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- [00:01]
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I'm Danny Gold, the host of Criminal Lives, a brand new true crime series available exclusively on Wondery. Criminal Lives is a series about everyday people who became criminal masterminds as told by the actual criminals themselves. It's a show about ambition, greed and what some people are willing to risk to get to the top. I'm about to play you a clip from the first episode of Criminal Lives where we'll meet Greg Valentino, the roid king who went from scrawny kid to bodybuilding legend and then stumbled into the dangerous world of underground steroids. Wondery plus subscribers can listen to the entire series right now, exclusively and ad free.
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Wonder.
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It'S the fall of 1995, Yorktown Heights, New York. Inside a hardcore, no frills gym. Greg Valentino is just finishing a set of 150 pound dumbbell curls. He's admiring his massive biceps when his phone rings. It's his friend Paul.
- [01:10]
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Paul calls me and he tells me we need to talk and we need to talk in person. Come right now, Come down to the city because you know you can't talk about this shit on the phone.
- [01:20]
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Greg and Paul are partners in a growing black market business. They sell anabolic steroids to fellow gym rats looking to get jacked. Business has been good, but now there's trouble. And when Greg gets to Paul's apartment, he finds out just how much trouble they're in.
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The whole house has been ransacked. Everything's gone. It looked like a robbery. And he said to me, bro, it's all gone. I said everything? As in everything? Yes, bro, everything. And you know what that means now, right? That means that we're going to have to go talk to Remo.
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Remo is their supplier and not a guy you want to cross.
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He's like a badass gangster. I mean a bad, bad, bad gangster. He was the kind of guy who would kill you at the blink of an eye.
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Remo had fronted Greg and Paul tens of thousands of dollars worth of high grade steroids. And those steroids had been stolen. Now Greg and Paul are on the hook.
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We're gonna have to explain to him that all that stuff he fronted us is gone. And you know he's gonna get psycho on us.
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Remo tells them to meet him at a parking lot in midtown Manhattan. Greg and Paul get there first and while they wait, they practice what they're gonna say. And then a white Lincoln Town Car with blacked out windows pulls up. Remo rolls down the window and tells them to get in the back.
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We get in. And we start telling him what happened. And he starts punching the dashboard. Motherfucker, Motherfucker. Why didn't you move it? Are you that stupid? That means you're gonna have to fucking pay for that. And he fucking whips out a gun and he points it right at Paul's head, and he says, I should just fucking kill you right now. And he goes, we gotta figure this out. He puts the gun back, and he just starts driving.
- [03:10]
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It's after midnight, and the roads are nearly empty. Remo sits behind the wheel, muttering and cursing to him.
- [03:17]
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I'm looking at Paul, Paul's looking at me, and he's like, fuck, man, I knew this shit was gonna be like this. And I'm just sitting there going, please, God. Please, God. Please, God, just get us out of this. Just get us out of this.
- [03:28]
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Remo drives north over Putnam Bridge and into the Bronx. They head along the east river next to the old railroad tracks. Remo pulls into a deserted parking lot, turns off the ignition and looks over his shoulder, and he goes, get out.
- [03:43]
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Of the fucking car. And he goes, get on your fucking knees, both of you. Paul's telling him, come on. Come on, Rema, listen, we can figure this out. We'll fix it. We'll fix it. I'll just smack. And he hits Paul with the gun, with the butt of the gun. Boom, boom. And he starts hitting him with him. Paul's bleeding, and he's got the gun right to Paul's head, and he's holding it there. And he kept poking him with the barrel. And you could tell he's thinking, should I just pull the trigger? And all I could hear was my heart beating in my ears. And all of a sudden, bam. Throws like, two, three shots right in the dirt. And then he quickly pivots around and he puts the gun to my head. Normally, you figure there's going to be this, like, cold steel feeling, but it wasn't cold. It was warm. I could feel the heat. And I'm thinking to myself, at any second, he can just pull that trigger. And now it's me. My name is Greg Valentino, and I was probably the biggest steroid dealer on the east coast back in the 90s. Everybody came to me.
- [05:02]
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Listen to Criminal Minds exclusively on Wondery. You can join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple podcasts, or Spotify.