I Think I Solved the Mystery of the NFL's Secret Scammer and a $5 Billion Check

Pablo investigates a story including, but not limited to, a Duke basketball champion, a World War II treasure hunt, an alleged con man, Bob Marley, Dan Snyder, and an attempt to make history by purchasing the Washington Commanders. This episode originally aired September 8, 2023. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

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• 0:44Pablo Torre?

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• 1:28Pablo Torre?

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• 2:11Pablo Torre?

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• 2:57Pablo Torre?

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  My money comes from white people. White.

• 3:07Pablo Torre?

  I don't even know what that means, but okay. Right after this ad.

• 3:12Speaker 03

  You're listening to Giraffe Kings Network.

• 3:25Pablo Torre?

  So Cortez, do you notice anything different about me today at the last show of our week here?

• 3:30Speaker 04

  I mean, instead of wearing like purple pants like you have in the past with me, you're wearing shorts. For some reason.

• 3:35Pablo Torre?

  We have found out a lot this week on Pablo Torre Finds Out. Why I'm wearing shorts. Go listen to yesterday's episode with Katie Nolan to find out why I will never wear pants again. That's one thing we found out.

• 3:47Speaker 04

  I'm so impressed with your calves, dude. As someone who used to do calf raises in high school, like yours are better than anything I've ever put out, like for sure.

• 3:53Pablo Torre?

  I do want people to understand that Ryan Cortez used to be a member of a thing called Roid Crew.

• 3:58Speaker 04

  Allegedly.

• 3:58Pablo Torre?

  That's a separate Finds Out investigation. But we learned, speaking of investigations, that Stu Gotts did better pee taped journalism than Rachel Maddow this week.

• 4:06Speaker 04

  We learned that Dan Snyder has the best Macho Man Savage impression I've ever heard.

• 4:10Pablo Torre?

  It's incredible. It's incredible. But today, Cortez, because I consider us a show on a mission. Right, a journalistic mission. I want to talk about how we all have that one like message, email, phone call, letter that we received at some point in our life that we vividly remember receiving, right? You remember where you were, what you were doing, how it felt to receive this thing.

• 4:37Speaker 04

  Dude, you know what's funny is five years ago on this day, you and I were working together on High Noon. This is the fourth show you and I have worked together on. Debatable, highly questionable High Noon. Pablo Torre finds out. Five years ago on this day, when I was getting ready to go to work for High Noon, I got a text message from one of the producers. And I remember that message. I remember where I was, how it made me feel. The message said, "Are you cool pouring maple syrup in Pablo's mouth?"

• 5:02Speaker 04

  And I was like, dude, I wanted to be a journalist and this is what my career has come to now.

• 5:07Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, youtube.com/pablo torre finds out. Find the archival footage of that happening. That's a thing we did on ESPN1. But for me, Cortez, the message I most remember receiving, the message that still is sort of like cattle branded into my brain, happened just this spring. And it was a text message that I got on a lazy May afternoon in New York City. I remember I was eating a whole wheat tuna wrap.

• 5:37Speaker 04

  It's disgusting. You're pathetic.

• 5:39Pablo Torre?

  Alone, staring out the window of a diner counter. What's wrong with, I mean, I guess I have been yelled at before.

• 5:44Speaker 04

  Tuna's disgusting and you're eating it alone? That's what's wrong with it.

• 5:47Pablo Torre?

  I did get yelled at once for eating a tuna wrap on an acella.

• 5:51Speaker 04

  Ew, bro, you should be kicked off for that. That's foul.

• 5:54Pablo Torre?

  It smells terrible. But I digress. The reason why I remember this tuna wrap was because I got a message, a text message, from my friend Kenny, who happens to live in Washington DC. And Kenny is a DC guy, born and raised. He's actually now the head basketball coach at Howard University. Just made the tournament with Howard for the first time in 31 years.

• 6:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:13Pablo Torre?

  In March.

• 6:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:15Pablo Torre?

  He is the MIAC Coach of the Year, actually, right? He's a big deal in DC. But the text that Kenny sent me in May, I should clarify, was not about any of that. And it was not actually text. This message was just an attachment, actually. It was a PDF of a bank draft.

• 6:35Speaker 04

  What is a bank draft?

• 6:36Pablo Torre?

  So a bank draft is just like a guaranteed check, basically. It's a form of check that carries a guarantee of funds. So it's like as good as money is what a bank draft is. And the amount of money associated with this bank draft, funds guaranteed by Citibank in this case specifically, certified by Wells Fargo, was $5 billion.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  You said B billion?

• 7:00Pablo Torre?

  A $5 billion bank draft, right?

• 7:03Speaker 04

  What was that for?

• 7:04Pablo Torre?

  And so this bank draft, I learned, was going to be used to purchase the Washington Commanders.

• 7:13Speaker 04

  Okay, very good.

• 7:15Pablo Torre?

  The NFL team. And so this weekend, as football is kicking off in earnest, we're gonna be on our couches just fusing to them.

• 7:22Speaker 04

  All day.

• 7:23Pablo Torre?

  Like those people in shows about how they need to be like, you know, forklifted out of their homes.

• 7:28Speaker 04

  Right.

• 7:29Pablo Torre?

  I'm gonna be thinking about the Commanders most of all because of the mystery that I plunged into after receiving this text.

• 7:37Speaker 04

  Ooh.

• 7:38Pablo Torre?

  My tuna wrap, delicious as it was, it sat there uneaten. And I just fell into a rabbit hole, inside of which I think I still remain today as we sit here at this table. Because down in that rabbit hole with me, it turned out, were the Imperial Japanese Army, Bob Marley, Christian Laettner, the worst owner in all of American sports, my family's ancestral homeland.

• 8:04Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 8:05Pablo Torre?

  And also, of course, these nuts.

• 8:10Speaker 04

  Okay, I'm very, I'm very interested.

• 8:12Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, well, I'll explain after the break.

• 8:32Pablo Torre?

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• 9:16Pablo Torre?

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• 10:01Pablo Torre?

  Head to dell.com/deals. That's dell.com/deals.

• 10:10Pablo Torre?

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• 10:52Pablo Torre?

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• 12:09Pablo Torre?

  Okay, so this story starts back in April 2023, back when Dan Snyder, the worst owner in all of American sports, finally agreed to do the thing that he had refused to do for like a quarter century.

• 12:26Speaker 06

  The end of Daniel Snyder's era as owner of the Washington Commanders is rapidly approaching. According to CBS Sports, Snyder has accepted a $6 billion offer from Josh Harris's group to buy the team.

• 12:39Pablo Torre?

  Before Josh Harris, that finance guy who also owns the 76ers and the New Jersey Devils, nobody had ever agreed to pay $6 billion to buy any team in the entire history of sports.

• 12:54Pablo Torre?

  But the day after this historic announcement, something happened that threatened to change everything.

• 13:01Speaker 07

  With breaking news tonight, once again, on the control of the commanders. Do I understand there is yet another twist in this?

• 13:08Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 13:08Pablo Torre?

  As record-setting as the sale was, it was not final, not yet. The agreement was still in principle, which meant that another bidder was very welcome to come along and pay Dan Snyder even more.

• 13:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, so I just obtained documents that say a Washington DC resident is in conversations with the Washington commanders after placing a $7 billion bid to purchase the team. Now, according to these documents, Brian Davis, the founder of Urban Echo Energy LLC, an energy company, originally placed a bid on March 21st. Now, Davis is a former basketball player for Duke. He won a national championship there. That's him in the middle.

• 13:52Pablo Torre?

  So Brian Davis actually won two national championships at Duke, to be specific, and he was not at all the best player on that dynasty from the 90s. Brian had averaged like seven points on teams that had Grant Hill and Bobby Hurley and Brian's roommate, Christian Laettner. But Brian was their leader. Brian was the captain they all elected. And once again, here was Brian Davis taking charge.

• 14:18Speaker 06

  We can confirm Brian Davis's financial documents were sent this morning to the Washington commanders. The documents give a general timeline that says the first billion dollars could be released to Dan Snyder within 24 hours and the rest of the $6 billion in a week. Also, in the letter, I saw Brian Davis is willing to indemnify Snyder as a condition of his offer. Now, if Dan Snyder accepts, it would set an NFL record for the most expensive sale in global sports history and the NFL's first African-American majority owner.

• 14:54Pablo Torre?

  But there was a problem. Everybody knew Josh Harris as a billionaire. When he bought the Sixers, for instance, a New York Times headline called him a private equity prince.

• 15:05Pablo Torre?

  But nobody, nobody, including Bank of America, the bank managing the team sale, had any idea how in the [bleep] Brian Davis had all of this money. The outlet Front Office Sports, they reported that the true source of Brian's billions might be Saudi Arabian investors. Brian's college coach, Coach K, he had questions of his own, I am told. And as one Bank of America managing director wrote, replying directly to Brian's submission of financial documents in an email I obtained, quote, "Are you able to send us some background and further details regarding the $10 billion of cash that you have on your balance sheet? Many thanks." End quote.

• 15:51Speaker 07

  All right, hold on. My head is exploding, Brian, with all due respect. So I think what I...

• 15:57Pablo Torre?

  All of which is why Brian eagerly called into The Sports Junkies, a live, super-popular sports radio show in Washington, DC.

• 16:05Speaker 07

  What I understood prior to having you on was that you were sort of like the lead guy and somehow you had, you were kind of like the voice of this money that you had accumulated. But I never thought for a second that you were ever alleging that your personal net worth was in the billions.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, my personal net worth, because of my partners, you know, as I said, I wasn't born with a billion dollars. But my partners are multi-billionaires.

• 16:33Speaker 07

  Right, so you're representing them, that's what I'm, that's what you're doing.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  I'm representing them, but I've sold my intellectual property, which allowed me to have, you know... A large, a large amount of capital. Um, and I, as I said, I'm not Nikola Tesla, but I am a person who's been doing the same thing for 25 years.

• 16:54Pablo Torre?

  No, Brian had never replicated his success at Duke in the NBA. The guy was out of the league after playing less than 70 games with the Timberwolves. But over those subsequent 25 years, Brian had helped develop a real estate venture with Christian Laettner in Durham, North Carolina, called The West Village, which eventually sold for $275 million. Then they bought and sold an ownership stake in DC United, the Major League Soccer team. And since then, and this is the most important part, Brian had launched his own green energy infrastructure business, which he called Urban Echo Energy.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  I have $20 billion in my holding company through my business. That's a fact. Whether you believe it or not, it's up to you. Okay? But I don't want to, it's the NFL's job to make that decision. I don't want, I don't want people to, to issue statements about me having Saudi money or any of these things that are not accurate.

• 17:48Pablo Torre?

  Instead, what Brian wanted to do was issue a statement of his own.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  My money comes from white people. White, Jewish.

• 17:57Speaker 07

  I don't even know what that means, but okay.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  White people, no, let me finish, let me finish. White people who are Jewish, who are Italian, who are Sicilian, white people.

• 18:07Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  And, and the NFL will find that out. It comes from white people. Those are my partners, white people.

• 18:11Speaker 07

  All right, hold on, I think that that's hilarious.

• 18:14Pablo Torre?

  So, yeah, look, if it sounds like Brian's a bit defensive about his partners here, it's for good reason.

• 18:22Speaker 07

  A source tells me they don't believe Mr. Davis has the money, and we learned that Davis has been sued several times. He's faced several lawsuits for not paying back loans, breach of contract, failure, failure to appear in court, and defaulted on loans.

• 18:37Pablo Torre?

  So, take the aforementioned real estate development in Durham, for instance, that became that big success. What Brian doesn't love discussing is how he had tried to replicate that same model in bigger cities, and then got sued for loans he could not repay, which was a giant humiliation. Or take that ownership stake in DC United that I told you about. Brian had also agreed to buy a majority stake in the NBA's Memphis Grizzlies for nine figures. But then he failed to produce the money he had to personally guarantee with that. Another giant humiliation. And in fact, Brian has been sued by NBA Hall of Famer Scottie Pippen, who invested in that Grizzlies deal, and his fellow Duke basketball alum Johnny Dawkins,

• 19:21Pablo Torre?

  and NFL star Sean Merriman, who immediately called bull**** on Brian's commanders bid on Twitter.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  That was 25 years ago. You asked me about the athletes. That was a different life. This life, I have an energy company. It's called Urban Echo Energy, where I develop infrastructure. It's a, it's a whole different level.

• 19:41Pablo Torre?

  What Brian really wanted America to know here was that he, like his net worth, had changed.

• 19:48Speaker 06

  All right, so if you're the owner, let's just fast forward.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  No, no, no, this is the learning lesson. This is what I'm trying to, this is my redemption song. Imagine me as that hoops Bob Marley. That's who I am. I'm a good guy.

• 20:00Speaker 06

  Brian Davis. Brian Davis, if you take over as the owner of...

• 20:08Pablo Torre?

  And this song, the song that Brian claimed as his own redemption song by Bob Marley. That's what played in my head for months.

• 20:25Pablo Torre?

  In May, about a month after that interview, Brian Davis was back at Duke for his son's graduation. It was supposed to be this big nostalgic celebration. But instead, what I learned was that Brian was enraged. Not only was Bank of America refusing to take him seriously, still, as the gatekeepers managing the sale of his childhood team, Bank of America, Brian claimed, was actually refusing to give him back his money. You see, this whole time, everyone had been asking for proof of Brian's billions. Well, what Brian says is that he had already sent by courier a signed and barcoded bank draft, a guaranteed, uncancelable check from Citibank

• 21:07Pablo Torre?

  for $5 billion. That's with a B. And by the way, Brian didn't just send this document to Bank of America. He had forwarded the PDF to one of his Duke teammates, a guy he knew from back in DC, who is now the head coach at Howard University. And also, an old friend of mine, Kenny Blakeney, who sent that same PDF at Brian's request to me. I mean, I very vividly remember how I got sucked into this story because you sucked me into it.

• 21:38Speaker 06

  I did.

• 21:39Pablo Torre?

  I mean, I remember getting that text that was just a PDF. And I clicked that PDF and inside of it is this $5 billion bank draft.

• 21:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 21:52Pablo Torre?

  And when you sent it to me, did you know that it was going to take over my life?

• 21:59Speaker 06

  I think that was the whole point of sending it to you. So Liz and Violet can be like, what the hell's wrong with daddy?

• 22:06Pablo Torre?

  Why is daddy constantly Googling? Why did Brian want to talk to me?

• 22:16Speaker 06

  I think Pablo, at the end of the day, when you look at it, probably the track record over the last, you know, 10, 15 years with Brian, you know, people, if he's trying to use his own voice to get this message out, it's not as effective.

• 22:38Pablo Torre?

  What Brian really wanted, I realized, was a journalist. He wanted a journalist who might put down the tuna wrap he was eating, sadly by himself, to personally verify the bank draft, the redemption of Brian Davis. Yeah, when I look at this stuff, it looks real. Like, I've never seen a $5 billion bank draft before, but this is how I would imagine it comes. There is a stamp that says Wells Fargo Statutory Trust, SGSR. There's a serial number across the bottom. And the letterhead on this ICC Demand Guarantee page that says, "This is all real."

• 23:18Speaker 06

  No doubt about it. About it. I've never seen a $5 billion check either, Pablo. So when I look at this, looks pretty official. There's some holograms, QR codes. It talks about the date that it was issued, the guarantee, period of coverage, beneficiary names.

• 23:37Pablo Torre?

  And what are the, what are the two signatures there at the bottom of the bank draft page?

• 23:42Speaker 06

  Tarciana C. Rodriguez, Demry Donald Norvell.

• 23:48Pablo Torre?

  These are the two named trustees.

• 23:51Speaker 06

  Absolutely. Solely as trustees.

• 23:55Pablo Torre?

  Now, those two named trustees are extremely important to the story. But I should also note here that there is an attached and barcoded financing statement indicating that this whole document, addressed to Urban Echo Energy, Brian's company, had been registered with California's Secretary of State, which it actually was. I checked. So Kenny, do you remember the first time you ever met Brian Davis?

• 24:17Speaker 06

  I do. I probably was a sophomore in high school. So 14 years old, 15 years old. Brian was a basketball player that was in PG County, right across the road from us at Dathah Catholic High School. And Brian showed up to Dathah one day, wearing a suit. And I knew who Brian was, but I've never met him at that point. And I was just kind of like staring at this guy like, who's this guy?

• 24:48Pablo Torre?

  Why was young Brian Davis wearing a suit showing up at Dathah?

• 24:53Speaker 06

  Well, not knowing it then, but that just who Brian was at the time. He's always wanted to present himself in a way that people took him very seriously.

• 25:05Pablo Torre?

  Had you ever seen anybody that age, wear a suit? A basketball player wearing a suit to, to school?

• 25:12Speaker 06

  That wasn't a drug dealer? No.

• 25:17Pablo Torre?

  So for people who aren't familiar with the DMV, explain where Brian came from.

• 25:21Speaker 06

  It's from Capitol Heights, but Brian was born in Atlantic City. And then moved to DC at a young age, moved to Capitol Heights and.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  The time that we were growing up Pablo, it was the crack epidemic. DC was considered the murder capital of the world.

• 25:38Pablo Torre?

  Given everything you knew about Brian over the course of his life since he was a teenager, what was your first thought when Brian sent you this $5 billion bank draft?

• 25:49Speaker 02

  I don't know if you have one of those friends, right? But he is just one of those guys that you... I'm talking to our team about some of the things that's going on.

• 26:02Pablo Torre?

  At Howard, yes, your basketball team.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  No, my Duke team.

• 26:06Pablo Torre?

  Oh.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  From the time when Brian and I are all on the same team.

• 26:10Pablo Torre?

  From the multiple national championship winning Duke dynasty.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 26:17Speaker 02

  And we're kind of going around and having conversations about it. And everybody consensus is thinking the same thing. Like, it can't be true, but it's Brian. When someone sends you a $5 billion check and says that here are the things that I'm thinking about doing, it's kind of like, oh, shit. Like, let me kind of sit up in my chair a little bit.

• 26:44Pablo Torre?

  Oh, shit is also how I felt at this point, admittedly. But as Kenny and I were examining this documented proof, the proof of Brian's redemption, I started squinting at it and looking closer at it. And at that point, we both noticed something else. Brian's $5 billion bank draft, very importantly, was not coming from Brian's own bank account. It was coming from and was funded by, apparently, an estate, an entity entrusted with a dead person's assets. That was why Wells Fargo SGSR Statutory Trust was attached to this in the first place, with all of that official letterhead.

• 27:30Pablo Torre?

  But this dead person, this dead billionaire, I realized,

• 27:36Pablo Torre?

  did not appear to be white, or Jewish, or Italian, or Sicilian. No. This dead person was a lot more like me.

• 28:05Pablo Torre?

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• 28:49Pablo Torre?

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• 29:34Pablo Torre?

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• 30:07Pablo Torre?

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• 30:51Pablo Torre?

  And all 800-plus clinicians are in-network with major insurers, so you can use your existing insurance instead of paying monthly subscriptions or out-of-network costs. Head to talkiatory.com/ptfo to complete the short assessment and get matched with an in-network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. That's T-A-L-K-I-A-T-R-Y.com/ptfo to get matched in minutes. Talkiatory.com/ptfo.

• 31:24Pablo Torre?

  The name of the estate on Brian's $5 billion bank draft was Severino Garcia Santa Romana. Say it again. Severino Garcia Santa Romana.

• 31:41Speaker 06

  In this episode, we're gonna talk about a man named Severino Garcia Santa Romana.

• 31:48Pablo Torre?

  Now, when I initially heard that name, I swear that a tiny radar deep inside my brain just started beeping. Because of course, this story, this specific story, of course it had to be like this. Of course Severino Garcia Santa Romana had to be like me and Dave Batista and Olivia Rodrigo and any number of Asian-looking people with Spanish names. Of course Severino Garcia Santa Romana had to be [bleep] Filipino.

• 32:25Pablo Torre?

  This is just one of many insanely detailed YouTube videos about Severino Garcia Santa Romana, many of which, I found, are in Filipino and Tagalog, the main language. But what I also found was dozens of message board threads about him, with thousands of comments in English, about how he was apparently a Catholic priest slash CIA operative with a dozen aliases. A key figure in what sounded like a legendary treasure hunt.

• 33:00Speaker 06

  For 70 years, legends have been told of a buried treasure, shrouded in danger.

• 33:09Speaker 06

  It's one of the great mysteries of World War II.

• 33:13Pablo Torre?

  Something very secretive and strange has gotta be buried in that mountain.

• 33:18Speaker 06

  In a covert operation, infamous Japanese general Yamashita allegedly buried thousands of crates throughout the Philippines near the end of the war.

• 33:28Pablo Torre?

  They were just taking anything about. That was from the History Channel. And after sifting through that, and all of these shows, and movies, and books, and forums, all these threads, what became clear to me is that Severino Garcia Santa Romana was, yes, a legend unto himself. He was the person who allegedly wound up finding, stealing, really, all that Japanese gold. Billions of dollars of imperial Japanese gold. But Severino Garcia Santa Romana, importantly, has also been dead for 50 years now. And so, his estate, according to Brian Davis's personal bank draft, was now controlled by two signed trustees, as aforementioned.

• 34:11Pablo Torre?

  There was a woman named Tarciana C. Rodriguez, and there was a man named Demery Donald Norvell.

• 34:22Pablo Torre?

  And so, okay, what I want to do right now is just take a breath. And I want to simplify things for everybody, including myself, because at this point, there were exactly two possibilities in my mind. So, theory number one. Brian Davis was legitimately in business with these two trustees. Brian Davis had cashed in on this fortune that all of those treasure hunters had been chasing, and he had done it by selling his intellectual property with Urban Echo Energy, his green energy business. He had sold that IP to this Wells Fargo and Citibank certified estate. That's theory number one. Theory number two, on the other hand, is a bit simpler.

• 35:06Pablo Torre?

  Brian had just used this Filipino conspiracy to forge all of these financial documents himself. He had personally forged signatures for two undoubtedly imaginary trustees as part of another crazy scheme to finally buy his own professional sports team. And I should also admit that I, like everybody else, I was leaning extremely heavily toward theory number two. But then I got a call. It was Kenny Blakeney, and Kenny had Brian Davis himself on the other line.

• 35:50Pablo Torre?

  There is no recording of our three-way conversation with Brian, unfortunately, but what you should know is that it was emotionally volatile, let's say. Instead of answering my many questions, which Brian found largely insulting, what he wanted me to do, very simply, was just report that Bank of America was refusing to return his certified and barcoded $5 billion bank draft that he had received from this estate, and that he, Brian Davis, now had a whole plan to get it back. So Kenny, I'm thinking about that call, the conference call in which you brought me into your conversation with Brian on the phone.

• 36:31Pablo Torre?

  Brian had a plan to get his bank draft, the $5 billion bank draft, back from Bank of America. What did he tell us he was gonna do?

• 36:42Speaker 02

  That he was going to sue Bank of America in federal court to get his bank drafts back.

• 36:50Pablo Torre?

  And Brian Davis actually did.

• 36:54Speaker 06

  And we caught some flack for having him on the show, whatever. Most people think he's a joke. Well, just to give you an update on what happened over the weekend. Brian Davis and his group, they are suing Bank of America. To everybody, which I believe.

• 37:13Pablo Torre?

  The civil case of Urban Echo Energy LLC versus Bank of America was filed the very same day as my call with Brian and Kenny, and they filed it at US District Court in Maryland. Brian was seeking the return, in front of a federal judge, of his $5 billion bank draft plus damages to be determined at trial. But that's not all. Brian had even signed and submitted a verified statement that declared, under the penalties of perjury, that he, Brian Davis, personally had this bank draft issued and bonded and delivered to Bank of America, and that the bank was, yeah, guilty of never informing the Snyder's of its existence, and that it was now refusing to give it back to him.

• 38:01Pablo Torre?

  You should know, here, at this point, that nothing about Brian's lawsuit was making sense to me, as, again, a theory number two guy. And it also didn't make sense to at least one former federal prosecutor that I was speaking to. Because if theory number two, that Brian masterminded all of this [BLEEP] himself, if that was correct, Brian had just taken this verifiably fake Citibank check and handed it to federal authorities to investigate, which felt, to me, like, shockingly suicidal, right? And so, what I started thinking about, for the first time, was a theory number three.

• 38:50Pablo Torre?

  So, this is where I do need to reiterate that I spent months of my life turning Brian's bank drafts into my own insane, personal treasure hunt. And I started with the Los Angeles phone number for Wells Fargo SGSR Statutory Trust, the entity allegedly managing the Severino-Garcia Santa Romana estate.

• 39:16Pablo Torre?

  Hi, is this Wells Fargo?

• 39:18Speaker 07

  No, you got the wrong number.

• 39:20Pablo Torre?

  Uh, sorry, what's, who are you guys? Who am I calling?

• 39:23Speaker 07

  This is not Wells Fargo.

• 39:25Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, are you, sorry, you guys, uh, what are you guys? I was just confused.

• 39:31Speaker 07

  This is a, uh, company.

• 39:35Pablo Torre?

  A little fishy, uh, this company, I would say, but it got even fishier. Yeah, what company are you guys? I'm just wondering why someone gave me the number for Wells Fargo. I just wasn't sure what you guys are.

• 39:47Speaker 07

  This is a seafood vendor.

• 39:50Pablo Torre?

  A seafood vendor?

• 39:51Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 39:54Pablo Torre?

  Got it. Apologies. Thank you so much.

• 39:56Speaker 07

  Right.

• 39:59Pablo Torre?

  And so then I called the other number listed on the trust's website in Connecticut, and an actual office worker this time physically picked up. The office is Richard.

• 40:12Pablo Torre?

  Richard was more than happy to double-check any and all details that I had questions about with his bank draft. How the estate's chosen bank was indeed Citibank. How the amount was $5 billion, a number I felt insane saying aloud, but Richard apparently did not even blink at it. And also how this bank draft listed the signatures of those two specific trustees. Can I just read you the name one more time to make sure that it's the same name? Terciana Rodriguez? Yes, that's the, uh, that's the, she's the trustee, yes.

• 40:47Pablo Torre?

  My hair is at this point, we're kind of standing on end. Okay, great. And so, and the other person's name, uh, Demery? That's another trustee, is that correct? That's correct. So again, this person's first name typed out on this document was Demery. His kind of weird last name, one word, was Donald Norvell. Demery Donald Norvell. But here's what was even weirder. Uh, the signature below this name was signed in handwriting, Donald Norvell, Demery, backwards. And Richard did not seem to care. Yeah, yeah, you can say Mr. Demery is fine.

• 41:33Pablo Torre?

  Mr. Demery. Okay, great.

• 41:40Pablo Torre?

  This was the precise moment when I felt myself falling down a rabbit hole that is so much deeper than I can possibly, I think, ever get into. Like, it got to the point where "rabbit hole" stopped being an appropriate metaphor for this. What it felt like was that I was running a blacklight under, like, the motel couch of the American economy. For instance, Wells Fargo SGSR Statutory Trust. What I realized about that was that they had no actual ties to Wells Fargo the bank at all. Documents that I found showed that Mr. Demery was leasing,

• 42:20Pablo Torre?

  yeah, a small office space inside the Wells Fargo Center in LA, but Mr. Demery was not a Wells Fargo employee in any way. And in fact, until last year, I discovered Wells Fargo SGSR Statutory Trust went by a different name. It was Quantum Trust SGSR. S-G-S-R, as in... A man named Severino Garcia Santa Romana. But that's not all. No, Mr. Demery, it turned out, also had a ton of aliases himself, including, but not limited to, Demery Donald Norvell, Donald Demery Diaz,

• 43:03Pablo Torre?

  and then his actual birth name, Donald Norvell Calhoun.

• 43:14Pablo Torre?

  So, who is Donald Norvell Calhoun? Well, according to one lawsuit from July 2022, quote, "Donald Calhoun is a career con man who has swindled millions of dollars from people and businesses across the United States. Donald Calhoun's scams all seem to share a common characteristic. Donald Calhoun makes promises of financing to people and businesses that need money." End quote. So in 2003, I discovered Mr. Calhoun slash Demery got sentenced to 37 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to a fraud scheme that cost investors $1.8 million. And in 2018, Mr. Demery was back and involved in a lawsuit from a movie production company

• 43:59Pablo Torre?

  over a fake $150,000 check. A check, I saw, that had the name of, yes, I think you guessed it at this point, Severino Garcia Santa Romana and Tarciana C. Rodriguez. And then, in 2021, I saw Mr. Demery and Ms. Rodriguez both signed a certificate from Quantum Trust SGSR for $300 billion, this time to back a penny stock of some kind that listed the same exact Connecticut phone number that I'd called before. The office, Mr. Richard.

• 44:42Pablo Torre?

  All of which is how it became clear to me that theory number two, that, you know, Brian Davis made up all of this himself, that it was actually wrong. Brian did not invent the SGSR scam. For years and years, long before Brian's $5 billion bank draft ever existed, Mr. Demery had been running this same exact con, preying on desperate people who desperately needed money and/or redemption. People like Brian Davis.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  No, no, no, this is the learning lesson. This is what I'm trying to, this is my redemption song. Imagine me as that hoops Bob Marley, that's who I am. I'm a good guy.

• 45:24Speaker 06

  Brian Davis.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  This is my redemption song.

• 45:26Speaker 06

  Brian Davis, if you take over as the owner of the...

• 45:30Pablo Torre?

  All of which finally brings me back to this theory number three.

• 45:36Pablo Torre?

  Because what if, and I need you to stay with me here, what if Brian Davis, after decades of desperation, was not the only scammer in this story? What if, in trying to scheme up the money to buy the commanders by, you know, selling his supposed green energy IP to Mr. Demery, Brian Davis had also himself gotten scammed? If Brian had been conned, scammed by the SGSR estate into believing that the bank draft was real, it would at least explain why he had presented it in federal court, in that lawsuit, to get it back. Now, I tried contacting Mr. Demery

• 46:20Pablo Torre?

  to attempt to get to the bottom of this. Dude did not return my messages. Not totally surprised. But what I did wind up getting was a good look at him.

• 46:39Pablo Torre?

  Because another thing I discovered about Mr. Demery underneath this motel couch is that the guy loves trademarks. For instance, he recently tried trademarking the phrase "king of NFTs", because, of course, he did. And what he also tried to do was trademark a cartoon.

• 47:00Pablo Torre?

  Now, this cartoon is described in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office records as, quote, "tan animated cashew nut with human face featuring black eyebrows and eyes with muscular arms, hands and legs, wearing high-top gray and black tennis shoes", end quote. And I gotta say, if you're not watching this on YouTube,

• 47:24Pablo Torre?

  accurate, very accurate.

• 47:28Pablo Torre?

  But the reason I bring up this insanely jacked California raisin-ass nut is to say that when I first found a Getty image of a human being tagged as Donald Demery, I did not immediately know if this was the Mr. Demery. Like, this Donald Demery in the Getty image photo was a happy-looking black dude with a gray beard and black-rimmed glasses and, like, an ornately-patterned shirt and a leather Kangol-style cap pointed forward. He was also notably throwing up deuces with both hands. But then, I noticed something off to this human being's right.

• 48:10Pablo Torre?

  On the white backdrop right behind him. Because there, right there, grinning back at me, was an insanely jacked animated cashew with a human goddamn face and tennis shoes, right near the logo for what appeared to me as a trail mix company named "These Nuts." In all caps, "These Nuts." With a Z. Nuts. And my first thought, as I was processing all of this, which took a while, was that

• 48:51Pablo Torre?

  here I was gazing, finally, into the face of the real Mr. Demery, the Donald Norvell Calhoun, and that I really needed to talk to Brian. I really needed to tell him everything I had found here. But by then, Brian was back in the news, busy becoming a joke. Again. I have no idea what's going on.

• 49:20Speaker 04

  But it doesn't matter. No, I'm not saying it's not. I could have just taken Brian Davis's money. Eric, I'm not saying it's not.

• 49:26Pablo Torre?

  By May, Bank of America had declared in federal court to a federal judge that Brian's $5 billion bank draft looked, quote, fictitious, end quote. Because, yeah, of course it did. But within days, what Brian did was, um, hard, I imagine. He voluntarily, shamefully withdrew his lawsuit entirely. And then Brian Davis just disappeared.

• 50:00Speaker 03

  The wireless customer you are calling is not available. Please try again later.

• 50:06Pablo Torre?

  Kenny and I tried calling Brian over and over again, but that's the message we heard. And not only did his phone number just stop working, when Kenny sent an email to Brian's old yahoo.com address, what we learned there was that that account was also deactivated. How much did Brian talk to you, Kenny, about what he was gonna do once he bought the Washington Commanders?

• 50:31Speaker 06

  Brian is one of those guys that, like, and this is the beauty of him. He's on to the next project. So in his mind, it was like, I've already bought the Washington Commanders. These are the next things that we're gonna work on. Like, here are the next things that we're gonna take a look at. These are the next franchises that I wanna buy, properties I wanna take a look at. So it was rolling conversations into the future of what he was gonna do, being one of the wealthiest guys in the world.

• 51:06Pablo Torre?

  The question I have for you, most of all, is whether Brian believed that this bank draft, the $5 billion bank draft, his fortune, whether he believed that that was real.

• 51:19Speaker 06

  From our conversations and from the tone, absolutely, he believed this was real.

• 51:25Pablo Torre?

  All summer, all NFL offseason, really, I could not stop thinking about Brian. About the difference between desperation and delusion and mental health. About how sports ownership, actually, was kind of the perfect treasure hunt for Brian Davis specifically. I mean, Dan Snyder, let's do the accounting here, had drawn state and national and NFL investigations into his own sexual and financial misconduct. And that dude cashed in for a record $6 billion. Because, yeah, an NFL team is a money printing machine. It really is.

• 52:07Pablo Torre?

  It's a money printing machine that seems impossible to mess up, no matter how embarrassing or embarrassed you are, so long as you buy one. And now, after 25 years, Brian Davis had to accept the reality that he never would. But then, out of nowhere, I got a text from Kenny Blakeney. A text that told me to check my email. Because Brian Davis was back.

• 52:50Pablo Torre?

  Weeks before Josh Harris would be formally introduced as the new owner of the Washington Commanders, Brian had forwarded Kenny a new email. Out of nowhere, it was the first he'd heard from him all month. And this email was an email that Brian had just sent to Bank of America. Bank of America, the same bank that he had recently sued and been humiliated by in federal court. The subject line.

• 53:17Speaker 06

  Washington Commanders Backup Offer.

• 53:22Pablo Torre?

  I asked if Kenny would read the rest.

• 53:25Speaker 06

  Good morning and happy 4th of July. I wanted to follow up with you to inform your group that we have posted in excess of $10 billion at BNY Mellon in New York City.

• 53:38Speaker 06

  We would like to have the opportunity to escrow the capital in your account immediately. We would like to wire it after the holiday this coming week.

• 53:47Pablo Torre?

  To be clear, there was zero acknowledgement anywhere in this email that Brian Davis had just sued these same exact people.

• 53:58Speaker 06

  We would like to give Mr. Snyder 8.1 billion, 7.9 billion for the acquisition of the franchise, 100 million for the breakup fee for the other group, 70 million for Mr. and Mrs. Snyder.

• 54:12Pablo Torre?

  And it kept going like this. Brian was offering more and more money, more than ever before, and it was almost like he was trying to prove that humiliation only hurt if you let it, if you acknowledged it, and that he, Brian Davis, and his checks could still be redeemed.

• 54:31Speaker 06

  Our bankers at BNY Mellon and Wells Fargo are available at any time to answer any of your questions.

• 54:39Speaker 06

  We look forward to hearing from you and thank you for your time and consideration.

• 54:45Pablo Torre?

  And then Brian Davis signed off.

• 54:51Speaker 06

  Warmest regards,

• 54:54Speaker 06

  Brian.

• 55:53Pablo Torre?

  So at the end of every episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out, I take the time to sit down at my computer and tell you what it is exactly that I found out today.

• 56:04Pablo Torre?

  And today, as we reflect upon this Russian nesting doll of scams, I should really start with this. Brian Davis is the single most relentless human being that I have ever personally encountered.

• 56:22Pablo Torre?

  Because in Brian's mind, the game is never over, even when it is actually, obviously, undeniably over.

• 56:36Pablo Torre?

  I fully believe that Brian is still attempting to purchase a pro sports franchise as we speak.

• 56:46Pablo Torre?

  And I expect him to resurface one day with even taller tails, taking even bigger swings. And despite all the lies, despite all the alleged scams, or maybe really because of them,

• 57:05Pablo Torre?

  this story, to me, is just as much about Mr. Demery, the man who, I suspect, scammed a scammer.

• 57:18Pablo Torre?

  And so it's about the untold other predators also, the predators who are still hiding right now in the nooks and crannies of fraudulent documents and pump-and-dump schemes, and reverse mergers, and these various Potemkin Financial Services websites, all waiting to scam you.

• 57:40Pablo Torre?

  And me.

• 57:43Pablo Torre?

  What I found out today, in the end, is this.

• 57:49Pablo Torre?

  If you dare to run a blacklight under the motel couch of the American economy,

• 57:55Pablo Torre?

  what you'll discover, inevitably,

• 57:59Pablo Torre?

  are these nuts.

• 58:05Pablo Torre?

  With a Z.

• 58:14Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a show that has way more producers than David Sampson's show. And they are: Michael Antonucci, Ryan Cortez, Sam Daywig, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rachel Miller Howard, Ethan Schreier, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Chris Tumanello, complete with studio engineering by Veridian Tech, post-production by NGW Post, theme song by Gian Bravo, and also Mike Ryan, Dan Levitards, Dugatz, thank you to you guys, John Skipper, Bimil Kapadia, Jenny Rutherford, Frankie, and Frankie's gun, shout out to you. I'm Violet Torre, who could forget? I'm Liz, my wife. I'm so sorry for being an absentee father.

• 58:54Speaker 03

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