Lady Mafia | 5. Losing at the Wynn

Summary

Summary of "The Binge Crimes: Lady Mafia | Episode 5: Losing at the Wynn"

The Binge Crimes delves deep into the intricate web of deception spun by Sara King, a figure dubbed the "Female Bernie Madoff" and the "Anna Delvey of the OC." Episode five, titled "Losing at the Wynn," unravels Sara's meteoric rise and dramatic fall, highlighting her fraudulent activities, personal struggles, and the eventual unraveling of her schemes. Hosted by veteran reporter Michele McPhee and produced by Sony Music Entertainment, this episode offers a riveting exploration of Sara's descent into fraud and addiction.

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1. The Facade of Success

Sara King presents herself as a successful loan shark operating in Orange County, navigating the shady realms of fast money and questionable deals. To investors like George Polos, Sara appears transparent and trustworthy on the surface. However, Michele McPhee uncovers that Sara's narratives often shift, making it challenging to discern her true intentions.

Notable Quote:

• George Polos [01:17]: "I know from talking with her all these months that her story has a tendency to change. It's tough to figure out what her motive was."

2. George Polos's Growing Doubts

George Polos, an investor in Sara's hard money lending company, begins to suspect fraudulent activities. Despite his reservations, he remains hopeful of recovering his $125,000 investment. His visit to Sara's Fashion Island office becomes a pivotal moment, witnessing Sara's Rolls Royce being repossessed—a stark irony given her business of taking luxury cars as collateral.

Notable Quotes:

• Sara King [02:22]: "So I'm sitting in her office one day."
• George Polos [03:00]: "You could see the scared look in her eye, like, what the fuck? It's all coming down."

3. The Marriage to Cameron and Its Implications

Amid financial turmoil, Sara marries Cameron in a rushed courthouse ceremony, hiding the union from her parents who disapprove of Cameron. This secret marriage adds another layer of complexity to Sara's already precarious situation, indicating potential personal instability contributing to her fraudulent activities.

Notable Quotes:

• Laurent Reese [12:51]: "We went to the Orange County, just the little courthouse, and we got married right then and there."
• George Polos [13:31]: "But here's what's weird. Sara is tight with her parents, and she didn't even tell them that she was getting married."

4. The Descent into Las Vegas Gambling

With mounting debts and the inability to repay investors, Sara relocates to Las Vegas, seeking solace and a potential way to recover her losses through gambling. Her time at the Wynn casino is marked by excessive gambling, substance abuse, and reliance on Adderall, highlighting her spiraling addiction and poor financial management.

Notable Quotes:

• George Polos [14:12]: "Sara was already in the throes of addiction."
• Sara King [24:21]: "Every time I would drink, I would take a pill... I just kept taking it."

5. Lingering Deceptions and False Loans

Sara's business model involves offering investors substantial returns, often without legitimate collateral. Laurent Reese, a sophisticated investor from Monaco, becomes a significant victim, having invested approximately $200,000. Sara's elaborate fabrications, including falsified collateral like luxury watches and sports contracts, deceive investors into believing in the legitimacy of her operations.

Notable Quotes:

• Laurent Reese [06:10]: "He had access to a whole new level of wealth."
• George Polos [09:05]: "Sara was really loaning money to anyone at this point. She was just taking investments."

6. The Unraveling of the Fraud

As Sara's fraudulent activities intensify, discrepancies in financial statements come to light. Laurent Reese, upon closer scrutiny by his lawyer Ronald Richards, discovers manipulated bank statements, revealing the extent of Sara's deceit. The realization that Sara's loans were fabricated leads to a significant legal confrontation.

Notable Quotes:

• George Polos [36:39]: "Everything crumbled when my friend and I realized that the bank logo of one of the statements she sent was missing."
• Jason Kelly [37:59]: "That wasn't sophisticated fraud. That was unsophisticated fraud."

7. Legal Battles and Personal Fallout

Laurent files a lawsuit against Sara, uncovering 97 fraudulent loans. Sara's attempts to mitigate the situation by doubling down on gambling fail, leading to further financial losses. Cameron, originally unaware of the full extent of Sara's deceit, distances himself, exacerbating the legal and personal fallout. The episode highlights the emotional and financial devastation experienced by those deceived by Sara.

Notable Quotes:

• George Polos [41:15]: "Cameron chose to prove himself to his childhood friend and chose to not stand by his wife."
• Laurent Reese [34:24]: "I used the money to try and win back other money."

8. Conclusion: The Freefall and Reflections

Sara King's story is a cautionary tale of ambition, deception, and addiction. Her inability to manage finances, coupled with substance abuse, led to the collapse of her fraudulent empire. The episode underscores the importance of due diligence for investors and the devastating impacts of financial fraud on personal and professional relationships.

Notable Quote:

• George Polos [30:07]: "I think she was so focused on the feeling when she won, she didn't remember how much she spent to get there."

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Key Takeaways:

• Deceptive Practices: Sara King utilized fabricated collateral and false promises to lure investors, demonstrating how complex and convincing financial frauds can be.

• Addiction's Role: Sara's reliance on Adderall and alcohol played a significant role in her deteriorating judgment and financial mismanagement.

• Investor Caution: The episode highlights the necessity for investors to perform thorough due diligence and remain vigilant against red flags in investment opportunities.

• Personal Consequences: Beyond financial loss, the betrayal and deception led to strained relationships and legal battles, emphasizing the multifaceted impact of fraud.

The Binge Crimes: Lady Mafia offers a gripping narrative that not only exposes Sara King's fraudulent activities but also serves as a broader commentary on the vulnerabilities within investment schemes and the personal toll of deceit.

Transcript

[Michelle McPhee]

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[George Polos]

To all episodes of Lady Mafia ad free right now by subscribing to the binge. Visit the Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page or visit getthebinge.com to get access Wherever you listen the binge feed your true crime obsession. The Binge on the surface, Sarah seems very open. But I know from talking with her all these months that her story stories have a tendency to change. It's tough to figure out what her motive was. Did she intentionally con investors? Or did she think she was running a legit business? Or maybe she started out thinking she would run things the right way but just kept fucking up. And instead of coming clean, Sarah got deeper into denial as she was getting deeper in the hole.

[Sara King]

So I'm sitting in her office one day.

[George Polos]

This is George Polos, one of her company's investors. You remember him from the last episode. At this point, George had a feeling that her hard money lending company was bullshit. But he was still hoping to get his 125k back. So he stuck close to Sara. One day he was visiting Sara's office in Fashion Island.

[Sara King]

I pull up in my truck. I see a Tow truck out there, huh? And it's right next to her Rolls.

[George Polos]

As he parked, he saw Sarah's Rolls Royce, the one she had wrapped white on white with the navy blue soft top.

[Sara King]

I mean, I watched it get repossessed. The guy's loading on a flatbed. He's got it out there, he's cranking that thing right up. And I run into the office. I go, sarah, they're taking your car. She goes, oh, well, she didn't, like, flinch. I go, how are you going to get home? I'll walk. And you could see the scared look in her eye, like, what the fuck? It's all coming down.

[George Polos]

Sarah was trying to play it cool, but George could tell how freaked out she was.

[Sara King]

You could see it. I mean, her eyes were like, boop. Now, was that chemicals or her? That. I don't know, but I saw that look.

[George Polos]

It was the ultimate irony. Sarah was supposed to be taking possession of luxury cars as collateral, and one of her investors watched her lose her own vehicle. Sahra had leased this fancy ass Rolls, didn't make payments, and the lender repossessed the car, Navy blue soft top and all. And according to George, this repo man wasn't the worst guy after her.

[Sara King]

When that Hells Angels guy, he told me, he goes, I'll go into her house and I'll chop her up in little pieces right in her bed. I was like, uh.

[Cameron]

Oh.

[George Polos]

Sara needed to make herself scarce and find a whole new pool of investors. And where better than Las Vegas? From Sony Music Entertainment, this is Lady Mafia. It's a story about going from lawyer to lawless, living high and blowing millions. I'm Michelle McPhee. This is episode five, losing at the Win.

[Alex Rodriguez]

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[Jason Kelly]

Today, behind the bright lights and adrenaline.

[George Polos]

Of pro sport is an equally exciting.

[Jason Kelly]

World of negotiations and deal making.

[George Polos]

That's what we cover each week on our podcast, the Deal.

[Jason Kelly]

I'm Alex Rodriguez, former baseball player turned business executive.

[George Polos]

And I'm Jason Kelly, chief correspondent for Bloomberg Originals. Over the next couple months, we'll hear from all stars like Jay Williams. I want to be an owner one day. Billie Jean King. Learn the business and so many more. Listen to the deal on Spotify when the shit started to hit the fam back in the oc, Sara went on the hunt for new money. She was flying to Vegas, making connections, trying to get her Nevada lending license. And she started courting a new fabulously rich investor, Laurent Reese, the childhood friend of her husband's.

[Laurent Reese]

One night he says, talk to my friend Laurent. You know, he's loaded and he could probably partner with you.

[George Polos]

Laurent is a private investor who used to manage a Swiss bank in Monaco. Laurent is married to an heiress, part of a Monaco real estate dynasty. And if Getty Images is to be believed, she's also quite the socialite. He looks vaguely famous, almost like Ben Affleck playing a Swiss banker. But do you want to know what was really special about Laurent? He had access to a whole new level of wealth.

[Laurent Reese]

Cameron said, you have to fly to New York. You have to meet Laurent.

[George Polos]

Cameron would later tell us in an email.

[Ronald Richards]

Looking back, introducing them is my biggest regret.

[George Polos]

That's not Cameron himself. We got a friend of the podcast to read it. But Cameron did tell us he had no idea he was setting up one of his oldest friends to be swindled. Sara met Laurent at the Soho Grand, a classic New York boutique hotel. It's the kind of place that's old school, stylish, a lot of squishy leather chairs, heavy curtains.

[Laurent Reese]

He actually had this little private room at the top of the stairs from the lobby that he was sitting. He had jeans on and a long sleeve like black shirt. He had a little jacket over it.

[George Polos]

Sara was wearing black leather pants, a white collared shirt.

[Laurent Reese]

He's actually really chill. He's a very, very nice, cool guy. He was sitting there with Cameron and I was a little bit late because Cameron and I had a fight.

[George Polos]

Of course, she sat down with the two men and started chatting. And that's when she said she got a message from John McCabe. A photo of collateral for a potential loan. Remember, John McCabe's lawyer declined to comment on his behalf on this or anything else.

[Laurent Reese]

And as we were talking, John sent me a text saying, oh, this guy has this Patek Philippe worth a million dollars. Can you get a loan on it? And right in front of Laurent, I mean, the texts were coming in and I showed it to him.

[George Polos]

She showed Laurent photos of the watch.

[Laurent Reese]

And he's all excited. Like, just crazy excited.

[George Polos]

And Laurent is not a regular guy like George Polos. Laurent is a financial professional who has a prestigious banking career. So why might Laurent be persuaded by a photo of a watch? Well, for one, Sara was offering an unusually large return. She says that she offered Laurent an average of 9% a month. And I think Sahra helped him make the final leap of faith because she was saying that she'd cornered a ripe market. Rich people in the OC who lived paycheck to paycheck. Sahra changes her story a lot here. She'll often say that the first several loans were real.

[Laurent Reese]

He grilled me like nobody's business, just grilled me to the death to figure out if this was safe or not. And at the time, it was absolutely safe.

[George Polos]

Safe, as we talked about in the last episode. I just don't buy it. The Sara was really loaning money to anyone at this point. She was just taking investments. I think Sara's neck deep in a lie here, talking to her husband's close friend. And when Laurent started asking hard questions, Sahra gritted her teeth and kept lying.

[Laurent Reese]

I said, start with one loan. Get comfortable, get your feet wet, get paid back, and then let's move forward. Right.

[George Polos]

It's hard for me to figure out who's a bigger bullshitter. A rich Swiss banker who should know a lot about banking rules, but for some reason is willing to risk millions in some shady storefront operation run out of a MALL in the O.C.

[Jason Kelly]

It'S possible there was a bias thinking, oh, well, she's a lawyer. She does have the finance company. How would she just ruin all this for just this one fraud?

[George Polos]

This is Ronald Richards, Laurent's lawyer.

[Jason Kelly]

Why would a rational person say that his longtime friend's wife is gonna now commit massive financial fraud?

[George Polos]

He's a total character. Beverly Hills lawyer straight out of Central casting. Ronald Richards has strong, unmitigated opinions about Zara.

[Jason Kelly]

She is the queen of unverifiable stories of positions that are meritless, that make no sense.

[George Polos]

Sara had detailed stories, photos of the collateral. To a potential investor like Laurent, it looked like Sara had lots of people taking out loans with her. The beginning of an outrageously profitable business. By January 2022, Laurent funded his first loan with Sara for around $200,000. Laurent and Sara were talking about scaling the business. Sara wrote to him in an email. We'll take some planning, but I do think we can take this nationwide. We may be able to really take over the industry. Exciting stuff. And Laurent had plenty of funding for that pipe dream. I can see a world in which this could have been a good thing, Startup capital, you know? But for Sara, it was the beginning of the end. She was already disorganized, popping Adderall, drinking like a booze Bag. Things were spiraling out of control for her. She'd like you to think that the 10 plates she had spinning at all times was a product of her ambition, her business sense. And that these bad deals, they were just bad accidents that befell her. But I am beginning to think maybe Sara was just bad at managing money. Trust me, I know the feeling. I never drove a Rolls. And maybe hooking a big investor was the event that turned Sara's downfall into a freefall. So Sara had investors looking for her. She had Laurent hooked. Guess what Sarah was thinking. Sounds like a great time to get married to Cameron, right? Take me through the engagement. Like, how did he propose to you?

[Laurent Reese]

He didn't.

[George Polos]

By now, Sara was divorced from her first husband. She was free to get married to Cameron, something they had been talking about for years. This was Cameron's fourth marriage, so maybe by now he was over big to dos.

[Laurent Reese]

We went to the Orange county, just the little courthouse, and we got married right then and there. It was like a Thursday morning. I'm in my sweats, he's in sweats, and we just go get married, do the paperwork so we can get it back to his attorney. But that was it. It was no wedding, no nothing.

[George Polos]

Nobody was there at the courthouse or even waiting to have a celebratory lunch afterwards. They had gold bands they'd started wearing years earlier, but there would be no diamond engagement ring for Princess Sara. Okay, maybe they just didn't want to make a big deal out of it. But here's what's weird. Sarah is tight with her parents, and she didn't even tell them that she was getting married.

[Laurent Reese]

Oh, my mom would have fucking killed me. So she said, he's a loser. You don't marry him. What are you doing? And so I was like, okay, I won't. You know? But I was head over heels in love with the guy. Like, what am I going to do?

[George Polos]

I know enough to know. This just seems fishy. There's something Sara isn't telling me. We hopped on a call. So where were you emotionally at this time? Like, your business is falling apart. You have. You're hiding this marriage from a guy that your mother thinks is a loser. Like, what's your. Where's your head? And you know that you are taking money from a big shot guy from Monaco with no collateral. That's all bullshit. So where is your head?

[Laurent Reese]

Thank God for Adderall and alcohol. I had no head at the time and I had no fucking idea what I was doing. I just kept taking pills, taking drinks. So I never really had, like, a sober moment to think about it. Never. I just kept going, going, going.

[George Polos]

All this time, Sara's been talking to me about day drinking and bar hopping, but by this point, not even Adderall is helping her focus. It sounds to me like she couldn't stop herself anymore from taking pills or from drinking. She was already in the throes of addiction. Through this haze of Adderall and alcohol and crushing debt, Vegas shimmered on the horizon like a mirage, like a beacon of hope. When Sara landed in the headlines as a con woman Back in 2023, the focus had been on her gambling away other people's money in Vegas.

[Sara King]

Newport beach attorney Sara King is now.

[George Polos]

Accused of living the high life and spending and gambling away More than $10 million of other people's money. But all this time, I've been trying to figure out what made her hightail it to Vegas in the first place. Before George Polos told me she was threatened, it was a mystery. And I kept asking Sarah that question multiple, multiple times. So that takes us to Vegas. Was there anything that precipitated it? Were there people threatening you or people getting upset that they weren't being paid? Like, what was happening right around that time?

[Laurent Reese]

Nope. People getting up, getting paid? No. I was always the one who had the money. So, I mean, like, I didn't. I didn't really borrow any money. So some people think I owe them money.

[John McCabe]

I don't.

[Laurent Reese]

I do. I would give. I always pay people I owe. That's just, like, who I am. Even if it hurts me, like, I will pay it.

[George Polos]

Here's how I see it. Sarah couldn't pay back investors. People wanted to chop her up into little pieces, and she was on the hook. I think she genuinely believed her lucky number eight was going to put her back in the black, and it was a good time to hide out in Vegas. I have a lot of empathy for Sara. We both have bad taste in men and make banged up decisions. But I'm also a human lie detector, and my internal ding, ding, ding goes off like a jackpot on the slots whenever she gives me the runaround. So George told one of our producers a story about people showing up at your house and trying to threaten you over money. Did that ever happen? No, it didn't get that bad ever. So you didn't?

[Laurent Reese]

No.

[John McCabe]

Who would?

[Laurent Reese]

No.

[George Polos]

Of course. From the legal documents, we know that Sahra owed people money she couldn't pay back. Mana Kadar was one of them. They eventually settled out of court. George was another. When Sahra skipped town, her business was in the toilet. There were people looking for her. Maybe we can't say for sure that some people wanted to chop her up, but that's what George said.

[Sara King]

Not me. No, no, no. I'm not that guy. I went the legal route.

[George Polos]

In March of 2022, George decided to file his own lawsuit against Sara to get his money back. But now there was an issue with that plan. Nobody could find her with the attorney.

[Sara King]

I couldn't even get her served, you know, she was doing everything she could because she knew at that point that everything was done and she had everybody on her. She was doing everything she can just to lay low, you know, she was hiding up in LA somewhere for a long time. Then Vegas, then la, then back down here to Newport, Irvine. And I'm just going, how does this woman live? She must be looking over her back all the time.

[George Polos]

George had to find her in order to serve her with the lawsuit in Vegas, Sara was using aliases, names like Snow White or Mary Poppins. At this point, Sara was going back and forth between Nevada and California. So George hired process service to stake out her building in la.

[Sara King]

And one day we caught her coming back with drinks from Starbucks. Baseball cap, sweats, the whole nine yards. You know, hair was up in her baseball cap because she had long hair and so forth. So she did what she could to hide her identity.

[George Polos]

Eventually, they delivered the lawsuit to her building manager.

[Sara King]

When they served it, the guy that served my lawsuit also saw Sarah's mailbox. There was 20 other lawsuits in there sitting there. He goes, you're one of like 20. I go, what? He goes, you should see what I saw. And I was like, holy shit.

[George Polos]

I don't know about 20 lawsuits, but I went to her apartment around this time and I saw the notices on the door. It looked like an art installation of legal documents. Anyhow, George was also in contact with Sahra's assistant, and he got a sense of how the boss lady was spending the money.

[Sara King]

She goes, george, she's at the Wynn. And I go, what?

[George Polos]

He's talking about the Wynn? Las Vegas, a five star luxury casino and hotel. At first it seemed like Sarah was just lying low there, visiting with friends, making connections, gambling a little, you know, for her.

[Laurent Reese]

And one day I was playing and they're telling me, we need to talk to a host for you. Because I was playing like, you know, good 20 grand a day, whatever. So.

[George Polos]

Which is a lot. You weren't worried about playing, that kind.

[Laurent Reese]

Of money I had. But I'VE always had that kind of money. So 20 grand a day is no big deal. Like, I honest to God, always made that kind of money for myself. It got scarier when I was dropping 50 to 100,000 a day. That got like, you know, that hurt.

[George Polos]

After she was assigned a host, Sara had arrived. A host is the guy assigned to cater to the whims of high rollers. Sara's win host was cute, clean cut, a guy in his 30s named Kevin.

[Laurent Reese]

He's like, come back to Vegas and, you know, put you in a different villa, golf course villa, the first floor which has a pool. And I said, okay. So I go back, and that's when I realized, like, okay, if this guy's inviting me, I have to spend money.

[George Polos]

It's hard for me not to roll my eyes a bit here. I mean, come on. No one is this naive. But, you know, Sara was in a rough spot. And casinos know what they're doing. Giving the right people perks to keep them happy, well fed, comfortable. That's what they do. And that way, these high rollers are too distracted to realize they're being blood drawn.

[John McCabe]

Now, when I arrive, my host has already prepared the room, so he texts me a few days in advance before I arrive, and he will ask, what do I want in the room? And I always had two main, you know, requests, which was the Samoan ville carte rose champagne and a charcuterie board. That's what I live off of. And so every time I would get there, he would surprise me with extra flowers. I probably had six dozen roses in my room from him. He gave me all these fancy chocolates, handmade chocolates. Kula would have a complete bed set.

[Laurent Reese]

With every toy that you could ever.

[John McCabe]

Imagine for a dog, and shoebone all ready for her to go.

[George Polos]

We asked Kevin to be interviewed for this podcast, but he respectfully declined. For their part, the win told us they don't comment on individual employees.

[Laurent Reese]

My dog loved it. She had time of her life in our villa. And so I said, you know what? What can we do to stay here?

[George Polos]

Sarah would call a few different villas home, and Kevin kept her entertained.

[John McCabe]

My host knew a lot about me. They asked you a lot of questions about what you like, and I love magic. This is one of my favorite things. So we would be eating dinner, and all of a sudden, some guy randomly sits down at our table with us, and I'm like, who the fuck? What is this guy? And he just starts doing magic. And I loved it. When he was finished, he would walk away and Then the manager would come over and said, we brought him in specifically for you.

[George Polos]

This is where things started to get muddy because Sara said that something else happened during this time of around the clock gambling. She couldn't pay Larratt back. Her. Her story is she loaned money to somebody who didn't pay her back. But that shouldn't have been a big deal, right? That's the whole point of collateral. She could sell it to get her money back. But Sara also claims the collateral was stolen. She says there are police records, but if there are any, I haven't been able to find them.

[Laurent Reese]

I started to panic and that's actually when I finally told. You know, I had told Cameron. I'm like, this is what's going on. Like I don't know how to handle it. And that's when he said, okay, you're good at these slots. Win back. Because he's seen me win tons of money on him. So I said, okay, but you kind of go down this rabbit hole.

[George Polos]

When we asked Cameron about pushing Sara to gamble, he said he despises gambling and wanted her to stop.

[Laurent Reese]

You know, I told you my dad's quote to me is, winning isn't everything. It's the only thing. And so you get competitive against a stupid machine. And you should know better than to gamble against the house. Like it doesn't ever pay off. Ever.

[George Polos]

By the spring of 2022, Sara was gambling like it was her job.

[John McCabe]

When I first arrived to the win.

[Laurent Reese]

That'S all I would do.

[John McCabe]

I actually didn't even unpack my suitcase. I would literally pop open the champagne, open the back door for Kula to go potty, and then I would take my champagne and go, go to the slot machines.

[George Polos]

Sara was spiraling.

[John McCabe]

I actually don't really sleep much. I never did anyways. Cause I took Adderall.

[Laurent Reese]

So I was always awake.

[George Polos]

The Adderall and the alcohol was a cocktail of focused haze.

[Laurent Reese]

Every time I would drink, I would take a pill. Drink, take a pill. Cause it would keep me alert, but also calm. When you take Adderall, you have a very bad short term memory, so you don't think about certain things. Plus with the alcohol, like it just kind of makes your reality just kind of euphoric in a way. Also invincible. You feel invincible A little bit. And that's probably why I just kept taking it. Thinking taking it would just solve my problems and I could figure things out if I just keep taking Adderall.

[George Polos]

She would take a little break around dinner time with Cameron, so we'd Go.

[John McCabe]

Back to the villa. I would tuck him in bed. I would change, you know, into my comfy clothes and put on, you know, my yoga pants and my Chanel sweater and my Chanel sneakers, and then at three in the morning, go back out at slots.

[George Polos]

There was a whole method Sara used for playing the slots. She called it her algorithm. To me it sounded like fucked up math. It didn't make any sense.

[Laurent Reese]

So I learned on the penny slots. So I, I was like, there's got to be a rhyme or rhythm and I have to feel the rhythm of the machine.

[George Polos]

The machine for her was the Dragon Link in the high roller room.

[Laurent Reese]

Okay, let me tell you about Dragon Link. It's basically a game. It has like five different characters. It has, you know, an old Japanese man, a young Japanese woman, a big Buddha, a panda.

[George Polos]

The machine itself has a massive Buddha greeting you on the screen.

[Laurent Reese]

Now I was the only one who could hit as many bonuses, you know, in a day. People would just watch me like I was in a zoo. But it was a really incredible game once you felt the rhythm of it. And then I knew how to bet properly and I would hit these big bonuses.

[George Polos]

Sahra says that sometimes she could put in 250 books and get 80, 90 grand out of the machine, depending on.

[John McCabe]

How the night went. I would either stay awake till 6 7am the next day and continue gambling the whole entire day. If it wasn't doing well, I'd go back to the room about 5am I would check on cool up. I would take her out to play in the yard. Cameron was still sleeping, so I would go back out at 6am to the slot machines. So I haven't slept.

[George Polos]

She'd order a coffee and head to the high limit room where she'd meet a janitor that she'd pay for intel.

[John McCabe]

So the janitor that would be on last would wait for me to come in and he'd give me a hug hello and let me know which machines were hitting.

[George Polos]

And from there Sara would start her day all over again.

[Laurent Reese]

I hated it. I was so stressed. I would never really enjoy it. I would drank myself into just disarray. Every day I took Adderall left and right to stay awake. I was a hot mess, but I played. And a lot of times I'd win really big. I really would.

[George Polos]

In her second month of her stay at the win, something big really did happen.

[Laurent Reese]

My host came up to me and said, we are presenting you with the Chairman's Club card. And they only present it once a year. And this Is mid year. The first thought that entered my mind was, holy fuck, how much have I lost? I was not excited. I was not happy. I was like, just, holy shit. What? How much am I? Lord?

[George Polos]

Did you know you were losing by then?

[Laurent Reese]

I had to. I mean, but the card. Yeah. Cause you don't just give a parade to somebody who winning all your money. So I knew right then and there, like, something's bad, like, this is not right.

[George Polos]

So Sarah knew that she was starting to lose and lose big. But she had dug herself in. It seemed like the only way to get out was to keep going.

[Laurent Reese]

Oh, I felt it was out of control when I was ordering, you know, 1,000 Adderall pills to my hotel room. From Newport beach to Mary Poppins at the Wynn.

[George Polos]

Cameron says he had no idea that she was losing, but he did see her addiction in full swing again. A friend of the podcast reading for.

[Ronald Richards]

Cameron, I hate casinos. I begged her more than once to stop playing. It was actually the reason for most of our fights. She would constantly send me her winnings to reassure me as she knew I was against it. Even the employees at the high limit room at the Wynn casino reassured me that she was winning. During the rare times I went in to try to get her to stop, it never crossed my mind that she could be losing the amounts. I later discovered it was beyond anything I could have imagined.

[George Polos]

According to Cameron, the casino employees convinced him that Sara was up. But Sara knew better. One day when she was gambling, someone who worked for the casino let it slip that she was far down the rabbit hole.

[Laurent Reese]

The guy said, oh, it's no big deal. You're like, you're down 1.8 million. And I had to, like, laugh, shrug it off like it's nothing. But it was definitely not nothing. And I about lost my. I mean, I had to go to the bathroom. Like, I had to. I couldn't. I couldn't even imagine.

[George Polos]

And maybe somebody else would have been keeping track of how much they were putting into the machines, but not Zara.

[Laurent Reese]

So what happens is I never look at how much I put in. I look at what the outcome of the day is, which was great. But, you know, the booze in the Adderall really helped me forget about the amount you put in to win the 200,000 you walk out with.

[George Polos]

I think she was so focused on the feeling when she won, she didn't remember how much she spent to get there.

[Robert F. Carl III]

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[Sara King]

The following interview is being videotaped at the Dade County Public Safety Department, Miami Dade County, Florida and sir, would you identify yourself?

[Jason Kelly]

My name is Robert F. Carl III.

[Cameron]

In 1976, a man in Florida tells a cop he has a confession to make.

[Jason Kelly]

Arriving in Miami, I proceeded to do certain things that I considered to be necessary in the crime that I planned to commit.

[George Polos]

I was looking for a hitchhiker, potential victim.

[Cameron]

But instead of becoming his victim, I became his confidant, one of the people closest to him as he recounted and was tried for his horrific crimes. From Orbit Media and Sony Music Entertainment. Listen to my friend, the Serial Killer. Subscribe on Apple Podcast to binge all episodes now or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts.

[Laurent Reese]

When I heard the number out loud, like, I understand you're losing, you get perks. Wake up. But this number, I mean, I was thinking to myself, how am I going to get back? And that's why I wanted to win my birthday amount.

[George Polos]

This was all based on something Sarah had heard about Vegas.

[Laurent Reese]

So they always say when you're a big player, they always make you win really big on your birthday.

[George Polos]

So Sara had a big 39th birthday bash.

[Laurent Reese]

I hate birthdays, but Cameron loves birthdays. And so he was actually my host who put together my whole room. So I was in room 8808 at the win.

[George Polos]

It was the end of August, 2022. Friends of hers were invited out for a big party that she didn't even want. Sarah was fixated on this idea that she was going to win big on her birthday weekend. So before the guest got there, she was glued to that favorite machine Dragon link.

[Laurent Reese]

I was playing and playing. I kept losing, losing. I was getting frustrated and angry.

[George Polos]

Cameron and her friend left to go to a concert.

[Laurent Reese]

They go to the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert. And I was like, fine, I guess I'll stay here. And I got up because I was so pissed off I wasn't winning on my birthday weekend, whatever. And I got up for what, 10 minutes. I moved to the poker, poker machines. And this girl is playing my machine and she wins the $1.6 million. And I'm just like. Like, literally 10 minutes. That's all it took was 10 minutes. And I was just like. Like, you could shoot me in the leg and I wouldn't cry, just so you know. And I cried like, I was just beside myself. So angry.

[George Polos]

Sara's good luck wasn't paying out. She had a shitty birthday, and she was still in the hole. And it wasn't the only place where things were going badly. Laurent Reese was about to start asking some tough questions. If you think that's all downward spiral, calamity level bullshit, well, wait, there's more. Do you think Cameron knew that things were a little messy for King Family Lending at the time that he introduced you to Lorraine?

[Laurent Reese]

Yeah, Cameron. Cameron 100% knew, because Cameron said that he saw all the collateral to Laurent.

[George Polos]

So Cameron told Laurent that he saw all the collateral, and the collateral basically didn't exist.

[Laurent Reese]

Correct.

[George Polos]

By the way, Cameron disputes knowing about the phony collateral. More importantly, in throwing Cameron under the bus, Sara is kind of making her own confession. How did you get the pictures of collateral that you sent to Laurent?

[Laurent Reese]

There were a couple of them. Absolutely. That I just Googled pictures online. Yeah, absolutely.

[George Polos]

The loan Sarah had been selling to Laurent were made up. And this is something that Sara has finally admitted to me.

[Laurent Reese]

So, yeah, they were false loans. Absolutely. That's true. I did false loans. I used the money to try and win back other money. Absolutely. Absolutely.

[George Polos]

Absolutely.

[Michelle McPhee]

Absolutely.

[George Polos]

We have the lawsuit that Laurent eventually filed against Sahra. It cited 97 loans. There were also emails Sara wrote with an impressive level of detail. Vehicle appraisals, titles, notes of attached videos of Tiffany stamped watches, coin collections, sports contracts with big shots in hockey, football, baseball. Well, in the paperwork which we have, you sent an email to Lorenz saying, hey, Kim Kardashian's hair extension girl is looking to start her own business.

[Laurent Reese]

Let's fund this loan so she exists. But I don't want to talk about her because she's. I love her to death, and I don't want her to be a part of this.

[George Polos]

Like, okay, so NFL players, MLB players, they're all bullshit, right? Yes, all bullshit. But Laurent kept sending money. And he wasn't the only one. Sara wasn't just blowing through Laurent's money at the casino. She was also actively recruiting new investors. On the casino floor, there was a surgeon and her husband, maybe a cocktail waitress, who knows? But Cameron says that Sahra seemed to be having a hard time keeping track of some of the details on the loans. So at Laurent's Request Cameron stepped in to help get everything organized in a spreadsheet. Here's what Cameron said to us in an email.

[Ronald Richards]

What you need to understand is that there are never any suspicious withdrawals in the bank account. Every single withdrawals or transfer was linked to a loan. It was accurate to the dollar. If the money was wired. The name of the party was showing otherwise, it was a cashier's check with the name of the person on it. She was sending us pictures of the collateral as well as the appraisals. She was also doing a lot of sport player contract loans with a good friend of hers.

[George Polos]

All of this came crashing down in November of 2022.

[Ronald Richards]

Everything crumbled when my friend and I realized that the bank logo of one of the statements she sent was missing. So we started to look deeper into it and realized there was a few typos in the statements and that's where everything started to come out. It was a huge shock.

[George Polos]

Ronald Richards Laurent's LAWYER There was a.

[Jason Kelly]

Tremendous amount of emails and whatsapps and, you know, I think Cameron scrambling to try to fix this.

[George Polos]

While Sara was chasing Dragon Link winnings, Laurent hired experts to take a look at the bank statements she'd been sending.

[Jason Kelly]

They ran a special software to see that the accounts were altered in some way. The statements, and he didn't want to believe it, but some sharper people in New York that understand, like how a fraud works were able to show scientifically that the statements that the company was.

[George Polos]

Getting were doctored basically through metadata. They could see that the statements had been tinkered with or photoshopped.

[Jason Kelly]

Is it sophisticated fraud to just take a PDF and manipulate the numbers on it? No, that's like shooting someone and leaving your gun and bullets at the crime scene after you touched it without a glove. So no, that wasn't sophisticated fraud. That was unsophisticated fraud.

[George Polos]

It had been about 10 months. Laurent was 10 million deep. So of course he freaked out. He jumped on a plane to Orange County. Zara immediately started doing damage control.

[Laurent Reese]

I called John McCabe. I'm like, look, you gotta show me your collateral. Like, we got cars, we got watches to show him. And he tried to pull it together, and together we couldn't do it at the time to get it to show him.

[George Polos]

Needless to say, John McCabe's lawyer advised him against commenting on this allegation or answering any of the more than 20 questions we sent. Ronald Richards described what Laurent was going through. He was embarrassed, ashamed. How could he be so gullible and he wanted to retain hope that he would get his money back.

[Jason Kelly]

I can't really describe what my client told because that's going to get into confidential communications. I could just tell you that Sarah and Cameron did their best to try to mitigate the level of fraud.

[George Polos]

How so?

[Jason Kelly]

Cause they, you know, they do what fraudsters do. They delay, lull, and give fake promises. The fraudsters always prey on. You think your debt is more important than the other people they've defrauded, and that's a miscalculation.

[George Polos]

Ronald is lumping Cameron and Sahra together here. Even Cameron said Laurent suspected him of being in cahoots for Sarah, my friend.

[Ronald Richards]

Laurent had doubts about my involvement, which I understand, given that she was my wife.

[George Polos]

But in an email, Cameron told me that he ended up trying to figure out exactly what had happened.

[Ronald Richards]

Laurent is my childhood friend, someone very dear to me, and I introduced him to someone who was lying to both of us. It was my duty, both as a friend and to myself, to get to the bottom of it.

[George Polos]

Sara offered a laundry list of excuses for not having any collateral to show off. But behind his wife's back, Cameron met with his old friend. That's what Laurent's lawyer told me.

[Jason Kelly]

Cameron met him and tried to basically did a mea culpa, that it's all her fault. And, yeah, I think Cameron pulled the plug pretty quickly. Once he was confronted, Cameron rolled over quick and said, I can't. You know, basically, I'm so sorry. I can't believe it. Cameron was frantic that he had a realization that this. That he could go to prison for what happened.

[George Polos]

Cameron wrote to us about this experience. Again, someone reading for Cameron.

[Ronald Richards]

I was shocked by the situation and deeply embarrassed that I hadn't seen it sooner. I confronted her about it, making it clear how selfish she had been for not even considering the impact this has had on my position and relationships.

[George Polos]

Sarah said it a little differently. She said she could have handled it if Cameron hadn't turned on her and sided with Laurent.

[Laurent Reese]

He's like, it's okay. I just want to get my money back. And like I said, I'm like, okay, well, if you trust me with that, like, I'll handle that. And then Cameron. Cameron caused, like, a shitstorm. He calls Laurent and just starts wailing on me. And I'm thinking, wow, what an asshole. Because he just doesn't want to get caught in the middle. So now he's the good guy.

[George Polos]

In this moment. Cameron chose to prove himself to his childhood friend and chose to not stand by his wife.

[Jason Kelly]

I have lengthy emails and lengthy calls with Cameron where I think he told me what happened. In my opinion, he did the smartest thing he could do and was keep talking to me. Because of that, I had enough information that made me have some doubt as to his culpability and I didn't need to make the decision to sue him. The same day I was gonna sue Sarah.

[George Polos]

Ronald Richards tracked Sara down and they had a call over Zoom.

[Jason Kelly]

The first interview, though, wasn't, hey, I'm still trying to fix these loans. There was a complete capitulation that, hey, I ripped off your client and I gotta try to fix it. And so my goal in the call was, you know, we have a short window here. If you could start fixing it, it'll save you a tsunami of problems.

[George Polos]

Next time on the finale of Lady Mafia.

[Jason Kelly]

Within seconds of me telling the women's general counsel she's a fraudster, they cut her off, 86ed her.

[Laurent Reese]

I probably could have fixed everything if Ron Richards didn't fucking put the articles out there. But whatever he did, we're not going.

[Jason Kelly]

To watch you gamble.

[John McCabe]

Why?

[Jason Kelly]

You owe our client all this money and all these other people. So I told her, like, you don't understand. Like, once I'm on somebody, I become obsessed with them. I only have the most love for you, Sarah, and that is to prevent you from stealing from anybody else. So if you can't gamble, there'll be no more victims.

[George Polos]

Unlock all episodes of Lady Mafia ad free right now by subscribing to the binge podcast channel. Not only will you immediately unlock all episodes of this show, but you'll get binge access to an entire network of other great true crime and investigative podcasts. All ad free. Plus, on the first of every month, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series that's all episodes all at once. Search for the binge on Apple podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page, not on apple. Head to getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. Lady Mafia is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment. It was hosted and reported by me, Michelle McPhee. Odelia Rubin is our lead producer and wrote this episode with a little help from me. Catherine St. Louis is our story editor. Shara Morris and Jonathan Hirsch are our executive producers. Sound design and mixing by Scott Somerville. Theme and original music composed by Hansdale. She. We also use music from Epidemic Sound, Blue Dot Sessions and apm. Our associate producer is Zoe Culkin. Our fact checker is Fendal Fulton, our production manager is Tameka Balance Kolasny. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rossick, Jamie Myers, Allie Kiltz and Corey Cesnik, who plays Cameron in this episode.