see a difference.

[B]

I don't see a difference either. I appreciate your point, but your client's innocent.

[C]

Now, Elizabeth Holmes, once the Wall Street Journal article drops, everything kind of burst open. Suddenly, the regulators, who had basically just been, like, duped and led astray and lied to and obfuscated, finally, with this public pressure, were able to get in there. They investigate the labs. They're like, this has horrible standards. This is not doing what you said you're gonna do. This does not follow our protocols. The company starts to collapse. She famously does this presentation at a medical conference to try to redeem herself and says, this is what it is. See, I'm finally revealing it for the first time. It doesn't do anything. And she is eventually convicted in 2022 of an enormous amount of investor fraud, as well as her co conspirator, Sonny. And it's a whole big disaster. This is one of the big, famous just disasters of the tech industry of the last 15 years. And it is truly and genuinely just un. Unadulterated fraud and embezzlement. It's ridiculous.

[D]

So it seems a little strange to me because we've been through a crazy day in this courtroom.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Honestly.

[D]

And oddly enough, most of the clients I've noticed that have come through today have already been dead. They're already dead. Which is unorthodox, to say the least.

[B]

It is unorthodox. It's not a normal day. Or the courtroom.

[C]

Finally, we are a living specimen.

[D]

We come to a case where the woman is currently alive in prison, relatively young, hasn't been in prison that long. How long was she sentenced for?

[C]

So she was sentenced to 11 years and 3 months.

[B]

Here's the deal, judge.

[D]

A long time.

[B]

It's just a lot more paperwork if we say guilty.

[C]

Well, here's the thing.

[B]

Like, a lot more.

[C]

I want to make a pitch to you. This is a woman who knowingly, directly defrauded investors, harmed patients, put on this lie for 15 years. However, go to her first tweet in February 18, 2026. She said, you may be confusing in response to Jason Calcanis, for some reason, who she's arguing with, the host of All In. You may be confusing me with tech entrepreneurs who cash out and walk away wealthy. I did. I never sold a share, despite all the opportunities to do so. Never enriched myself. I gave everything I had to our company, to seeing our mission through down to the last Second, it lived. What I have to give is blood, sweat and tears from the torment of my fight over the last 10 years and the indomitable fire in me. To realize our vision for affordable, accessible healthcare. To realize change. I want to serve our country. Pain stokes a fire that cannot be extinguished. As I've endured the violence of this journey. I've studied relentlessly over the past eight years. I've studied and studied. Profound learnings from my failure failures. And she goes on. You can keep scrolling down to say how she now wants to use AI and innovation to help change big healthcare. For 15 years I worked 20 hour days, seven days a week. I think she would be dead. She does have children also. I want to serve our country. I want to apply the lessons learned burned into me. I want to help us lead as innovators in healthcare. I want to ensure the dream of affordable, accessible healthcare becomes true in a world of AI for all Americans. And I just want you to know.

[B]

She said AI.

[C]

She said ii.

[B]

I want to invest. I want to invest. She's not guilty. Get her out. Put a ticker up and get part of my savings into it.

[D]

Is this not an insane thing to say when you're literally in prison?

[C]

You're in prison. Nothing you did provided a product.

[B]

Hi, Aiden. We're missing a financial opportunity here.

[D]

Allbirds.

[B]

AI is worth 500 million. I'm gonna invest in Theranos. AI right now. Not guilty. Order. Order. Our final case of the evening. It's been a long day.

[C]

Famously usually go through about 10 cases

[B]

a day in the courtroom and they're all very high profile and long dead. Lawyers, final case.

[D]

Lawyers, judges, people and women of the court.

[B]

People and women.

[D]

That sounds worse coming out than I had my attitude. Overruled.

[B]

You're fine. You're fine. Not guilty.

[D]

First question.

[C]

Is our client alive?

[D]

Hold on. My client is alive.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

All right.

[D]

And the other.

[B]

No, no.

[C]

Is it dad?

[D]

The other.

[C]

Is it a call?

[D]

Has fled. Okay.

[B]

Nothing wrong with fleeing.

[D]

He's fled. And I come to you with another. Our last story of the day, a company called Wirecard. A German success story. Wirecard was an online payment processor. You can think of them. Something similar to Stripe, you know, something that lets businesses interact with credit card payments online later doing things to like help support mobile payments kind of financial infrastructure on the Internet. And they got their start helping provide these payment service to gambling and adult media sites, because those are spaces online where like equivalent companies often don't want to get involved. So they saw a market opportunity there and then they leveraged that into becoming one of the tech all stars of the 2000s, especially for Germany, a company that was looking to compete with the US's tech success.

[B]

Right.

[D]

And much like Elizabeth Holmes, Marcus Braun, the CEO becomes this powerful tech figure in the media, often copying the Steve Jobs aesthetic as well, literally rocking the turnover. I think Steve Jobs is nasty for

[B]

just making so many copycats.

[C]

Let's get him in here.

[B]

Let's get him in here. Fits our crime.

[C]

We're gonna.

[D]

He's also dead.

[B]

We mostly persecute dead people. And Steve Jobs is way more guilty than Marcus Braun.

[C]

Up courtroom. What is wrong with us?

[D]

And, and what you will find extraordinary about this company that made its way through the 2000s, including the 2008 financial crisis and the 2010s, is that they managed to maintain record profit the whole way through.

[C]

That's what I'm talking about.

[B]

That's what I'm talking.

[C]

I like winners.

[B]

Benchmarks flowing in.

[D]

Eventually, toward the end of the 2010s, they find their self on the DAX, which is the. Think of it like the Dow equivalent for Germany on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. They are one of the 40 major German Blue chip stocks. And it's made it. This is kind of the envisionment of tech success in Germany.

[B]

What percentage of Nike would you say Wirecard was?

[D]

And probably it was probably five Nikes.

[B]

Five Nikes.

[D]

I made that up one Airport. But I think my client would, would like that I make things up on his behalf, especially financial. And through this whole time period there's increased scrutiny of Marcus Braun, the CEO guy who seems to have a lot of buzzwords and not a lot of substance when it comes to the company's success. But they do manage to keep adding product like online products to their repertoire and somehow expanding the business. And a huge part of their growth in profit is as they decide to leave Germany and operate in other countries. They cannot necessarily get the legal licensing to be able to operate their services in these places. So what is the thing that they do? They partner with other companies abroad and then form like a relationship or license with them, like provide a similar sort of service. You brand under us, you pay us a kickback. And a massive amount of profit from this licensing strategy starts to pour in. They're creating foreign headquarters of their company in places like the Philippines, Dubai, Hell yeah. And Singapore. And eventually there is enough raised suspicion that they are audited for I believe a second time by a company called kpmg. And they start digging around and they see this report of the amount of money that is coming through from the Philippines branch specifically. And apparently there's $2 billion in accounts in the Philippines. Love that. And they go to check on the Philippines headquarters of the company. They go on over there. Excuse me, I believe it's the FT initially investigates to go check out the Filipino headquarters of the company. What do they find? A family's home instead of an office.

[B]

Yeah, work is family for them. It's like this office is a family.

[C]

They meant it callous Western values.

[D]

I believe the FT runs it over article about this and Wirecard does not like this. This doesn't make any sense. The FT is bashing us and then KPMG coming in for a second audit decides to pursue or look into the banks that hold all this money that is, that exists on the books of Wirecard. Let's check these accounts out. Let's look at the representatives at the bank that are listed. We'll just. Well they initially come in just thinking like we just want to make sure that this, these assets that they're reporting are liquid in the Philippines. Like how quickly can they access these things to make sure that they're accounting all checks out.

[B]

Okay.

[D]

What they didn't think they would find is that not only did the are these assets not liquid, they don't exist at all. They actually don't have any accounts. And the people at the bank they reported to work with have no idea that Wirecard even is a company at all. And after. And if you take is entirely made up and if you take away the money from these foreign branches of these foreign branches of Wirecard, the company isn't remotely profitable. It's not even close to profitable. And then this story breaks and the company crumbles and Marcus the CEO is arrested. But one other weird crazy thing on this is his right hand man, I think the COO Jan Marsalek is apparently flees upon realizing that the house of carbs is finally crumbling underneath them. And this guy goes and flees to Russia. Turns out he had ties to Russian intelligence and mercenary groups since 2010, often traveling with Russian mercenary groups to places like Syria to like go shoot guns and have a good time.

[B]

Not a crime to have friends and

[C]

hang out with the boys. Yeah. To be safe.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

And to this day my client who's innocent is still hiding in Russia. Interpol seeking him and has continued to live there since 2020. And that's where the story kind of ends. Marcus ended up going to jail, I believe, and I still claim that he's innocent of course. And Jan is on the run from Interpol.

[C]

I hope Jan and the crypto queen had a happy ending together. Where did the money come from? They were just saying that they were making the money.

[D]

Yeah, so they. They were the. What ended up. Initially, from what I can tell, this company did have legitimate origins. And as it scaled and the hype grew, they expanded the company in ways that they could not sustain or actually pay for. But they managed to continue raising money through the hype of the stock. Where the fraud comes in is as the company got bigger and bigger, they claimed these larger and larger sources of revenue from primarily these licensing deals in foreign countries, albeit not just that, but the bulk of these ventures were extremely profitable, like disproportionately profitable. And it was what made the company look profitable at all. But it was just made up money. And if you took it out of the equation, once it was discovered that, oh, this money doesn't exist, these relationships with these banks don't exist, there's no customers fueling this business at all, then the company just collapsed.

[B]

I'd say having to live in Russia is punishment enough.

[D]

Well, case closed.

[C]

Guys, I have to admit something. I was a lawyer the whole time. I'm not a judge.

[B]

Me too.

[D]

If I'm to confess to you guys, I actually do know how to put a tie on, and I was just joking.

[C]

No, you were not. No, you were not.

[B]

That's why I made your clients innocent. I was your. Your goofy hair in the tie.

[C]

Ladies and gentlemen, this was fun. Let us know who you think is the most awful scammer of all time. And did we get anything wrong? And next week, join us. We will be putting Aiden's dead grandparents on trial.

[D]

If you want an extra 60 minutes of the show, you could go to patreon.com lemonadesand where we will be doing a more normal.

[B]

That's the real scam.

[D]

That's normal. The real scam is subscribing to Patreon on iOS. Don't do it.

[B]

Don't do it.

[D]

Go on desktop, use Android, do something else.

[C]

Not subscribe to Atriox Twitch channel. He doesn't. Thank you. When you subscribe, he didn't say anything. I should be treated like royalty over there.

[B]

Part of the legal system. Let's not throw each other under the bus.

[D]

We'll see you guys next week.

[B]

Thanks for watching Case Closed.