The Crooked Carpet Cleaner w/ Ronnie Adrian (Fraud Friday)

In this week’s Fraud Friday, Laci is joined by comedian and actor Ronnie Adrian (Grand Crew, EverythingNowShow) to explore the absolute mess of carpet-cleaning Ponzi schemer Barry Jay Minkow, who got his career as a con man started early in his youth. Plus, in Scammer of the Week, we meet Bruce Bagley, a 73-year-old International Studies professor who pleaded guilty to money laundering. Stay Schemin’! (Originally Released 02/03/2020) Follow on Instagram: Scam Goddess Pod: @scamgoddesspod Laci Mosley: @divalaci Research by Sharilyn Vera SOURCES: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Minkow https://news.sky.com/story/international-money-laundering-expert-arrested-for-money-laundering-11864982

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:57Speaker 03

  She'd throw things, wander, and started hoarding. Mom's Alzheimer's was already so hard. But then we found out she had agitation that may happen with dementia due to Alzheimer's disease. And that was a different kind of difficult. So we asked her doctor for more help.

• 2:12Speaker 04

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• 2:47Speaker 03

  I'm glad I asked for help.

• 2:49Speaker 04

  Ask your loved one's doctor about Rexulti.

• 2:54Laci Mosley?

  What's poppin', congregation? It's your girl, Lacey Mosley, aka Scam Goddess. Welcome to an episode of Fraud Fridays, where we release older episodes from the Scam Goddess vault. That's right. Fraud Fridays is where we bring back your favorite episodes from behind the paywall. Enjoy this episode from behind the paywall. And as always, stay schemin'.

• 3:35Laci Mosley?

  Welcome back, congregation, to another edition of Scam Goddess. It's me, your girl, Lacey Mosley, aka Scam Goddess. And I'm here with... Oh, gosh, I'm so excited, guys. Oh, I know I say that every week, but I really am excited. And this is gonna be a fascinating episode, for sure. I'm here with, oh my god, Ronnie. Adrian! Yes, I had to do that. Yeah, what's up, everybody? Not that...

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Person who actually makes the beats, by the way.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  I want y'all to be like, oh shit, you got him on there?

• 4:09Laci Mosley?

  I got, oh my god, Ronnie on the show. No, just go with it, Ronnie. Go with the scam.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:16Laci Mosley?

  Oh, man. Alright, so how the show works is I start with a segment called What's Hot and Fraud, which is where we warn our listeners about what's hot and fraud, or we give them tips for scams. Guys, if you have any scams that do retire, hit us up at [email protected], but only if they're retired. Because remember, say it with me, we don't want to fuck up your bag. Alright, wonderful. Yeah, so this scam comes from, what am I gonna name this person? Okay, I'm gonna call you Tina Marie. Like the singer.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  Like the singer?

• 4:53Laci Mosley?

  Yes.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay.

• 4:54Laci Mosley?

  Portuguese love.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  Okay, and that's the song that you sing?

• 4:59Laci Mosley?

  That's one of my favorite Tina Marie songs. What, this is the Square Biz?

• 5:04Speaker 02

  I mean, that's a choice. Maybe you could do the line from Fire and Desire?

• 5:08Laci Mosley?

  If you're a real Tina Marie fan, then you know about Portuguese love.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Okay, alright.

• 5:11Laci Mosley?

  Okay? Tweet me if you know about Portuguese love.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  Oh man, I can't wait to see those four tweets.

• 5:19Laci Mosley?

  Oh, you're so rude. Don't disrespect Tina like that. Put some respect on Tina's name. So Tina says, hi Lacey, I wanted to write to tell you about a scam I pulled off numerous times in college. I was super broke and loved to eat. Don't we all? Don't we all love to eat?

• 5:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:36Laci Mosley?

  I do it every day.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I try to.

• 5:38Laci Mosley?

  So, but also wanted to spend my small income and nights out at the bar. So she was like, these coins are for 99 bananas, Captain Morgan. What's the other ratchet college drinks? Fucking Fireball.

• 5:57Laci Mosley?

  What's some other terrible shit that I ingested in college? Oh, Four Loko's. I had a friend who would make Four Loko margaritas. And this was before they regulated Four Loko's. This is when it was killing people. So, a Four Loko ice margarita mix and tequila.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  God, that's crazy.

• 6:17Laci Mosley?

  Why?

• 6:18Speaker 02

  That's too much.

• 6:18Laci Mosley?

  That's horrible.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  That's too much. I remember my friends, because I don't drink. But all my friends, like, once we discovered alcohol, like, at the end of high school and into, like, college age, everybody, when they would drink, I was like, oh, man, all my friends suck drunk. Like, you know, like, and, and I just remember being like, oh, okay, like, and it'll be funny up until a point, because you know, like, it's always funny with your friends, but it's to the point where it's like, all right, now you're getting annoying. You know, and no, no, so, yeah.

• 6:48Laci Mosley?

  Oh, no, me and my friends were the funnest drunk people ever. And I didn't really drink a lot. I didn't drink in high school. I didn't, I drank in college, but not really until, like, my sophomore year. And we would drink, like, on the weekend if there was a party. Like, we were friggin' nerds. But we had some wild ass times.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  I mean, Lacey, you had wild times. What are you talking about?

• 7:06Laci Mosley?

  I mean, no, the times now, the times now are pretty wild, okay?

• 7:10Speaker 02

  Don't hang it up.

• 7:11Laci Mosley?

  I, no, no, no, I actually picked it up. I picked it up now.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  Lacey's still in the game. LeBron James, seventeen years, still strong, going strong.

• 7:19Laci Mosley?

  I am not the LeBron James of drinking. Don't do that.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Ain't, ain't missed a step.

• 7:24Laci Mosley?

  I hate you so much. All right, so, obviously, Ronnie and I have known each other for a while. Okay, so she was trying to spend her coins on that drink, honey. Understandable. I once went through a fast food drive-thru and they forgot to put a burger in my bag. So I told them and they gave me a new burger, no questions asked. A light bulb went off. Oh, I love it. What do we tell you? What do we say about scams, guys? Opportunity. And when you realize that there's an opportunity for scamming, just gotta take advantage.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  And that's the whole saying? I thought you about to stop at opportunity. I was about to be like, okay. Opportunity.

• 8:00Laci Mosley?

  I mean, truly, it is opportunity.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  But you can say that about anything. Anyway, go ahead.

• 8:05Laci Mosley?

  So, I started going to all these fast food places and I would say something like, "Hey, I was just here and you guys forgot to put blank in my bag and it worked every damn time." One time, I did get caught though. It was at a frozen custard place. Okay, see, that's why.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  Tina got a little bit crazy. Tina got a little bit overzealous, huh?

• 8:27Laci Mosley?

  Don't get greedy, y'all, okay? Stick to the drive-throughs, girl. Now you, you pulling up at the soft serve? Or you pulling up at a, uh, what's a custard place? I can't even think of one. Uh, Yogurtland? Yeah, you trying to go to Yogurtland with the scam? That's too much. Also, Yogurtland is a place where you can just get free shit anyway. You get a little baby cup, get two of them joints, and you just go over there, eat all the yogurt you want.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Okay, I don't, okay. I mean, this is, hey.

• 8:52Laci Mosley?

  I'm just saying.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  I'm on scam got it, y'all.

• 8:54Laci Mosley?

  So, so she says she tried at a frozen custard place. She says she called and told them that her husband had forgot to get her Oreo milkshake. Could I come down and get it? She said, "I wasn't married, though, but I thought saying husband would sound more believable, I guess." You know what? It does sound more believable.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, that sounds good.

• 9:13Laci Mosley?

  Husband, when you say husband, that sounds like financial security. That sounds like you don't need to steal a milkshake from Yogurtland.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  And also, like, men are dumb, so they're like, "Oh, your husband? Of course." They always do that.

• 9:24Laci Mosley?

  Right, a man?

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Men be forgetful, yeah, they be forgetful as hell.

• 9:26Laci Mosley?

  Right. So, she said, "I even went as far as to put a ring on my finger to further the scam." I love you so much, Tina Marie. You are putting on costumes to steal a milkshake, sis.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  This is good, this is good.

• 9:43Laci Mosley?

  She said, "The manager said that he'd been there all day and never got an order for an Oreo shake." So he said he didn't think the order came through. I got the feeling he was on to me. I was like, oh, well, maybe he forgot to order it. But I was too scared.

• 10:02Laci Mosley?

  So she said, once she had the pushback, she got too nervous to do it anymore. Love the pod, been telling everybody about there. And oh, thank you so much. Very nice things at the end. All right, Tina Marie, what do you think about this?

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Um, I mean, I love that the fact, like, generally, like, he was on to the scam. Probably the way it sounds, and it's a custard place, so he probably was very nice about it. But that being like the ending of her scam, like, oh, no, this is, oh, it's too, getting too hot. I gotta stop. It's getting too hot now. So I think you could have kept going if you wanted to.

• 10:32Laci Mosley?

  Yeah, you could just keep going to drive-throughs, boo. Just go to drive-throughs. Like, but see, that's what happens when you scam is like when something gets good, you start trying to push it further. And if you're a good scammer, you know when to stop. Or to move on to a new type of scam. You know what I mean? Like, you have to have a diverse portfolio as a scammer. You can't just have one thing in your bag because you'll exhaust it.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  So you're saying that Tina Marie, she had her food scam, but she should have upgraded to something else? Or is it still have to deal with food?

• 10:59Laci Mosley?

  I think that she could have kept scamming food. She just needed to move into, like, so basically, she could have kept scamming food. She also maybe could have scammed drinks. What if she started going to the bar? And like ordering like a cocktail and then being like, this is nasty. And like bring like a little bottle of water to fill it back up after she drank it. I haven't tried that, but that seems like it would be a decent scam. I used to bartend. I would just throw the drink out and make you another one.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  Hmm, I mean.

• 11:24Laci Mosley?

  And two drinks for free.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  Lacey giving you free game right now. She giving you a free game to try.

• 11:28Laci Mosley?

  But Tina Marie, I, I think if she had kept doing the drive-through, she would have been fine. But I think she got too bold with it. Like, you going to, you calling a custard place.

• 11:38Laci Mosley?

  You were calling a custard place. Put it on a wedding ring. Driving down there. And also, I think this would have worked ma- I don't know if it would have worked if it was a woman either.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  I mean, well, what, the, the manager?

• 11:53Laci Mosley?

  Yeah.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  Okay, well, maybe, but at the same time, if she called and asked them, "Hey, my husband left, uh, you know, whatever, the Oreo shake."

• 12:03Laci Mosley?

  Yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  Uh, can I come down and get it?" And somebody had to be like, "Yeah," right?

• 12:07Laci Mosley?

  Yeah!

• 12:08Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? Somebody had to be like, "Yeah, okay," for her to be like, "All right, I'm gonna take the trip." So, rather, somebody said it, and then, rather, they was like, "All right, I'm gonna let the manager handle it." Or the manager was there, and he was like, "I just wanna see this person's face." "I wanna see, I wanna see if I could, if they got a trustworthy face."

• 12:21Laci Mosley?

  So, the manager's either a huge hater and very petty, and was like, "Yeah, come on down. Yeah, we got your husband's milkshake." "We sure do. Get on down here. Ah, hand spinning again." And then he got down there and was like, "Look here, bitch." "I'm on to you."

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Truly, if he did that, I'm giving him points. If he was like, "Oh, hell yeah, come on down to get this mil- this Oreo milkshake." Hung up the phone and was like, "I ain't had no Oreo milkshake all day. I'm about to flame this bitch."

• 12:49Laci Mosley?

  I feel like it must have been a slow day in the yogurt shop. Because, otherwise, it truly doesn't make any sense. Because, also, she says she was scared in this moment. Why would you be scared? Just be like, "Oh, maybe he just forgot it. He lied and told me he got it." Like, that's not a weird thing.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, what even happened afterward? Because then she had to go like, "Oh, he probably forgot to order it." And then, then she then, to cover her own lie, had to be like, "All right, well, let me get one." Or just be like, "He must have forgot to order it." "Well, I ain't hungry for it no more." You know, like, how you get out of that? Because...

• 13:18Laci Mosley?

  Also, why didn't he come back?

• 13:21Laci Mosley?

  Why, why didn't the husband come back?

• 13:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, manager looking out the window like, "Oh, so is your husband in the car, or is it just you?"

• 13:26Laci Mosley?

  Yeah, the manager was asking too many questions. He was like, "Yeah, so what does your husband look like? How tall about is your husband? Does he have a beard? Show me a picture."

• 13:35Laci Mosley?

  It sounds like this manager was petty.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:37Laci Mosley?

  Because he could have just, "Come on now, that milk costs you what?" It costs you nothing, because you the manager.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  Hey, man, it's a custard place. They probably, like, they're not like a big corporation like McDonald's or like Burger King or something.

• 13:47Laci Mosley?

  That's true. There are some smaller ones.

• 13:49Speaker 02

  We, we make, we keep inventory of our custard. And we know, "Oh, if I, if I fucking turn this milkshake machine on right now, that's fucking forty cents out the door."

• 13:56Laci Mosley?

  Imagine a custard place that keeps inventory of every single ounce of custard. Like, you come into work, and they're like, "Hey, uh, Tim, can you come in here?" Can you come in here real quick, Tim?

• 14:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, what's up?

• 14:06Laci Mosley?

  Yeah, step off the floor. Uh, take your apron off.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  Uh, take it off?

• 14:09Laci Mosley?

  Yeah.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 14:10Laci Mosley?

  Yeah.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  I'm gonna keep it right here, cuz I gotta get back out there.

• 14:12Laci Mosley?

  Uh, yeah, that's the thing, Tim. We're not gonna allow you back out there.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Why not? What's happening? You need me back here in the back or something?

• 14:18Laci Mosley?

  No, uh, we've been tracking every time that you work here.

• 14:21Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 14:22Laci Mosley?

  And every shift, we are three and a half ounces short of custard when you leave.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  Nah, that's impossible.

• 14:27Laci Mosley?

  No, no, no, we are.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  Okay. First of all, how y'all even know that?

• 14:30Laci Mosley?

  We measure.

• 14:31Speaker 02

  Okay. I don't think...

• 14:33Laci Mosley?

  Okay, this is in hard times. We're a small business, this is a small economy.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  I get that, but it ain't me. I don't, uh, look, I don't do heavy custard pour.

• 14:39Laci Mosley?

  I don't know, you look like, you look like you eat three and a half ounces of custard today.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't do heavy custard pours, and I don't even touch the stuff. When I'm off work, if I'm off work and I want custard, I come right up here and I buy it. I don't even get the, I don't even get the employee discount.

• 14:50Laci Mosley?

  I don't know, I feel like you're getting high on our supply.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  No, never. Never that. Never that. He sweating, sweating custard out his fucking pores. Never that, not me.

• 15:00Laci Mosley?

  Like, that's, that's very petty. But you know what? Uh, shout out to you, Tina Marie, for getting away with it as long as you did.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:08Speaker 06

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• 15:37Speaker 03

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• 16:19Speaker 02

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• 17:41Laci Mosley?

  Take a break, preferably one involving crisp wafers and chocolate. Kit Kat gives you permission to stop for a second and enjoy Halloween too. They say you can break when you're dead. Break now. Have a Kit Kat.

• 17:58Laci Mosley?

  And it's time for you know what? My favorite segment of this podcast, historic hoodwink. I am going to regale Mr. Rodney Adrian with a historic tale.

• 18:10Laci Mosley?

  Uh, fraud and chicanery and we're gonna get his opinions on it.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 18:15Laci Mosley?

  Throughout.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  Okay, alright, this is another historic one, huh?

• 18:18Laci Mosley?

  Yeah.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 18:19Laci Mosley?

  So, and actually, this is a bit of an older one. Well, I say older, but it's like nineteen eighty seven, so, you know. Sometimes we do really recent ones, like, you know, that happened this year or whatever. It just doesn't depend.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 18:30Laci Mosley?

  So this is about Barry J. Minkow, who was a former businessman, pastor, and convicted felon. And I mean, I just love that pastor's in there because I think that, I mean, I call the show Scam Goddess. My mom says I'm too sacrilegious. I am a Christian. I do love God and I need to have that recorded on this podcast so that I can show God when I get up to the gate. Like, look, I know I did a lot of bad shit, but um.

• 18:57Speaker 02

  You really think that like, if you like, God, hold on, before you try to condemn me, throw your headphones on and listen to an episode of my podcast real quick. And when you say I love God and then hear the rest of the podcast, you're gonna be like, you know what? Thank you for saying, just because you said that part, you up in here. They'll be like, yeah, but what about all the shit you said?

• 19:15Laci Mosley?

  Literally how the Bible works. They say you can just come back and be like, my bad, I love God, and then it's all good.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  I think that has to be the end, though. Like, I think it's like, you have to like repent, like, yeah, my bad, I love God, and then be like, alright, cool. I can't do no more fuck shit. I gotta like, and then like, you know, like, cause they gotta be like, no, you have to start all over again.

• 19:34Laci Mosley?

  Clear.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  Okay. Everybody on their deathbed is like, ah, I love Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior. Now, get me alone. Don't make me do anything. And they just sit in their bed and they just die.

• 19:44Laci Mosley?

  They said, leave me alone.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  Leave me alone. I want no more righteous stuff.

• 19:47Laci Mosley?

  Make me sin.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  Don't make me sin.

• 19:49Laci Mosley?

  He's like, don't bring that sexy nurse in here. Don't bring nobody here who gonna make me sin. I'm fresh. That's why the pastor come at the last rites and it's like, you are the last person I see family, get out.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Don't make me sin. Don't bring that sexy nurse in here.

• 20:05Laci Mosley?

  Look, you gotta stay fresh to, to death. Alright. So while in high school, he founded Z Z Z. Okay, so it's four Z's and then the word best. And it's pronounced Z best, which sounds like a modern day, like, cough syrup rapper. They all have the, the letters in their names.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  A modern day cough syrup rapper?

• 20:27Laci Mosley?

  Yes.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 20:28Laci Mosley?

  That's what I'm calling them. I feel so bad for those four babies.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  Who's the, just give me. Me one example of.

• 20:33Laci Mosley?

  Trippie Redd.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  Okay, alright, alright.

• 20:35Laci Mosley?

  You know.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  Pretty perfect.

• 20:36Laci Mosley?

  They literally sing about cough syrup in every song. Um, I want them, I hope they stop. Um, so, an immensely successful carpet cleaning company. So Z Best is a carpet cleaning company. I don't know how I'm supposed to know that they clean carpet. It is not in the title.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, if it's that many Z's, I would think like it's some sort of, like, oh, this is something that's gonna help me sleep.

• 20:57Laci Mosley?

  Yeah, I'm thinking like a mattress. Yeah, I'm not thinking carpet cleaning. I love it.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  I'm be hella fucked that you show up at my place like, hey, I've just been really, really tired and they come in and start looking at my floor. I'm like, what you doing?

• 21:08Laci Mosley?

  Right. No, I don't sleep on the floor. They're like, no, we're here for the carpet. Carpet is a scam.

• 21:16Laci Mosley?

  Cause when you get it, then you gotta maintain it. Like, just get wood. Anyway, however, it was actually a front to attract investment for a massive Ponzi scheme. So Z Best, the carpet cleaning company, was a front to attract investment for a massive Ponzi scheme. It collapsed in nineteen eighty-seven, costing investors and lenders a hundred million dollars. One of the largest investment frauds ever perpetrated by a single person, as well as one of the largest accounting frauds in history. My mans was in here cooking these books like they were stir fry.

• 21:58Laci Mosley?

  Like, sir.

• 22:02Laci Mosley?

  Nigga had to walk on the books, just a flick of the wrist on the books, a hundred million dollars.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  That's a lot. That's a lot. That's a lot for a carpet cleaning company. I don't know.

• 22:13Laci Mosley?

  What carpet cleaning company you know?

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, I mean, I get that this is a scam, but if some of those, like, for a hun-

• 22:19Laci Mosley?

  I know, I know about one.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  Gotta be like, they gotta look, you gotta look in the mirror. Like, sometimes you gotta look at a scam and be like.

• 22:26Laci Mosley?

  This is my fault.

• 22:28Speaker 02

  Come on, I should've known.

• 22:29Laci Mosley?

  Like, if the niggas from Empire show up at my house, call Empire today. If they showed up at my house talking about, look, we gonna give you a hundred million dollars, I'm like, Empire, you ain't cleaned nary enough carpets to have a hundred million dollars.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  No way. No way.

• 22:45Laci Mosley?

  Ain't enough carpet in America for y'all to have a hundred million dollars. So Minkow was born in Inglewood, California to a Jewish family. And was raised in San Fernando Valley. When he was nine years old, I love that he's from Inglewood.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's beautiful, beautiful.

• 23:03Laci Mosley?

  Uh, when he was nine years old, his mother got him a job as a telemarketer with a carpet cleaning business where she worked. So I'm gonna say that mom, this is your fault. You made your son a scammer. And yeah, for some reason I got a Brooklyn accent right now. You got your son a job at nine years old, that's mad illegal. Like, my baby boy was supposed to be in school.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 23:24Laci Mosley?

  And you got him calling, this is a joke on my TV show, Florida Girls, where there's a calling center and there's an eight-year-old and she's like, can I verify your credit card information? It's literally a joke on the show that I do, and he was doing this at nine years old.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  I mean, but Lacey, keep in mind, it's a different time.

• 23:40Laci Mosley?

  It's nineteen eighty-seven.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  That's when the, that's when the scam was.

• 23:43Laci Mosley?

  Oh.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  You know what I'm saying, but like before then, when he's nine years old, we don't know how old he was when he did the scam.

• 23:48Laci Mosley?

  Right, so this might be like in the, what, sixties? How old is, how old is, uh, Barry J Minkoff?

• 23:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:55Laci Mosley?

  We'll find out.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:56Laci Mosley?

  So, he was working as a telemarketer for a carpet cleaning business.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  Okay, that's a pretty, I mean, I can understand like being the, the sweet boy at the, at the, at the grocery store or something, but yeah, that kind of job at nine years old is a little bit much.

• 24:09Laci Mosley?

  You have to call people. And also, this is where I think the scam was born, because telemarketing is a scam in itself. And then carpet, so these are his two fields of in, like, a industry since nine years old. So he knows them well. I, I get it. So by the age of fifteen, while a sophomore at Cleveland High School, Minkow started the best. So he started this when he was fifteen years old.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  And what year was this?

• 24:33Laci Mosley?

  Um, let me see, uh, we gotta figure out his age first.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  He was born in sixty-six.

• 24:39Laci Mosley?

  So nineteen seventy-five, he was nine years old.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 24:41Laci Mosley?

  Okay, so that makes sense, in nineteen seventy-five, you're nine years old, that makes a lot of sense that you might be working at a call center and no one would think that that's bizarre.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's the seventies, man.

• 24:50Laci Mosley?

  Right, so at fifteen years of age, he was a sophomore at Cleveland High School, and this is when he started the best.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  So that's like, what, eighty-one, eighty-two then?

• 25:00Laci Mosley?

  Yeah. You keep doing that quick math for me.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Real quick maths.

• 25:04Laci Mosley?

  In his parents garage with three employees and four phones. My nigga got employees at fifteen. This is some Steve Jobs shit, like didn't Steve start his shit in the garage? Or at least Bill Gates did.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  I mean, everybody do.

• 25:19Laci Mosley?

  Everybody started it in the garage.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, and Barry Minkoff is no different.

• 25:24Laci Mosley?

  I started scams in the garage too.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Scam.

• 25:29Laci Mosley?

  That's what you gotta do.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  That's what he looks for when he goes up to Steve Jobs or when he went up to Bill Gates. He's like, yeah, I started scams in the garage too. Like, like they do the same thing.

• 25:36Laci Mosley?

  Right.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  We all out here scamming them, huh?

• 25:37Laci Mosley?

  Right. I mean, low key Apple is scamming us and so is Bill Gates. So, at first, Minkoff struggled to meet basic expenses. He was plagued by customer complaints of demand for payment from suppliers. And at times, he found it difficult to make payroll. Faced with a shortage of operating capital, he financed his business via check-kitting. Stealing and selling his grandmother's jewelry. Staging break-ins at his offices and running fraudulent credit card charges. So this is when he's a bit older, because I'm like, he's not doing this at fifteen. So, check-kitting, uh, if you don't know what that is.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  I don't.

• 26:13Laci Mosley?

  For our seasoned scammers, they probably know. But check-kitting is a form of check fraud involving taking advantage of the flow to make use of nonexistent funds. So, in my culture, at least in my family, this was called a post-dated check. And you'd be like, cash this in two weeks.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 26:33Laci Mosley?

  Because the money's not in there yet.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 26:35Laci Mosley?

  So basically, in this way, instead of being used as a negotiable instrument, checks are misused as a form of unauthorized credit. Basically, meaning like, here's a piece of paper that says I'm gonna pay you money, but actually I don't have the money. And I'm gonna get the services that I need from you immediately, and you are not gonna get the money. At all. I, I can't even believe checks were a thing. Check, checks feel crazy. You can still write people checks. Like, like, I'm talking personalized checks. Obviously, businesses are writing checks to everyone every day. But a personalized check just feels insane. I wanna go to the grocery store and pay with a personalized check.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  I mean, you can.

• 27:14Laci Mosley?

  Can you?

• 27:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean. I mean, it's so rare, yeah. I, I worked at a, um, I, I worked at a Bed Bath and Beyond and for the longest time I was there to when checks was like a normal thing until when it started transitioning out and then it was rather like cash and card. I wasn't even play with card. Um, but it would be so jarring when somebody then in the wild west of now this new age would just pull out a check. You're like, oh shit, uh.

• 27:43Laci Mosley?

  Oh, wait.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Uh, how does, how does it work again? Like, you know, like it was just so crazy and they don't like, and the thing about it is when people who pay with checks don't give a shit about time or anybody behind them.

• 27:53Laci Mosley?

  Of course not, because they're paying with a fucking piece of paper. They're crazy.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  Every now and then somebody would be like, alright, cool. They already have it all ready. Got the name on the joint. Just ready for you to tell them what the

• 28:00Laci Mosley?

  Amount is.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  What the amount is. Not these people. You'd be like, alright, so your amount is this. And they'd be like, it's what?

• 28:05Laci Mosley?

  It's what? Okay. And, and you said thirty seven cents?

• 28:08Speaker 02

  I mean, shit, Lacey, you already writing right now, but they gotta pull out their purse first. They gotta, okay, cool. They'll go grab and they get their checkbook. Alright.

• 28:14Laci Mosley?

  Like they didn't know they were gonna pay with a check?

• 28:16Speaker 02

  It's like, you know, it's like, oh, okay. They need to see people behind them just unpaid. Looking around for other registers like, nope, just mine.

• 28:23Laci Mosley?

  Oh my God, I wanna write hot checks. This feels like such a fun time.

• 28:28Laci Mosley?

  So this is obviously like when Minkov's business had expanded, because like they, they talk in the beginning about him being fifteen and working in the garage, but he's gotten older.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was definitely like.

• 28:38Laci Mosley?

  Because I was like, it jumped really quickly. So he's gotten older, expanded his business. So soon after Minkov expanded into, he branched into the insurance restoration business. So now he's got the carpet cleaning company. He's got the insurance restoration business, which insurance itself is a fucking scam industry. So, makes sense. With the help of Tom Paget. Tom Paget sounds like a fraudster.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Wait, let me, let me, uh, just to get this right. So at this point, when he started in this new thing, is this before or after the, um, eighty seven when he broke it?

• 29:15Laci Mosley?

  No, this is all before eighty seven. In eighty seven, it collapsed. So he's like, this is all.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  So, I mean, so truly, I mean, even if this is still all later, this dude, it's like, if eighty seven, he was like, what, twenty one? So like within this time, he's still like fifteen to twenty years old range. That's still like, I don't know, that's big business for a teenage kid. That's big business.

• 29:36Laci Mosley?

  He was quite young during all of this, which is crazy. But I, you know what? He started scamming at nine. So he's actually been in the industry for over ten years.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  That's true. That's true.

• 29:46Laci Mosley?

  So with the help of Tom Padgett, an insurance claims adjuster, Minkow forged numerous documents claiming that Z Best was involved in several restoration projects. Padgett and Minkow formed a fake company, Interstate Appraisal Services, which helped them to get loans from banks, allowing him to expand across Southern California. So while most Ponzi schemes are based in like, nonexistent businesses, Z's best carpet cleaning division was real and won high marks for its quality. So they would actually clean carpet. And so they could kinda keep the scheme up with that. However, its insurance restoration division, which to me, this doesn't make any sense. Like, y'all are cleaning carpet,

• 30:29Laci Mosley?

  and then y'all also have an insurance restoration, what?

• 30:34Speaker 02

  Uh huh, I mean.

• 30:35Laci Mosley?

  But you know what? Paul Mitchell makes hair products and he sells Patron, so. That makes no sense.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  I mean, I mean, you gotta have, like you said earlier, you gotta have your hands in multiple scams.

• 30:49Laci Mosley?

  Yes. But they were not a part of the same company. But, okay. So, they decided to go public with this shit, which is crazy because they know it's a Ponzi scheme. And Ponzi schemes, which we've talked about, oh, I haven't really set up so yet. So Ponzi schemes, the way they work is, is like, people give you money, you keep their money, and then when somebody else like, gives you money, and somebody else that you already have money from asks for money back, you just keep recycling and giving people the same pot of money. But they're naturally, you're not making any profit. You're just taking money from someone and giving it to someone else to make them feel like you've made a profit. So that's what he's doing. So he goes public with the business. Minkow took the company public in 1986, which has collapsed in 1987, so a year later.

• 31:35Laci Mosley?

  Like, why would you go public with this?

• 31:36Speaker 02

  I don't even.

• 31:37Laci Mosley?

  This is audacity. See, this is just like when our girl Tina Marie called the Yogurtland. Like, you doing too much.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  First of all, I, we have to give her a due. She didn't call Yogurtland, that makes it sound so basic. She called a custard place.

• 31:52Laci Mosley?

  Okay, which could have been Yogurtland.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  No, yogurt is yogurt, custard is different.

• 31:56Laci Mosley?

  No, it's not.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  Yes, it is. Custard is like that stuff that you put in like, donuts and stuff.

• 32:00Laci Mosley?

  No, it's not.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  Yes, it is.

• 32:02Laci Mosley?

  That's a type of custard, but custard is like, uh, ice cream. That's why she was getting an Oreo milkshake. You know what, I'm not doing this with you.

• 32:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean.

• 32:10Laci Mosley?

  Tweet us and tell us this custard frozen yogurt. So, Minkow took the company public in nineteen eighty-six, garnering a spot on the NASDAQ, bruh. This is risky. So, the accountant who audited the company before it went public did not visit the insurance restoration sites himself. Had he done so, he would have discovered that they were just mailboxes located throughout San Fernando Valley. So, they basically, there's no real company there. Minkow retained fifty-three percent of controlling interest, making him an instant millionaire. Going public seemingly offered him a way to cover up his fraudulent activities. So, the downfall comes when accountants wanted to inspect the company's operations.

• 32:53Laci Mosley?

  Minkow borrowed fake offices for a tour of the interstate appraisal services and used an incomplete building to present a fake restoration job. So, he rented some offices. Did he hire actors too? Like, I feel like you have to hire actors, because you don't have employees for these offices, because these offices are fake, they're mailboxes.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  This is what loses me with scam, like, big, huge scams like this. Where it is like, what's the end goal here? Like, because I get it if it's like, well, I'm gonna be scamming, but I'm scamming simply because I want to just live the luxury, this luxurious lifestyle and have like millions and da-da-da. But it's so funny, because it's one thing to be like, I'm scamming right now in the beginning, you know, because you gotta be able to get your weight up. And then by the time I catch up, you know, da-da-da, so therefore my business will be legit, you know, whatever. But it's another thing to be like, man, I'm scamming, and I'm always be scamming, you thinking like, don't you know you're gonna get caught?

• 33:49Laci Mosley?

  I mean, for some people, they're career scammers. And I think they think like, maybe they won't get caught, or maybe by the time they get caught, they'll be too old to care. Like Bernie Madoff was like old as shit when he got caught. He lived a good life.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  But was he scamming the whole time?

• 34:02Laci Mosley?

  Yes, he really was.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 34:06Laci Mosley?

  So he probably just thought, you know, I'm gonna keep running it up. But I get what you're saying though, because it's like when rappers sell crack, like as soon as their rap careers get off, they stop selling crack. It's not like you see Jay-Z on the corner, like still selling crack.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  I'm done with the crack. Like I was doing the crack so I could be a rapper. Like that's what I was after, when I was done selling crack, I gotta go to the studio. So I didn't have no five, but.

• 34:27Laci Mosley?

  What if Jay-Z was just like really passionate about selling crack and just like continued to sell crack?

• 34:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, like it's, but that's crazy. These people are so passionate about it. Like this seems like so much work. Like to be like, like it's so much work to be like, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta fucking set this thing up. All right, cool. Gotta set this walkthrough. Gotta go.

• 34:43Laci Mosley?

  I gotta get on Backstage.com. This is the kind of job you get on Backstage.com.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  So you're gonna be the person that's, um, uh, you're gonna be happy to be about this place. And let me just see how you're, oh, okay.

• 34:54Laci Mosley?

  All right. All right. You're the mail guy. So you're gonna be pushing this cart around. I want you to come by. I want you to have a lot of mail on the cart, okay?

• 35:00Speaker 02

  Hmm. You really, so you look like you haven't ever done mail before. You know, we're gonna call you. We're gonna call you back. I got a couple more auditions. You got a couple more auditions for this part. It's like, this is crazy. Like this is so crazy. Like you're always having to like write fraudulent checks and do all this stuff and it get, it's like such a, like that's, the scammer lifestyle is so crazy. Cause it's like so much work for what? Like if you had this, if you had this type of like mind, it was like, why don't you do something real?

• 35:28Laci Mosley?

  Because this is real. Scamming is real, Ronnie.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  I get this. Like I get the idea of like, you know, I'm gonna go to the grocery, I'm gonna go to a grocery store and be like, yo, this apple, I don't know, like or even what Tina Marie did. But when it's like, all right, I'm on this big platform and you gotta spend so much brain energy. Like, all right, so I'm gonna go public. I'm gonna do this. It's like, you know, you could spend that so much time like actually thinking of something that's legit.

• 35:49Laci Mosley?

  Well, the weird thing is, is that Z Best was a legitimate profitable company. If he had just stopped there instead of using it to create a Ponzi scheme, but for all we know, he could have been laundering money. You know what I mean? And when you start laundering money to a certain extent, you do become like a public figure because if you get too much money, everybody's looking at you. You know what I mean? It just gets hot. I mean, obviously he had enough money to rent out buildings for fake tours and show a fake restoration job.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  I mean, who, who says rent out? He probably told them people would be like, all right, if I can borrow this building for a couple of hours, I'll clean all the carpets here for free.

• 36:30Laci Mosley?

  Z Best will clean these carpets for the rest of your fucking life, okay? Just give me thirty-five minutes and, and call me the CEO, okay?

• 36:39Speaker 02

  For the rest of my life, as long as we're a company, we'll clean these carpets.

• 36:43Laci Mosley?

  I'll clean your, your carpets, your mama carpets, your cousin carpets.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  He ain't doing it, that's the whole point. He, and that's what's going, that's the scam, because then he go like, and then he was, his partner was like, oh, you really gonna do that? He like, I'm not gonna do that shit. I was telling her that so I can get this spot. He can clean this dude's carpet.

• 36:58Laci Mosley?

  No, you gotta do it, because otherwise he might out you.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  How you gonna out you? Who you gonna find? He gotta find people to out him. This is nineteen eighty-seven, this ain't Twitter age, like, you know what I mean?

• 37:06Laci Mosley?

  You can't just tweet.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can't do-

• 37:08Laci Mosley?

  This is also a beautiful time to scam.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:11Laci Mosley?

  Because you can't tweet, you can't FaceTime, like, you have to manually, literally, go places to inspect them. So if it's in San Fernando, and we're operating in Los Angeles, and you're doing the accounting, I can just bring the books to you. And also, books that are cooked, like, if you, if you got, if you're cooking with the right flavor, and I'm telling you, Barry was the emerald of books, okay?

• 37:36Speaker 02

  Barry was the emerald of legacy of these books.

• 37:38Laci Mosley?

  Cooking books better than him. So it's like, what do you compare it to? Like, yeah, so you're right, there is like, the time period also is preventing, like, presenting challenges to, for him to get caught, which is beautiful.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  I mean, we live in an age where like, now everybody's just, I, I think everybody's so much more bold now. And I say that just because they know that there are so many ways for them to get caught, and they still do shit, you know, like-

• 38:01Laci Mosley?

  And that's what I love.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? Like, you can't, you can't, you gonna have, you can't have like, two families, like, two, three families now, because at some point it's gonna be like, I'm gonna catch you, you gonna, somebody will catch you.

• 38:10Laci Mosley?

  Someone's gonna have a Facebook post, so you're gonna be in the back of a photo.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  Back then, people, as late as like, what, ninety-nine, people was like, man, I can just do whatever, I got a family in Phoenix, and I come home in Los Angeles, and nobody would never tell.

• 38:23Laci Mosley?

  They would have them on the same street.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  Like, this shit is crazy.

• 38:27Laci Mosley?

  And, and you're so right about that, because like, there was literally, someone did a Yelp review that went viral about a restaurant, and they took a photo of like, their food or some crazy situation in the restaurant. And then someone commented under the Yelp review and was like, thank you so much for writing the skating review, because my husband's in the back of this photo with another woman, and I just caught him. And it's like, not fake.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Oh, shit.

• 38:53Laci Mosley?

  So like, you can't even, you cheating out here.

• 38:57Speaker 02

  You gotta be like, I wanna take you to this fancy place, this restaurant in the dark.

• 39:02Laci Mosley?

  You better make a picnic in the woods at midnight, at 3 a.m.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  Have always listening for signs.

• 39:11Laci Mosley?

  Why do we always have to meet by flashlight?

• 39:12Speaker 02

  I just wanna, Angela, Angela, that's you, Angela? Oh, okay, okay, we good, we good. Who's Angela? Nothing. I'm just, I don't know, it's just a name that I yell.

• 39:21Laci Mosley?

  Just a name that I yell. Insane.

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• 42:27Laci Mosley?

  So, Mingkaw became the youngest person to lead the company through an IPO, which an IPO is an initial public offering. This means that the company is offering its shares for sale to the public, so you can buy into this company, which is partially fake buildings. So Mingkaw launched a massive television advertisement. Mingkaw was trying to get caught.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  This is so... Come on, ladies. This is so much. This dude was doing the most.

• 42:54Laci Mosley?

  The confidence of this man, I love him so much. He launched a massive television advertising campaign portraying Z Best as a carpet cleaner that Southern Californians could trust. Now technically, you could trust the carpet cleaning. So by February 1987, Z Best was trading at $18 a share on the NASDAQ. That's pretty good.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 43:18Laci Mosley?

  Valuing the company at 280 million of them things.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 43:26Laci Mosley?

  Minkow's stake was worth 100 million, so he has like almost half of it. That's crazy. Then, almost as rapidly as Z Best rose, it fell due to the credit card fraud several years earlier. Minkow blamed the fraudulent charges on immoral contractors and another employee and paid back most of the victims. So remember back in the day, he was running scam, he was writing hot checks, he was doing credit card fraud, he was selling his nana's jewelry, honey. Like, but you know what? After I saw the Titanic, like, sell your nana's jewelry, because she threw that stone in the ocean, I said, bitch, you better jump in there and get that shit back. What's wrong with you?

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Nah, she's no good.

• 44:07Laci Mosley?

  And also, you murdered Jack, so why you trying to throw some jewelry down there for my man?

• 44:11Speaker 02

  Nah, he didn't want to get on, he didn't want to get on.

• 44:12Laci Mosley?

  He didn't want to get on. She was like, there's no room.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  She should've said something.

• 44:16Laci Mosley?

  She should've offered. She was so raggedy. So yeah, sell your grandma jewelry. Honestly, that, the Titanic, really ruined it for grandmas. Like, after that, I stopped fucking with grandmas. So he paid the women, or not the women, but the people back for, you know, the fraudulent charges and the credit card things that he had done. However, he had not paid back a homemaker who had been overcharged a few hundred dollars. Okay, let's see how this weighs in. So Minkow ignored the woman's request to pay her back. So the woman tracked down several other, ooh.

• 44:57Laci Mosley?

  You cannot scam somebody with time.

• 45:04Laci Mosley?

  Guys, all a petty, if, if you ever hear this phrase in your life, "I got time", you better fix whatever that situation is and immediately. Because when people have time and they are petty, they will ruin you.

• 45:22Speaker 02

  I bet you this woman was like older too. Like, because I'm pretty sure like he probably was like, oh, if I scam these old ass people. Trying to, like, oh, yeah, here's the, you know, I do the carpet, da, da, da.

• 45:32Laci Mosley?

  And he's been doing grandma scams for a while. He robbed his grandma.

• 45:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, so he's like, what the call it? And this old woman was like, they don't know how, I do my due diligence.

• 45:39Laci Mosley?

  Right. He was like, I don't even pay my own granny back. Like, if me ma can't get the coins back, bitch, like, you're out of luck.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  Like, well, me ma ain't me, so I'mma see you. We gon', I'mma see you again. Don't worry, I'mma be, I'mma be, I'mma be over to see you. Don't worry about that.

• 45:53Laci Mosley?

  So, this woman tracked down several other people who had been defrauded by Minkow and gave a diary of her findings to the Los Angeles Times. I remember this is the eighties.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  Like, what's super crazy about this is being like this, because we even understand about time. Like, today, once again, so different. Like, in order for her, she had to do so much legwork to find these people.

• 46:18Laci Mosley?

  She had to use a phone book, probably.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  This is like, she, she was, she did, she did that thing.

• 46:23Laci Mosley?

  A thick phone book.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  Like, this ain't like right now, where you're like, all right, I'mma go on a couple, couple people DMs. I seen, you know, I seen a couple people comment.

• 46:30Laci Mosley?

  And just be like, yo, tweet me if this also happened to you.

• 46:33Speaker 02

  I'm gonna, what the call it? I'mma see people who also making comments on, yep, I'mma, I'mma hit them up. Like, yo, you got a problem, da, da, da, so and so forth. Like, this woman had to be like, all right, I'm starting from scratch.

• 46:43Laci Mosley?

  So she said, give me the, what was it called? The Bell? The, um, what's the, what's the, uh, phone book called? It's called the something bell. Yeah, so she had to go get the white pages and the yellow pages.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  Man, I wish they had a name for it.

• 47:00Laci Mosley?

  And then, I can't think of the name of the phone book. It was something with a bell in it. Y'all tweet me names of phone books. I only saw a phone book as a child, okay? Uh, but so she had to get the phone book and then I don't even know how the fuck you find people who have been affected by the company.

• 47:16Speaker 02

  Exactly, where you even start?

• 47:17Laci Mosley?

  Robo-dollars?

• 47:18Speaker 02

  Where you even start, like?

• 47:20Laci Mosley?

  Are you just like, hey, hello?

• 47:22Speaker 02

  I mean, cause that, that movie is like, even then you gotta get like, some sort of person to give you information, to give you leads, to go contact people.

• 47:30Laci Mosley?

  She had to get leads?

• 47:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's like, who you, where do you start from with this? But she was like, no.

• 47:35Laci Mosley?

  Is she like waiting outside of the Z Best company every day, like with like sandwiches and like just papers scattered everywhere and like binoculars?

• 47:44Speaker 02

  Seeing people storming out, being like, okay, that person looked mad.

• 47:46Laci Mosley?

  They look mad, okay, okay, I'm gonna get them.

• 47:48Speaker 02

  Let me go, let me go see what's going on. Like, this is crazy. For a few hundred bucks, she was like, oh my gosh, she really needed that money. Rather, she needed that money or it's a principal thing.

• 47:57Laci Mosley?

  I think it was the principalities. It was the principalities of the issue because if you have this much time, like you did not need that money.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:05Laci Mosley?

  So, then she writes a diary. Sisters out here. You know, most people are writing about their emotions in their diary.

• 48:14Speaker 02

  Not her.

• 48:15Laci Mosley?

  She was in here like, March twenty-four, nineteen eighty-seven. I still haven't seen a dime from Z Best. I called and he told me to fuck off, old lady.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  Everybody, it sounds like those really, really like old southern bells, like, the gentleman hasn't called lately. It's like, why you, why you sound this old?

• 48:42Laci Mosley?

  I was trying to give you like Morgan Freeman's Shawshank Redemption.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 48:47Laci Mosley?

  Voiceover.

• 48:47Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 48:49Laci Mosley?

  I've been waiting outside of the Z Best carpet.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  Now, Z Best is...

• 48:56Laci Mosley?

  For eight hours every day. Sometimes Fred comes by and brings me a sandwich.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  Minkow went out to a nice restaurant. Hmm, odd.

• 49:10Laci Mosley?

  She's following him.

• 49:11Speaker 02

  Is he spending my money? I think, is he spending my money?

• 49:15Laci Mosley?

  Definitely.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  Probably. Don't worry. I'mma get that back. I'mma get that back.

• 49:22Laci Mosley?

  I hope that she was stalking him. I hope she was like, okay, when I give it to Los Angeles Times, I'll rip out the pages about me stalking him. But I'll leave everything else.

• 49:30Speaker 02

  There's a lot of pages in this book that's ripped out. You don't worry about those. They don't matter.

• 49:35Laci Mosley?

  So this is later that day, at a press conference, a reporter denoted another bombshell. She had evidence that the Sacramento project didn't exist. And that Z Best did not have a contractor's license required for large-scale restoration work. So she found out that the building that they showed them wasn't real and wasn't theirs. And she also found out that they didn't even fucking bother to go get the permits to do the fake job that they don't do. Damn.

• 50:07Speaker 02

  I mean, he did so much work in other areas and then just slipped up on the, on the, on the, on the small detail. The details. This is the details thing.

• 50:14Laci Mosley?

  Barry, you gotta have a secretary of scam. You gotta have somebody who's like, you know what you need? You have to hire a hater. You have to hire a hater, but they need to love you. And you need to pay them well.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  So who they hating on in this scenario?

• 50:27Laci Mosley?

  Everybody else.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 50:29Laci Mosley?

  Because here's the thing about haters and small, and small people who are petty and small. Like, they'll notice details like that. That's like, a hater's gonna zoom in on every Instagram photo you post. And check the walls and the corners to make sure that you haven't distorted the image. You know what I mean? And if you got somebody like that on your team.

• 50:49Speaker 02

  Check the walls. Oh, my God.

• 50:54Laci Mosley?

  They be doing it. Chloe Carr actually had to take down a picture because somebody zoomed in and was like, why this piece of tile bent like this?

• 51:03Laci Mosley?

  And that's why you need to have a hater friend and you send it to your hater friend first. You say, does this look good? And they'll be like, oh nah bitch, I could, I could clearly see that this uh, this wooden bar from the banister has been warped. So you gonna have to make your booty normal size again.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 51:19Laci Mosley?

  But he had a booty like that.

• 51:20Speaker 02

  What a wall.

• 51:22Laci Mosley?

  So, to calm nervous investors, Minkow issued a press release touting record profits and revenues. Which, sir. Okay, we have no way to prove that.

• 51:35Speaker 02

  I mean, that's the way to go though.

• 51:36Laci Mosley?

  That feels very Donald Trump to me, like, we made a lot of money.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean.

• 51:40Laci Mosley?

  Record profits.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  And you see, he's the president.

• 51:42Laci Mosley?

  The most money ever.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  Obviously, that goofy shit work. Like, you just tell people, some people, like, some people gonna be like, I don't know. But other people will be like, shut up, he said we made money. We gonna see that soon. Yeah, don't worry about it. You gonna get that soon.

• 51:54Laci Mosley?

  It's so crazy to me that so many white people are so mistrusting of black people and will scrutinize everything we say. But then if you white, you could just say crazy, wild, vague shit. And they'll be like, okay.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, don't flinch. You, and you can't flinch. Like, even in the face of like, so much factuals, like, that's the thing about Trump, I give it to him. He don't flinch. Like, he'll, you'll put shit like, right in front of his face being like, nigga, this yours, own this. He's like, nah, not me. I would never do that. Then he'll move, then he'll change the subject. Also, why would I ever write on paper like this? Why would I, you know, it's like, god damn, you're like, damn, maybe he right. Like, hold on, is we wrong about this? Like, don't flinch. Never will flinch.

• 52:31Laci Mosley?

  Oh god, ooh. So, July 2nd, Minkow abruptly resigned for health reasons. By this time, his company's stock had dropped by 81%. So, I'm hoping that Minkow has started selling off them shares. You know what I mean? Before, when he retired. Oh, and he retired. So, I wonder if, when he retired, he was like, let me get my shares of the company.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  I mean. Truly, we, once again, we have to put this in perspective. Like, truly, this dude is up there giving press conferences, probably looking like a teenage boy. He is very young, right? So, like, this ain't some old man where you go like, "Oh, okay, cool."

• 53:10Laci Mosley?

  Yeah, by the end, he's 24.

• 53:12Speaker 02

  Like, it's like, you looking at somebody being like, "Man, I mean..."

• 53:15Laci Mosley?

  But they wouldn't have high def, though. Ain't nobody have high def back then?

• 53:19Speaker 02

  I mean, but I'm sure this dude still looked like, you know, like a scrappy dude in a fucking oversized suit. "Don't worry, you..."

• 53:26Laci Mosley?

  He looked like the Little Rascals, like he was two people standing on top of each other.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then looking crazy, trying to tell the people like, "Don't worry about it, your money's safe." It's like, "How you know? You 21 years old. Like, you don't know shit."

• 53:37Laci Mosley?

  And he said, "Health reasons." You were very young for health reasons, okay. So, two days later, the Los Angeles Pizza Department...

• 53:45Speaker 02

  The Los Angeles Pizza Department? Pizza Department?

• 53:48Laci Mosley?

  The LAPD, man. Fuck the LAPD. Two days later, the LAPD raided Z's Best Headquarters and Minkow's Home and found evidence that the company was being used to launder drug profits for organized crime, which I pretty much suspected in the beginning. Um, so basically, the, um, restoration company that they had no permits for, that was a shell company. So, there's like a ton of different ways to launder money, and it's all very complicated. And sometimes, we Google "how to launder money." There's like...

• 54:19Speaker 02

  I mean, not now, though. We just right off the dome. Let's write on Lacy's Dome right now.

• 54:22Laci Mosley?

  No, I Googled "how to launder money." Um, because there's like, layering, then there's placement, and then there's integration. And that's super fucking vague, but it's because you can do it in lots of different ways. So, in this particular way, um, My Man's Berry was using his fake company, the one that did restorations with no permits and no buildings, as a shell company. So, it was just a front. So, basically, all the drug money that was coming in, he could clean by saying that they were profits from this fake company that did not actually do anything. It only existed on paper. And mailboxes, because remember, the, uh, this is really the auditor's fault, but who audited, uh, My Man's before they went public, because he ain't want to drive to San Fernando.

• 55:04Laci Mosley?

  So he never discovered that it was just mailboxes.

• 55:08Speaker 02

  This is tight. So, so, so for all you dough boys out there listening to this scam, this scam got us podcast, right? You out there making it, you out there on the streets trying to feed your family, making your dough nobly, of course. It's not for flossing, it's for, you, you gotta feed your family. Um, and so you make it, so you got a ton of dough. And it's like, all right, well, I gotta be able to learn of this. So get your homie, get him to give like a, a, like a car cleaning business, like a, you know, like that's what we love, that's, we love that shit. The interior joints, we do that. That shit ain't real. We know it ain't real.

• 55:37Laci Mosley?

  Oh my god, what if every car cleaning business is a drug front?

• 55:42Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 55:42Laci Mosley?

  Cause we know laundromats are.

• 55:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, what if every car cleaning business, I mean, not every, but I would what, like 70% of them probably are?

• 55:50Laci Mosley?

  I'm gonna say 70, I'm gonna say the same for laundromats. My old landlord owned a laundromat. And he was very chill about when my roommates would pay their rent. And I was like, that's because he don't need that money. And he was always in makeup. Like he was always in makeup. So, you know, you, we put the facts together.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 56:12Laci Mosley?

  And that's why I loved him. I think that's why we got along is because we were both scammers and we knew it.

• 56:16Speaker 02

  Hey, game, peak game. All right, give me, give me the money when you can.

• 56:19Laci Mosley?

  Also, he was so nice that I'm like, he definitely murdering people. Cause everybody thinks murderers are probably like these grim scary people. I think it's the people who look gentle and, you know, and they're gen- Cause it's like, I'm good to you till you're, till you're not of use to me anymore, or till you cross me.

• 56:37Speaker 02

  I can see that.

• 56:37Laci Mosley?

  I could so see my last landlord just being like, all right, man, uh, it was nice working with you. We don't need your services anymore. And then he just leaves and the guy's like, murder the guy.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  That's like.

• 56:53Laci Mosley?

  I see that.

• 56:53Speaker 02

  This is crazy. Also, I, I also would love to point out the fact that, uh, when Lacey, uh, said it, she was like, yeah, that's why he didn't trip when my, uh, my roommates didn't, uh, pay their bills all the time. Like she didn't throw herself in there. She was like, I always pay mine all the time. She didn't want to throw herself in there. She knows he was like, you know, you've been like.

• 57:08Laci Mosley?

  I wasn't. The reason that we didn't get evicted when one of my roommates, and this is the reason I live alone, she like, didn't pay her rent for three months while I was shooting. And I came back and I was like, I want to upgrade the apartment. Cause I came back with a little money. And my landlord was like, oh yeah, we could totally do that, but first you have to pay the rent. And I was like, wait, what? It was like first you gotta pay the rent. He was like, yeah, I was actually about to evict you guys. He sent me the paper forms of how my roommates had, cause we sent it all individually. How they had neglect, they had been late on rent for like two years. And then like, we're really pushing it now. We're like doing like multiple months without paying rent.

• 57:45Speaker 02

  I mean, first of all, that's a good ass landlord. Cause you know, most of the time if it's being like, alright, cool. I see that y'all three people.

• 57:51Laci Mosley?

  That's my thought.

• 57:51Speaker 02

  But y'all gonna be paying, y'all gonna have to give it to me all at once. I'm not gonna be like going to you for yours and you for yours and you for yours.

• 57:59Laci Mosley?

  Right.

• 57:59Speaker 02

  So I mean, he was really, damn, that's really nice.

• 58:01Laci Mosley?

  He was so sweet, but obviously I think that's because he had other business to attend to. He was like, I gotta go back.

• 58:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, he probably had some other tenant places, other.

• 58:10Laci Mosley?

  Yeah, and businesses. He had shell companies and books to cook. You know, he had other shit going on.

• 58:16Speaker 02

  He was over there going to La Cordera Blue trying to get his book, his books cooking going.

• 58:21Laci Mosley?

  Right. Oh, yeah. He's just like a certified, like three Michelin star book cook.

• 58:28Laci Mosley?

  That's what I, that's one of my goals. Um, so yeah, of course they, the police are up on it. So Ming Kao and ten other Z best insiders were indicted by Los Angeles federal grand jury, January nineteen eighty-eight on fifty-four counts of racketeering, securities fraud and money laundering, ooh, and embezzlement. Wait a minute, also mail fraud.

• 58:50Laci Mosley?

  Don't stop the beat now. Tax evasion, ooh, and also bank fraud. Um.

• 58:56Speaker 02

  He was doing a lot. He was doing a lot.

• 59:00Laci Mosley?

  They hit him with the, they hit him with everything.

• 59:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, he did. They was like, we ain't letting none of your things slide, every last one of them.

• 59:07Laci Mosley?

  Also though, if you have ten people who are implicated in this crime, I'm a little disappointed that they, none of them thought to get you a contract. Like a fake contract for your fake company. Like nobody thought to make your fake company whole. Y'all couldn't build one building.

• 59:22Speaker 02

  I bet you like.

• 59:23Laci Mosley?

  You couldn't restore one joint just for the culture.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  Well, he'd have had, so I'm pretty sure like everybody, I'm pretty sure he probably ripped off them as well. Probably like less, like they got to eating shit, but like they was like, damn, I ain't even, you know what I'm saying? Like he probably was. Also doing them dirty.

• 59:38Laci Mosley?

  No, I feel like if you have a sous chef in your kitchen and they see you cooking the books, like your sous chef has to learn to cook as well. Like when you go on vacation, like the sous chef gotta run the restaurant still.

• 59:49Speaker 02

  I mean, I think you can know if it's like, you got, I think you gotta look at the time that everybody got. Like, you know, if everyone got lesser times, that means that.

• 59:56Laci Mosley?

  So let's see. So on December fourteenth, he was found guilty on all of them things.

• 1:00:02Speaker 02

  Oh, shock.

• 1:00:03Laci Mosley?

  They came in and they said racketeering, guilty, security fraud, guilty, money laundering, guilty, embezzlement, guilty, mail fraud, jail time, tax evasion.

• 1:00:16Speaker 02

  And every time they go to, he like standing there like, okay, but not this one though. Damn. All right, what's the next one?

• 1:00:22Laci Mosley?

  Damn.

• 1:00:23Speaker 02

  Okay, all right. Oh, y'all can't get me on this one though. Y'all ain't got no, damn.

• 1:00:26Laci Mosley?

  They're like bank fraud, get the cuffs.

• 1:00:31Laci Mosley?

  Like, they gave, they threw the book at my mans.

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, dude.

• 1:00:35Laci Mosley?

  They threw the phone book.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, but they threw the phone book, whatever that is, the Bell, they threw the Southern Bell phone book at them mans.

• 1:00:40Laci Mosley?

  So in March nineteen eighty-nine, he was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison, placed on five years probation and ordered to pay twenty-six million of them things in restitution. Now, he was worth a hundred million. He did retire, right? Uh, two days before he got arrested. I wonder if he had pulled, if he had liquidated his stocks. I wonder how much money he had. And we don't know. And he got twenty-five years, bruh. You know what? Life is wild. Amber fucking Geiger got five fucking years for shooting a man in his own goddamn home. But this man got twenty-five years in prison because he plagued y'all.

• 1:01:19Speaker 02

  Uh huh. I mean, but to be fair to the situations, he probably played a bunch of white people.

• 1:01:25Laci Mosley?

  You're right.

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? If Amber Geiger walked up in that house and shot a nice, a Mr. Rogers-like white man, you know what I mean?

• 1:01:33Laci Mosley?

  While he was putting, he was changing his sweater and he was putting on one shoe.

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? Like, she probably would have, I don't know.

• 1:01:39Laci Mosley?

  She would have got more time.

• 1:01:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, she probably would have got at least ten.

• 1:01:41Laci Mosley?

  And she definitely wouldn't have got no hugs from the family. I'm not getting into this.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  That's not what the scammers want to hear.

• 1:01:47Laci Mosley?

  No, they don't want to hear that and we know that's dark, that's dark. We try to keep it light. But I am just saying, like, this sentence seems heavy and he is white. I'm abdicating for him.

• 1:01:56Speaker 02

  I mean, he got twenty-five years, but I'm pretty sure he probably didn't do them. He probably didn't do all twenty-five.

• 1:02:00Laci Mosley?

  I hope not. Or I hope it was at like a really nice prison with like a golf course and massages and acupuncture.

• 1:02:05Speaker 02

  I mean, if I know my man, it's Ming Kao. Don't worry. He, he living, he was living good up in there. He was doing okay.

• 1:02:12Laci Mosley?

  Also, he's young as hell, so he's gonna probably not serve all twenty-five. He'll probably get out in his late thirties, early forties.

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:18Laci Mosley?

  He'll still have a full life.

• 1:02:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was doing, he, he, he was doing alright in there. He would every now and then get some filet mignon to come in there. He was scamming in jail. He knew, he knew how to do it.

• 1:02:25Laci Mosley?

  I'm sure he has got some money tucked away in some offshores.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  Come on, he has to.

• 1:02:30Laci Mosley?

  But what's crazy is also like he was laundering for a drug front, but they didn't murk him.

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. Probably because he didn't rap. That's probably why he went to jail. Like, when you don't rap, they tend to do you alone.

• 1:02:39Laci Mosley?

  Very. You a real one.

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's okay. All right. You didn't say nothing, huh?

• 1:02:44Laci Mosley?

  Nothing, not a pe-.

• 1:02:45Speaker 02

  I know a guy, I know a guy in jail that can probably watch over you. Go see Fat Tony. He'll be able to tell you.

• 1:02:50Laci Mosley?

  So while in prison, Ming Kao had become a born-again Christian. Hallelujah. During his prison stay, he became involved in a Christian ministry, completing coursework through Liberty University School's lifelong learning. After Ming Kao's early release from prison in nineteen ninety-five, like we, yeah, he didn't do that time.

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  Not at all. That ain't even close. That ain't even half.

• 1:03:13Laci Mosley?

  Wait a minute, he went to court in nineteen eighty-eight, bruh. He did seven years. He didn't even do half.

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  He wasn't, yeah.

• 1:03:20Laci Mosley?

  He's still spry.

• 1:03:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was, he was hella good. He was like, I'm still, I ain't even thirty yet. I'm out here balling. I ain't even thirty yet. Look at me.

• 1:03:27Laci Mosley?

  So then he goes to work as a pastor of evangelism at a church at Rocky Peak in Chatsworth, California.

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  All right. Now, hold on, before you continue to read, I just want to point out the fact. I, right now, am waiting for this other shoe to drop. I don't trust it. I don't trust it.

• 1:03:46Laci Mosley?

  You don't think he really found God?

• 1:03:47Speaker 02

  I don't trust it.

• 1:03:48Laci Mosley?

  You don't think he went in there, he was like, God, is that you?

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  He was like, oh shit, this is, this is a new hustle. Okay.

• 1:03:54Laci Mosley?

  We all know the church is a fantastic hustle.

• 1:03:57Speaker 02

  Some of them are. Some of them are.

• 1:03:58Laci Mosley?

  But some are good churches. If I don't say that, my mom will get mad at me.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm, some are doing.

• 1:04:03Laci Mosley?

  Cause she's sick of my shit.

• 1:04:06Laci Mosley?

  One of her church going friends listening to me being like, she's like, I raised you.

• 1:04:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:10Laci Mosley?

  So in nineteen ninety seven, he became the pastor of Community Bible Church in San Diego. And

• 1:04:17Speaker 02

  Community Bible Church?

• 1:04:18Laci Mosley?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  Alright.

• 1:04:19Laci Mosley?

  And also in nineteen ninety five, he wrote a firsthand account of Z Best Scam. Clean Sweep, that's what the book is called.

• 1:04:28Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:04:29Laci Mosley?

  And um, all of the, he should have just called it Z Best Scam.

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. Like Clean Sweep, I was like, but it's carpet though.

• 1:04:36Laci Mosley?

  Yeah, that don't make no sense.

• 1:04:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was hardwood, you do that.

• 1:04:39Laci Mosley?

  You know what though? Clean Sweep sounds better as like a scam marketing book because I didn't know about Z Best. I probably wouldn't pick that shit up. I wouldn't know what I was reading.

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  I just mean that Clean Sweep, it sounds tight until you get to the logic of it. You mean like, oh, that shit don't even make no sense. Like, it's not even close. Like, you don't sweep the carpet.

• 1:04:55Laci Mosley?

  Clean vacuum?

• 1:04:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. I get it. It works perfectly. But when you think about it, it's like, oh, this shit don't even, that shit don't even go.

• 1:04:59Laci Mosley?

  Suction.

• 1:05:00Speaker 02

  It just sound tight.

• 1:05:00Laci Mosley?

  That sounds like, that sounds like a Zane book, like an erotic novel. Suction.

• 1:05:06Speaker 02

  I laid her down on the dirty ass carpet.

• 1:05:09Laci Mosley?

  Alright, sir. So all of the book's proceeds went to repaying his victims.

• 1:05:13Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. Yeah, because obviously he didn't have that money. I don't know, I don't got the money.

• 1:05:17Laci Mosley?

  Off short.

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  He don't got the money.

• 1:05:19Laci Mosley?

  So soon after his arrival, a church member, so this is when he starts the Community Bible Church. Soon after his arrival, a church member asked him to look into a money management firm in nearby Orange County. Suspecting that something was amiss, Minkau alerted federal authorities who discovered it was a three hundred million dollar pyramid scheme. Wait a minute, Barry. So you became a snitch when you found Jesus?

• 1:05:46Laci Mosley?

  I be reading a good book and it don't say nothing about snitching. It say, love thy neighbor.

• 1:05:52Speaker 02

  I get that.

• 1:05:53Laci Mosley?

  If that neighbor doing, doth do crime, none of thy business.

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  Well, but I was thinking about it like this. He could be like, alright, this time I'm gonna get back in their good graces. I'm gonna snitch on these cats.

• 1:06:04Laci Mosley?

  Oh.

• 1:06:04Speaker 02

  Get them in my grave like, hey, damn, look how good I am.

• 1:06:06Laci Mosley?

  Some of that restitution off.

• 1:06:07Speaker 02

  Come on, man. Like, I just told them this thing. Like, yeah, y'all can trust me. And then

• 1:06:11Laci Mosley?

  You are so right.

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  Laying the groundwork to take advantage of him later.

• 1:06:14Laci Mosley?

  Yes.

• 1:06:15Speaker 02

  I mean, he could be smart. Let's see. Let's see, Barry. Let's see.

• 1:06:18Laci Mosley?

  So this was the beginning of a fraud discovery institute, a for-profit investigation firm, which eventually transpired. I'm not even gonna say that. I'm gonna save the last part. So. He basically starts a business where he is detecting fraud for the government because he has done fraud.

• 1:06:38Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 1:06:39Laci Mosley?

  Right?

• 1:06:40Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:06:40Laci Mosley?

  So he soon attracted the attention of the media and began T- appearing on TV as a fraud expert. Several Wall Street investors liked what they saw and they sent him enough money to go after bigger targets. So now, the people he scammed on Wall Street are like giving him money to go find other scammers. So Ming Kao claimed to have uncovered a billion dollars worth of fraud over the years. Ming Kao almost always held a position in stocks on which he reported. However, he has since stated that while his lawyers advised him the practice was legal, it was probably unethical. So now he's like kind of getting into ethics and he's getting into like money laundering, drug fronts, businesses like this.

• 1:07:22Laci Mosley?

  So several companies have sued Ming Kao for making false accusations against them and most of which have been settled out of court. So he probably raked up like a bag. Snitching on companies. Then some companies were like, we not even doing fraud, bruh.

• 1:07:37Speaker 02

  Bruh, we over here, we legit over here, bruh. This is crazy.

• 1:07:41Laci Mosley?

  Snitched on every laundry company he ever saw. Anytime he drove past a washing phone, he called the feds.

• 1:07:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, this don't look good over here.

• 1:07:49Laci Mosley?

  And he was probably right 70% of the time. So some of the washing phones were like, damn, we not actually doing crime. So one month after Ming Kao learned that he was a subject of a criminal investigation, he announced to his attorney that he was pleading guilty on one count of insider trading. So remember, he was going to figure out companies, like if they were doing fraud, checking their books, things like that. Also, he had specific stock intel because that's on what he was basically reporting the most. Because his fraud, even though it had to do with money laundering with his like shell company, he also defrauded like Wall Street, the NASDAQ. And so he's basically going in specifically looking at stocks.

• 1:08:31Laci Mosley?

  So he was using this information while he was fraud detecting to do insider trading. He couldn't stop doing crime.

• 1:08:38Speaker 02

  He couldn't. He couldn't. I mean, this was- A lower scale, like, cuz he definitely like, oh, okay, like, this one, he probably was like, this is so damn easy, like, they throwing this right into my lap.

• 1:08:47Laci Mosley?

  Right, they're literally paying me to come in here, look at inside information, and then I can go use it.

• 1:08:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I ain't gotta hire no, I ain't gotta hire no fake company, I ain't gotta make no commercials.

• 1:08:56Laci Mosley?

  I don't have to get on backstitch.com and Craigslist and Backpage, I don't have to do mail fraud.

• 1:09:03Speaker 02

  I don't gotta get like ten of my homies in this, I can, it's just me, this is tight.

• 1:09:07Laci Mosley?

  This is fantastic.

• 1:09:08Speaker 02

  This is crazy.

• 1:09:09Laci Mosley?

  So Mekow claims not to know at the time that he was breaking the law, which is my favorite excuse. He said, oh, you mean, I can't go look at a company's reports and stocks and they use that information to purchase said stocks?

• 1:09:23Speaker 02

  Oh, man, it's the first I'm hearing about this.

• 1:09:25Laci Mosley?

  Also, he's still pretty young, so maybe people will believe him.

• 1:09:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:28Laci Mosley?

  In a pre-sentencing evaluation, Mekow was diagnosed as having antisocial personality disorder, narcissist, wait, this is a long list, so, Mekow was diagnosed with having antisocial personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety disorder, opioid dependence, anabolic steroid abuse.

• 1:09:53Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:09:53Laci Mosley?

  And he was diagnosed with migraine headaches.

• 1:09:57Speaker 02

  Hmm, okay.

• 1:10:00Laci Mosley?

  So, the headaches is really what, everything else on here, I hate mental health shaming, I think these are all legitimate, I know they are, but you go tell the judge you had headaches and that's why you did insider trading?

• 1:10:15Speaker 02

  Like, y'all don't understand, like, it's just.

• 1:10:17Laci Mosley?

  The sentence wasn't working, so I had to start insider trading.

• 1:10:20Speaker 02

  Have you, Judge, have you ever had a bad migraine? Like, I got them all the time, like, I can't even.

• 1:10:26Laci Mosley?

  And that's why I have to break the law.

• 1:10:27Speaker 02

  I have to break the law, I think, health, health stuff ain't easy, it ain't easy, I can get into healthcare.

• 1:10:33Laci Mosley?

  What? So, two months later, it emerged that officials within the church had accused Mekow of running a fraud discovery institute with church funds, applying for credit cards in the name of church members.

• 1:10:43Speaker 02

  Is he still doing, is he still a pastor at this time, by the way? All right, okay, Barry, all right, they had to find this stuff, and they also be like, all right, but I gotta get this sermon, I gotta get this sermon popping for Sunday, all right, Barry, okay, Barry.

• 1:10:56Laci Mosley?

  You're a busy man.

• 1:10:58Speaker 02

  Very at your, at your community bible church. That's not even, they don't have a denomination. It's like, what church is this? This is a bible church.

• 1:11:04Laci Mosley?

  They're trying to get everybody's money.

• 1:11:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, he ain't like, man, I don't, I don't, I don't shit, nobody. Whoever, baptist, presbyterian, Catholic.

• 1:11:10Laci Mosley?

  The bible?

• 1:11:13Laci Mosley?

  He ain't doing no denomination up here.

• 1:11:15Speaker 02

  That's on the market, I tell you. Did you like the bible?

• 1:11:17Laci Mosley?

  He said, we're not even non-denominational, okay? We just all denominational.

• 1:11:22Speaker 02

  Y'all believe Jesus is lord?

• 1:11:24Laci Mosley?

  Then come on in.

• 1:11:25Speaker 02

  Come on in.

• 1:11:26Laci Mosley?

  We got something for ya.

• 1:11:30Laci Mosley?

  So he was still running the church at the time.

• 1:11:33Speaker 02

  Alright.

• 1:11:34Laci Mosley?

  And applying, what, what's really sending me is that he was applying for credit cards in church members' names. That's wild.

• 1:11:40Speaker 02

  That he was doing that?

• 1:11:41Laci Mosley?

  Yes. And he was leading his flock into bad investments. Sir, so when you preaching on Sunday, are you getting up like, hello everyone, thank y'all, thank y'all so much for coming out here today? The Lord hath told me that gold is up.

• 1:12:02Speaker 02

  King Midas.

• 1:12:06Laci Mosley?

  Like, is this Ernest and Young, or is this a church?

• 1:12:08Speaker 02

  I don't even, I, I honestly, I don't even believe, I don't believe he wrote it, ever wrote a sermon. I would say, I believe he probably went to other churches, like night churches, or like a church on a Wednesday.

• 1:12:16Laci Mosley?

  And stole the sermon.

• 1:12:17Speaker 02

  And just stole everybody's sermon, and then just went to the church and gave, uh, gave them the debt.

• 1:12:21Laci Mosley?

  You're right. I would believe that.

• 1:12:23Speaker 02

  One hundred percent.

• 1:12:23Laci Mosley?

  So, one woman says that Minkop asked her for three hundred thousand dollars purportedly to help finance a movie about his redemption.

• 1:12:32Laci Mosley?

  Sir, if my pastor ever asked me for three hundred thousand dollars. Hey, Sam, do you mind staying after church?

• 1:12:40Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, yeah, what's going on?

• 1:12:42Laci Mosley?

  Hey, hey, hey.

• 1:12:43Speaker 02

  Hi, how you doing? Hey, Pastor, hey, great sermon by the way.

• 1:12:44Laci Mosley?

  Oh, thank you so much.

• 1:12:45Speaker 02

  Sounds so fresh and original.

• 1:12:46Laci Mosley?

  Absolutely. Um, you know, I, I've been noticing that you, you look real blessed these days.

• 1:12:51Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:12:52Laci Mosley?

  Are, are those Balenciagas?

• 1:12:53Speaker 02

  Oh, yes, these, oh, yes, of course. Um, these are, it's been hard for us.

• 1:12:58Laci Mosley?

  And that's a Rolex watch?

• 1:12:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, my grandma died and like, she left me with a lot of money. I didn't realize she had as much money as she did. And, you know, I've been searching just a little bit to kind of make myself feel better.

• 1:13:06Laci Mosley?

  Yeah, the Lord, the Lord taketh and the Lord giveth, and the Lord instructed ye to giveth his will. Yeah.

• 1:13:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, well, I gave a lecture in time today.

• 1:13:14Laci Mosley?

  Did you tie?

• 1:13:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I gave a lecture in time today.

• 1:13:16Laci Mosley?

  Did you give ten percent of your grandma's money?

• 1:13:18Speaker 02

  Uh, I wouldn't say ten percent, Pastor, but I gave more than I usually give.

• 1:13:21Laci Mosley?

  Let's do ten percent, but how about we give it to me? Is it as an investment? In a blessing?

• 1:13:28Speaker 02

  An investment for what Pastor?

• 1:13:29Laci Mosley?

  You will help me anoint the silver screens of this great nation.

• 1:13:35Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. How much money?

• 1:13:38Laci Mosley?

  Three hundred thousand dollars.

• 1:13:39Speaker 02

  Okay. Pastor, I gotta be honest, I know a little bit about movies. That movie about to be trashed there. Three hundred dollars, three hundred thousand dollars? That's not enough to make a good movie?

• 1:13:46Laci Mosley?

  Shot on the iPhone.

• 1:13:49Speaker 02

  Not in the nineties? Yeah, okay.

• 1:13:51Laci Mosley?

  So he admitted to embezzling over three million dollars in donations to Community Bible Church. Why is he asking for three hundred thousand dollars if he's embezzled three million? What is he spending his money on?

• 1:14:01Speaker 02

  I mean, that's the thing. I'm learning about business stuff and like, guess what? When you even have money, you don't spend your own money. Like you, you spend other, you spend like the banks money, but that's why he like, I don't spend my own money. I know the rules to this. I've been scamming since I was nine years old. I know the rules to this.

• 1:14:14Laci Mosley?

  He has been scamming since he was nine. So he opened unauthorized, unauthorized bank accounts on the church's behalf, forged signatures on the church's checks, diverted money from church accounts to his personal use, and charged unauthorized personal experiences on church credit cards.

• 1:14:29Speaker 02

  This dude just can't stop.

• 1:14:30Laci Mosley?

  Massages on Jesus, cars on Jesus, put everything on Jesus. Among his victims were a widower who gave seventy-five thousand dollars to fund a supposed hospital in Sudan to honor his wife after she died of cancer, and a woman who gave Ming Kao three hundred thousand dollars that would have otherwise gone to help raise her teenage granddaughter.

• 1:14:53Speaker 02

  This dude really told somebody, yo, give me some money and I'm gonna, and it's go, I'm gonna go build a hospital in the Sudan.

• 1:15:04Speaker 02

  I feel like this thing just turned the globe and was like, the Sudan, that's what I'm gonna say, the Sudan.

• 1:15:09Laci Mosley?

  A place I know you'll never fucking go.

• 1:15:11Speaker 02

  You ain't never going to the Sudan. Oh my God.

• 1:15:15Laci Mosley?

  So, and dude, that's sad. He did it for his late wife, so I feel bad for him.

• 1:15:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh, he, yeah.

• 1:15:20Laci Mosley?

  That's so sad.

• 1:15:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, no jokes on you, my man. I'm sorry about that, man. Sorry for your loss. Sorry for your loss.

• 1:15:26Laci Mosley?

  Okay. So in June twenty fourteen, Ming Kao reached an agreement with the federal prosecutors that called for him to pay three point four million dollars in restitution again on top of his twenty-six million dollar restitution. So he, the book must not have done that well because it did not pay off his twenty-six mil. As a result of his last sentence, Ming Kao was released June sixth, twenty nineteen. My man's just got out.

• 1:15:49Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:15:49Laci Mosley?

  Tea glizzy, first day out. So it looks like they may be doing a film adaptation.

• 1:15:58Speaker 02

  Hmm, I mean, this is all interesting.

• 1:16:00Laci Mosley?

  And actually, they did. So following his release, it was canceled. Um, like, so they were gonna actually do a film adaptation.

• 1:16:08Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 1:16:09Laci Mosley?

  And it was canceled, um, when he got arrested. So then, the film was retitled Con Man, and the original title was Minkout. Um, and it was, it was released in March twenty eighteen, Con Man.

• 1:16:22Speaker 02

  Con Man, and it's about him, though?

• 1:16:24Laci Mosley?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:25Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 1:16:26Laci Mosley?

  Everybody go out, watch Con Man.

• 1:16:27Speaker 02

  Go watch Con Man.

• 1:16:28Laci Mosley?

  It's probably on Amazon.

• 1:16:29Speaker 02

  I mean, I mean.

• 1:16:30Laci Mosley?

  Netflix.

• 1:16:31Speaker 02

  I don't know, this is so interesting and compelling, like, and he got all them diseases and all that stuff, like, so it's just like, I can feel like he just like, yeah, I can see that, uh, the notion that he just like, look, man, I scam once, and I just can't stop. At that, I can't stop scamming. I'm, I'm gonna keep going, I'm gonna keep, I'm gonna put credit cards in people's names, I'm gonna ask people for money that I shouldn't be asking, I'm gonna be doing all this, on top of the fact that I'm getting, I'm getting the bag also doing the fraud shit, like, but I can't stop getting money. Like, if people gonna give me this money, I can't stop taking it from them.

• 1:17:03Laci Mosley?

  Can't stop, won't stop.

• 1:17:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, until they send me to jail. I can't stop, won't stop till they send me to jail.

• 1:17:08Laci Mosley?

  And then they keep letting him out. He, well, he did a bid this time, though, because he got out in twenty nineteen, so he did a bid.

• 1:17:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I guarantee you right now, like, he like, you know what, man?

• 1:17:21Laci Mosley?

  I'm gonna start scamming again.

• 1:17:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. They already thinking here, like, all right, man, what's a scam that's not gonna get me in jail? You know, I'm just, I know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna start, I'm gonna start going and scamming food, getting this free food first of all. Let me go in here first of all, I'm hungry. Let me go to this McDonald's real quick and tell them they didn't get my McChicken sandwich.

• 1:17:36Laci Mosley?

  Oh, he's gonna start, he's gonna go all the way down to Tina Marie?

• 1:17:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, he gonna go to Tina Marie's level.

• 1:17:40Laci Mosley?

  I was gonna say, he'll start washing cars.

• 1:17:43Speaker 02

  Barry ain't never.

• 1:17:43Laci Mosley?

  Because he can glean money with that, too.

• 1:17:45Speaker 02

  He ain't washing cars. He already gonna, he gonna figure out a way to like, get in on somebody else's car washing business, like, hey, you know what? I can really help you expand your business. I'm really good at this.

• 1:17:53Laci Mosley?

  Into crime.

• 1:17:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:54Laci Mosley?

  You like crime?

• 1:17:58Laci Mosley?

  All right, guys, oh, I hate this part, and I have to let Ronnie go.

• 1:18:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:02Laci Mosley?

  It's been wonderful.

• 1:18:03Speaker 02

  This has really been very interesting. I learned a lot.

• 1:18:05Laci Mosley?

  I did too.

• 1:18:06Speaker 02

  I'm gonna go home and try to read more up on money laundering. Not to do it.

• 1:18:10Laci Mosley?

  I am too.

• 1:18:11Speaker 02

  Not to do it, but just to be like.

• 1:18:12Laci Mosley?

  Just to know the specifics of each type of money laundering, just to know.

• 1:18:17Speaker 02

  It's crazy. You watch so many, I've seen so many movies where that is a crime that people are accused of. I'm just like, yeah, okay, cool. But you really don't really know the intricacies of it.

• 1:18:27Laci Mosley?

  No, they're not putting it out there. I gotta get on the dark web. So the scammer of the week is Bruce Bagley. This is the segment of the show where we honor one charlatan that's really worthy of our praise. And this week it's Bruce Bagley, a university professor seen as an expert on organized crimes and the drug trade, has been arrested for allegedly laundering millions of dollars. Really stayed on theme with this episode. So he was an expert, but then he also was doing the laundering. So the professor of international relations at the University of Miami is accused of helping launder $300 million of dirty money from Venezuela while skimming about $300,000 for himself. Other reports say that the total involved is 2.5 million, which he's accused of receiving from bank accounts in Switzerland. Always scammy to have a Swiss bank account.

• 1:19:12Laci Mosley?

  And they were the proceeds of bribery and embezzlement in Venezuela. So the US attorney said in a statement that Badgley, who was held on Monday and retained about 10% as commission, he's charged with two counts of money laundering and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Badgley is 73. And considered one of the foremost experts in the field. He wrote the 2015 book Drug Trafficking, Organized Crime and Violence in Today's America. The academic has previously worked and consulted with the FBI as well as the US State Department and the DEA. So. Maybe we need to be looking at these experts. Cause if you know how to do it.

• 1:19:55Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 1:19:56Laci Mosley?

  Also, I think that's dope because you could give the government just enough tea, but you don't have to give them all the tricks. You save the new shit for yourself. And then also you get to learn how much technology the government actually has.

• 1:20:09Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. And what they, yeah, I mean, that's a great, like, to be on the inside, like, that's also a form of boldness. To be on the inside, being like, alright, cool. And I'm scamming on the inside and being like, and this is so foolproof. I can't, I won't get caught. And then also they trust me, like, how do they, they're like, nah.

• 1:20:25Laci Mosley?

  They'll never even be looking into you while, meanwhile, they're like, oh, man, uh, Bruce showed up today looking real clean. Is he driving a Rolls Royce? I thought he was a professor.

• 1:20:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:36Laci Mosley?

  Yeah, yeah, I'm tenured.

• 1:20:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm tenured, I'm old, I've been living, saving money for a long time.

• 1:20:40Laci Mosley?

  I save my money my whole life.

• 1:20:41Speaker 02

  My whole life. I thought I was spurred finally, you know, what else I'm gonna do with it? It's like, alright, Bruce.

• 1:20:46Laci Mosley?

  I feel like at seventy-three, if he helped y'all catch all these people, y'all can't make him go to jail for this. Like, let my mans go.

• 1:20:51Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, he probably, that's what he probably thought too. They probably pulled him in the room being like, Bruce, how you do this to us, Bruce?

• 1:20:58Laci Mosley?

  They fucking know him.

• 1:20:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:59Laci Mosley?

  They're gonna be like, oh, Mike, Bruce.

• 1:21:01Speaker 02

  Bruce.

• 1:21:01Laci Mosley?

  Like, you know how they got him too? They probably didn't even, like, arrest him. They were just like, let's just let him show up for work today.

• 1:21:10Laci Mosley?

  Let him show up to work today. Bruce, you're gonna have to give us your key card.

• 1:21:14Speaker 02

  Why, what happened?

• 1:21:15Laci Mosley?

  I'm getting fired? No, you're going to federal prison.

• 1:21:18Speaker 02

  Oh, that don't sound right, why? No, I didn't do that.

• 1:21:21Laci Mosley?

  No, I investigated myself, I definitely didn't do that.

• 1:21:24Speaker 02

  I investigated myself. I investigated myself, I came out clean. I investigated myself and I came out clean.

• 1:21:31Laci Mosley?

  Oh, man, Rodney, this has been fantastic.

• 1:21:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is a really interesting and enlightening show.

• 1:21:36Laci Mosley?

  I don't know if you're being sincere.

• 1:21:38Speaker 02

  I really am, I am, I was literally, I didn't know what this was and I came to this and then I was like, oh, okay, this is very interesting.

• 1:21:45Laci Mosley?

  Well, Ronnie, where do you want to be found?

• 1:21:47Speaker 02

  Uh, oh, uh, I guess you can find me on the Gram, Bones Adrian. Uh, I'm also on Twitter, but who cares? I'm never on it. Oh, yeah, I perform at, uh, the Ed Wright Cities Brigade Theater, UCB Theater. Uh, I have a show there every Saturday, 10:30, and every second Friday at 10:30.

• 1:22:05Laci Mosley?

  And what are the names of those shows?

• 1:22:07Speaker 02

  Uh, one is, uh, called Make It Hot with My Team White Women. And the other one Saturdays is Let's Party With The Dragons.

• 1:22:15Laci Mosley?

  Yes. All right, guys, and as always, you can find us at [email protected]. Send us your scams, make sure they're retired. Or if you've been scammed and you want to share, please let us know. We also love sharing that with the congregation. Guys, you can find our podcast at scamgoddispod, on Twitter and on Instagram. And you can find me at D I V A L A C I, Diva Lacy, on all platforms. All right, congregation, stay Schemin.

• 1:22:44Speaker 01

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• 1:23:28Speaker 01

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