Billionaire Boys Club: Wannabe Heir Makes a Killing in LA

In 1980s Los Angeles, a charismatic prep-school hustler builds the Billionaire Boys Club—part investment syndicate, part illusion—until a high-stakes con, a missing mogul, and a pair of brutal murders expose how greed, privilege, and cocaine turned a fantasy of wealth into a deadly spiral. Sources for this episode include: Billionaire Boys Club (HBO) “The True Story of the Billionaire Boys Club” (Esquire) “Notorious founder of the Billionaire Boys Club wants parole.” (LA Times) “Fast Cars, Armani Suits, Pretty Women: How the 'Billionaire Boys Club' Led to Murder” (People) Keep up with Killer Stories! Instagram: @killerstoriespodTikTok: @killerstoriespodX: @killerstorieshq Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:06Harvey Guillén?

  En la antigua Grecia, contaron la historia de Quin Midas, un hombre tan hambriento por la riqueza que pidió a los dioses por un toque que podía convertir cualquier cosa en oro. Y le concedieron su deseo. Al principio, se sintió como gloria, pero el regalo se convirtió en una maldición. Su comida se endureció en sus manos, su hija se esfrió en una estatua. Y Midas aprendió demasiado tarde que la búsqueda de riquezas sin límite puede costarte todo. Pero Midas no es solo un mito. Su historia se repite una y otra vez, con nuevos nombres y nuevas fortunas.

• 0:50Harvey Guillén?

  Antes de Elizabeth Holmes y su bogaña compañía Theranos, antes de Anadelfi, la hermana alemana fraudulentísima, antes incluso de Bernie Madoff, había Joe Hunt, a.k.a. Joe Gamski. Él era el hombre que quería tocar el mundo y hacerlo convertir en oro. Y finalmente descubrió que su propio tipo de toque de oro era letal.

• 1:17Harvey Guillén?

  Soy Harvey Guillén y esto es Killer Stories.

• 1:40Harvey Guillén?

  Cue la música de los años 80. Es abril de 1980 en Los Ángeles, California. Joe Gamski es joven, hermoso, encantador y hambriento por un tipo de vida que la mayoría de la gente solo sueña. Él quiere riqueza, poder, influencia, todo eso. Y en su mente, no es una pregunta de si sucederá, sino cuándo.

• 2:05Harvey Guillén?

  Which sounds entitled, I know, but Joe doesn't come from money. He just knows money. He spent most of his formative years rubbing elbows with the 1% by earning a scholarship to the most elite prep school in LA. His classmates were the sons of CEOs, heirs to enormous fortunes, the original Nepo babies. Meanwhile, Joe's father was a storefront psychologist, and his mother disappeared when he was in high school. Well, sometime after she called Joe "the Antichrist" at a séance. So, at school, Joe always felt like a tourist, like he didn't belong.

• 2:45Harvey Guillén?

  But being that close to real wealth showed him it didn't have to be a fantasy. It could one day be his. So, he studied, he worked, he apparently read the dictionary for three hours every night, all because, as one former classmate put it, "he wanted to prove he was better and smarter than the rich kids." And he was. The real start to Joe's upward trajectory actually happens by accident, when he bumps into two former prep school classmates on the street: Dean Carney and Ben Dosty.

• 3:24Harvey Guillén?

  And Joe takes advantage of the chance encounter by inviting them to a movie on him, which is both an honest invitation to catch up and a way for Joe to showcase how well he's doing, how impressive he is. And that's important, because Dean and Ben are both those rich kids we talked about earlier. Their families have a lot of money, money that could one day come in handy for Joe. So Joe turns that movie night into multiple lunches, into regular hangs, which eventually turns into Joe being invited to stay at Dean's family estate in the Hollywood Hills for free.

• 4:09Harvey Guillén?

  Because Dean's parents think Joe is a good influence on their son. And before long, Joe's long-term plan works out. He gets a seat as a trader on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and he convinces Dean's parents to give him a bunch of money to invest. He raises half a million dollars and ships off to Chicago. The plan is obviously to take the money and make it multiply. But within 18 months, he loses it all, every penny. He does so poorly that the government revokes his trading privileges for the next 10 years.

• 4:51Harvey Guillén?

  But here's the thing, Joe doesn't see the epic failure as an obstacle. In his mind, it only poses a problem if people find out, and he's not about to let that happen. So when he moves back to L.A., he doesn't tell people he was banned from trading. He says he was forced out by bigger players in the game because he was too successful. How successful? Well, he says he turned their $500,000 into $14 million. And apparently, no one questions it. Because when Joe moves back to L.A., he moves in with Dean to a condo owned by Dean's father.

• 5:36Harvey Guillén?

  So clearly, the carni's still think their money is safe and doing well. Which may be hard to believe, but by all accounts, Joe is nothing if not charismatic, articulate, and convincing. And this lie is just the beginning of him putting those qualities to use.

• 5:59Harvey Guillén?

  By the spring of 1983, Joe convinces Dean and Ben to become the first two members of a new social club. He calls it the BBC, which I promise is not a reference to anything that you may have thought about and popped into your head. No. It apparently comes from a restaurant that he liked in Chicago. The Bombay Bicycle Club. He just borrowed the initials. Now, what do they actually do? Well, Joe says it's a social and investment club. But it's hard to pin down what that actually means because Joe's pitch to recruit members doesn't really make any sense. He speaks in what I call startup word salad. He waxes poetic about what he calls his paradox philosophy, saying things like, "reality

• 6:44Harvey Guillén?

  is circumstantial, black is white, and white is black. There is no good or bad, no true or false. Everything's about reorienting perspective." And if that sounds like a whole lot of nothing, there's a reason for that. But, like I said, Joe is a type of person other people just believe. Whatever he's selling, people are buying. And when it comes to the BBC, it helps that he targets the kind of people he used to go to school with. Young men with trust funds who are living in their parents' shadow, who don't need their own success, but feel like they have something to prove. Like Tom and Dave May, twins.

• 7:28Harvey Guillén?

  Their dad owns a massive real estate empire. Their allowances fund their lives, and they stand to inherit a fortune when their father passes, despite the fact that he thinks they're both totally and completely useless. He once told them they should go get a job scooping ice cream at Baskin Robbins because that's all they're qualified to do. But when Joe speaks to Tom and Dave May, he builds them up. He tells them they're brilliant, resourceful, filled with untapped potential. Their parents, they're what he calls normies, way down by old values.

• 8:10Harvey Guillén?

  He says they lack the intellectual daring to succeed in the new era, in the future of American business, which is where Joe can take them. All they have to do is trust his vision. He then repeats this speech to all the Tom and Dave May's in LA.

• 8:31Harvey Guillén?

  And the pitch works. They all accept Joe as their fearless leader. It doesn't matter that there is no real vision, strategy, or organizational structure to the group. They believe his mumbo jumbo, and it doesn't hurt that he gives them whatever title they want. President, executive vice president, who cares? It's not important. As Joe says, all they need are their ideas and the capital to fund them. Of course, the initial capital comes from the new recruits. Tom and Dave May, for example, hand over $160,000, and then they tell their dad they've been appointed to the board of directors

• 9:15Harvey Guillén?

  at a new corporation called BBC, consolidated of North America, because why not? Now, if stage one is recruiting members and raising capital, stage two is investing in an image, which starts with a classic movie makeover for Joe. He's the only one in the group who needs training on how to be rich. So Dean and Ben get him a haircut, tell him what suits to wear, what cars to buy, what clubs to make appearances at, and they don't pinch pennies. They drive parades of Porsches, Mercedes and BMWs, take first-class flights everywhere, go shopping on Rodeo Drive, buy a massive office in West Hollywood,

• 9:59Harvey Guillén?

  luxury condos with neighbors like Julie Andrews, Mr. T, and a Saudi prince. I pity the fool. They travel in packs of 20, running up tabs wherever they go and leaving $500 tips like their pocket change. Pretty soon, the members start referring to themselves as "The Billionaire Boys Club", and the joke kind of sticks. Everywhere they go, The Billionaire Boys Club makes an impression, and that's what Joe has been missing, maybe even more than capital. He's always been able to sell his promise, but now he can sell his success. And that leads to real investors,

• 10:44Harvey Guillén?

  real business deals, and real people begging him to invest their money for them.

• 10:53Harvey Guillén?

  Cut to about a year later. It's June 7th, 1984. Joe rushes into Dean's bedroom to wake him up. It's 8:30 a.m. Joe's hair is freshly wet from a shower. He's wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase with something important inside. A check for $1.5 million. And it's signed by Ron Levin, the man he just killed.

• 11:26Harvey Guillén?

  Okay, so Billionaire Boys Club. They're a bunch of rich kids who blow their parents' money doing rich kid things. Blackjack in Vegas, polo lessons, safaris, which would be totally fine if that's all it was. But no, they've convinced themselves and a bunch of other influential business people that they're incredibly successful investors and entrepreneurs. And the trail of that delusion ultimately leads back to Joe. It's one thing to raise money. It's another thing to make money, to turn a profit, right? Well, Joe's primary plan for turning his club's money into more money is to revisit his greatest failure: trading.

• 12:10Harvey Guillén?

  Remember when he went to Chicago, lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then the government revoked his trading privileges for 10 years? Yeah, Joe sees an easy way around that. All he has to do is change his name. So Joe Gramske becomes Joe Hunt, and he's ready to trade again. But the problem is, he's way better at convincing people to invest money than investing it himself. This one time, he gives a presentation to the stockholders of a major company as part of a potential merger deal. And by the end of it, they make him president of the company, chairman of the board, and give him complete control over its $12 million of assets.

• 12:56Harvey Guillén?

  But Joe and everyone else in his little fraternity can't seem to put that money to work. Joe's just proven he can run a Ponzi scheme, which is all the club is. For those who don't know what that means, it's a type of investment fraud that pays early investors by using money collected from new investors rather than actual profits. It requires a constant flow of cash from new clients and new investments to create the illusion of success, because that illusion is what attracts investors. But the thing about Ponzi schemes is the people running them don't necessarily think they're doing something wrong, because they always see a way out.

• 13:41Harvey Guillén?

  They just need their next bet to pay off, so they can stay afloat long enough to take someone else's money. It's a form of gambling, but just like in Vegas, the house always wins. Ponzi schemes inevitably collapse when the pool of new investors runs dry, or when too many people try to cash out at once. In May 1983, there are no cracks in the billionaire boys' club. No one's killed anyone yet, no one's waking up to checks written by murdered men, and there are plenty of potential investors left in the sea. Joe has been trying to reel a big one in for a while now. His name's Ron Levin.

• 14:26Harvey Guillén?

  He's the type of gay man who appears charming and polished, who always greets you with a smile, but you're kind of worried about what he's saying behind your back. He's 42 years old and travels around with a gaggle of young gay men. And even though it's the 80s, he's too wealthy and well-connected for his sexuality to be an obstacle. He's longtime friends with Muhammad Ali, and he throws massive parties that everyone wants to be at. They include guests like Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, and Andy Warhol.

• 15:02Harvey Guillén?

  The lore is Ron has a 186 IQ. He's a genius, who, after graduating from Harvard, took his $200,000 inheritance and turned it into 25 million. So you can see why Joe wants to do business with him. Joe wants access to Ron's resources and assets, but every time they talk, Ron keeps turning Joe down. But not in a "no" way, in a "not now" way. In a way that feels like a game. Because ultimately, Ron respects Joe. He respects the hustle, which could have something to do with the fact that they're a lot alike.

• 15:45Harvey Guillén?

  Ron's also a schmoozer, who relies on appearances. A bit of a scammer, and when it comes down to the brass tacks, he's ruthless and cutthroat. So Joe and Ron have this strange push and pull for a while before Ron finally agrees to do business with Joe in June 1983. But by the end of the year, their relationship already goes south. Essentially, what happens is Ron promises Joe money at a time when Joe is desperate. He has a cash flow problem and needs collateral for loans. But Joe later learns that due to Ron's own fraudulent activity,

• 16:29Harvey Guillén?

  the money Ron promised him doesn't actually exist, which makes Joe look like a fool and turns Ron into public enemy number one. Pretty soon, Dean and other members overhear Joe making some really inflammatory comments, like how he's going to kill Ron. You know, those kind of things. And that makes some members nervous. Some start to see the writing on the wall and decide to leave the club. But people leaving only makes Joe's leadership even more cult-like. Anyone he's close with, he draws closer. You're either all in or you're all out. It's like that meme with that dog.

• 17:12Harvey Guillén?

  Even though everything's on fire, Joe's sitting there saying, "It's fine."

• 17:19Harvey Guillén?

  It's not. In fact, he raises expectations. He sets higher goals. He says he wants to recruit thousands more members. And he starts saying the quiet part out loud. That the BBC needs to be a national organization of kids close to their inheritances. One that can expand and create companies all over the world. In places like Hong Kong, Hamburg, and Rio. Meanwhile, in Joe's loyal circle, people start talking about buying what they call an ice house, which is a retreat they can escape to should things really hit the fan. And Joe starts buying books like Hitman: Technical Manual for Independent Contractors

• 18:03Harvey Guillén?

  and Black Bag Owner's Manual 2. Which brings me to the person Joe buys those books for: Jim Pittman. Jim is Joe's bodyguard. They met while Jim was working security at some event Joe attended. They got to talking and Joe ended up hiring Jim to teach karate lessons. One of the BBC's many random extracurriculars. He then brought him on board as his personal security guard. Jim is 5'8" and 210 pounds of solid muscle. Joe tells people he's a former All-American NFL football player who also spent some time working for the mob, and none of that is true. That's just a backstory he invents. Why?

• 18:48Harvey Guillén?

  I don't know. But Jim really is a karate guy. He's good at it. He's won lots of competitions. While Jim's on payroll, Joe buys him really expensive presents, but not the kind you can buy at a mall. He buys Jim weapons and surveillance tools. I'm talking about CIA-level stuff. Voice-activated microphones and pistols built into ballpoint pens. That's on top of the more standard tools of warfare. You know, your run-of-the-mill machine guns and silencers. At first, he says it's just because Jim's interested in those kinds of things, but then, yeah, he buys Jim books on how to murder people.

• 19:31Harvey Guillén?

  For fun? I'm just interested in, you know, killing people. What? I don't think so, Jim. I don't think so. Things first escalate to real violence in March. Joe disappears one night and when he reappears, he tells some of the people closest to him that he and Jim went and shot up a lab with machine guns to fix some business problems they were having. Come April, someone notices a strange vial of liquid in Jim's car. When they ask about it, Jim warns them not to touch it. He says it's an industrial chemical solvent that spiked with poison. It can cause instantaneous heart attacks.

• 20:17Harvey Guillén?

  Which brings us to June 1984, when Joe wakes Dean up with that $1.5 million check with Ron Levin's name on it. Joe tells Dean that Ron's dead that day. But a few days later, he spills the beans about everything that happened. How Joe met Ron for dinner at Ron's house. How Jim came over for dessert. How they forced Ron to write the check, handcuffed him, made him lay face down on his bed, then shot him in the head before burying his body in a grave Jim dug earlier that day.

• 20:58Harvey Guillén?

  And imagine being Dean. You don't want to hear any of this, especially not in the great detail that includes Joe imitating the gurgling sounds of Ron's dying breath. And then you have to weigh in the fact that you are now complicit in murder, one that you didn't have a direct hand in, but do benefit from because that $1.5 million will fix a lot of problems. And now imagine doing everything you can to cash that check as fast as humanly possible, only to find out it bounces.

• 21:35Harvey Guillén?

  That Ron Levin is actually having the last laugh from beyond the grave. Well, what do you do if you're Dean and Joe? Well, easy. You plan to kidnap and torture an Iranian millionaire.

• 21:53Harvey Guillén?

  Investing is all about risk assessment. And for Joe Hunt, so is murder. For him, killing Ron Levin was a risk worth taking because he doesn't see a world where an investigation leads back to him. And in a way, his assumption is correct. At the time of his murder, Ron was under a criminal indictment for fraudulent business practices. He was almost certainly going to prison for up to seven years. So Joe bet that if Ron went missing, police would assume he flew the coop, that he disappeared on purpose. And he's kind of right. The next day, two young men show up at Ron's house. They're expecting Ron to take them

• 22:38Harvey Guillén?

  on a trip to New York, like he promised. But Ron's not answering. Then, when one of Ron's employees arrives, they all go inside and find the home empty, with Ron's suitcases unpacked. Which isn't the only strange detail. They report Ron missing, but apparently, the Beverly Hills police don't even send a detective to his house. They assume he fled. Then, a few days later, they get a call from the Plaza Hotel in New York. Someone checked into the room Ron had booked. And whoever it was racked up $2,000 worth of charges. So, the police asked the hotel for their help catching the culprit.

• 23:23Harvey Guillén?

  And it leads to a really strange and kind of funny scene. Security spots the person exiting the room holding two suitcases. They follow him down a staircase and into the lobby. They ask if he's a guest. The man says something about a limousine, but before he can exit the building, a bunch of guards surround him in the lobby. And rather than stand down, this man drops his suitcases, screams his head off, and hits a fancy karate pose.

• 23:55Harvey Guillén?

  Can you imagine the faces of all the guests checking in? Like, "It's the Plaza, Home Alone 2, Eloise." Anyway, obviously, the guest is Jim Pittman. Joe's bodyguard, and now, Hitman. He tries to run, but ends up going to jail. Except, he's booked under the name Ron Levin, and Joe bails him out the next day. So, nothing really comes of the incident, and things go back to normal. Which, for the billionaire boys' club, now means the opposite of normal. By June 24th, a lot more members know about Ron's murder. Because Joe tells them.

• 24:37Harvey Guillén?

  Even though Jim warns him that it's a terrible idea, Jim thinks the less people who know, the better, because, in his words, "There's always someone who talks." But for some reason, Joe cares more about his frat brother's trust than he does about other people's lives. So, he tells his inner circle, and just like Jim predicted, one of them talks. It's one of the May brothers. He goes to the police, and then steals every piece of paper in the BBC office that has his name on it. When Joe finds out about the missing documents, he goes berserk. He suspects it could be the May's, so he breaks into their house

• 25:20Harvey Guillén?

  and plays the messages on their answering machine. And one is from the Beverly Hills Police. So, his suspicions are confirmed. And that leads to a meeting where Joe pitches killing the May Twins, which turns into an actual plan to murder by finding them on a highway and driving a large, weighted truck into their car. And this is a plan that he actually puts into action. Joe has the May's hunted down by truck, motorcycle, and plane. Luckily for the twins, he never finds them. But by July, the BBC is planning something that's quite possibly even crazier.

• 26:04Harvey Guillén?

  The idea is first suggested by Ben. If Dean is Joe's number one, Ben's his number two. And Ben says he knows the son of an Iranian millionaire. The guy used to be a high-ranking official in the Shah of Iran's government, but he now lives in LA and his son hates him. In fact, Ben says the son hates his father so much that he might help the BBC kidnap him and force him to sign over all his assets to them, which are worth more than $30 million. Again, money they need to maintain their house of cards. Now, the planning that goes into this is absolutely insane.

• 26:49Harvey Guillén?

  There's surveillance, designated roles, police disguises, delivery boy uniforms. They really go all out. And the plan is for Joe to be the guy who does the talking once they kidnap him. So what does Joe do? Well, he goes to the local library and reads up all about the best ways to torture people so they do what you want, which I guess proves you really can learn anything, anything, at your local library. Support your local library. Now, back to the story. They even rent a remote house in Bel Air with a massive basement so no one will hear the guy's screams, which they set up to double as both a torture chamber and an office.

• 27:32Harvey Guillén?

  Now, allegedly, the plan is just to kidnap, torture, and extort this man. The plan is not to kill him, but when they actually put things into action at the end of July, they find out it's a lot harder to subdue a grown man than they thought. It takes a lot of beating and then some chloroform to knock him out. They stuff his body into a big trunk, put it in the back of a U-Haul, transfer it to a pickup truck at some point. Meanwhile, the whole time, someone is sitting with the trunk, listening to the man scream from inside it. Because, oh yeah, they apparently didn't knock him out well enough. But before they get to their remote torture chamber, the screams suddenly stop.

• 28:18Harvey Guillén?

  They open the trunk, and the guy's dead.

• 28:23Harvey Guillén?

  So that makes murder

• 28:27Harvey Guillén?

  numero dos.

• 28:29Harvey Guillén?

  The guy's reported missing pretty quickly, but the Billionaire Boys Club doesn't waste any time. With a couple of forged signatures, they make it so the Iranian millionaire's son gets power of attorney and is made the conservator of his father's estate. So in no time, Ben and the son hop on a plane to Europe to go find the guy's many bank accounts and bleed them dry. Meanwhile, it doesn't take long for police to figure out they now have two major disappearances on their hands. But even with help from BBC insiders, they're having a hard time building a case, mostly because they can't find Ron Levin. And without a body, it's really hard to prosecute a murder case. Not impossible,

• 29:14Harvey Guillén?

  but you need an overwhelming amount of evidence to meet the beyond a reasonable doubt standard. But after a while, officials start regretting not taking Ron's disappearance more seriously earlier because when they finally send an officer to Ron's house months later, they find a smoking gun. It's a yellow legal pad with a to-do list on it. And it's not just any to-do list. It's an incredibly detailed, step-by-step murder checklist. You can't make this up, okay? The tasks include close blinds, scan for tape recorder, put gloves on, handcuff, and tape mouth. There's even one line that reads, "Jim digs pit."

• 30:00Harvey Guillén?

  It looks like the one item they didn't get around to is "kill dog." Ron's poodle was found alive when others arrived, though it did pee on the very expensive rug. Bad boy. Now, who would be so anal and so careless to make a murder checklist and then leave it at the crime scene waiting to be found? Well, Joe was famous in the Billionaire Boys Club for his to-do lists, and the list spells the beginning of the end for him. As Joe is still scrambling to find new investors, in September 1984, officials issue an arrest warrant. He's taken into custody in an Armani suit and a Rolex from Tiffany's,

• 30:42Harvey Guillén?

  a watch that was actually a birthday present from Ron Levin. He's held in jail, unable to pay his $500,000 bail, but he acts cool, calm, and collected. Right up until officials place the to-do list in front of his face. Even though Ron's body is never found, a jury convicts Joe Hunt of first-degree murder in Ron's case and is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Dean Carney testifies against Joe in exchange for immunity. Jim Pittman, Joe's bodyguard, manages to escape any significant sentence.

• 31:24Harvey Guillén?

  After two hung juries, he takes a plea deal to lesser charges and only gets time served. He then goes on TV and brags about killing Ron Levin and now being untouchable due to double jeopardy laws. As for the murder of the Iranian millionaire, many members of the BBC are convicted of kidnapping and murder in that case. But the convictions are later overturned on appeal due to technicalities around how certain evidence was presented at the trial. So, believe it or not, the case is ultimately thrown out and all charges dropped, even though Dean brings officers

• 32:08Harvey Guillén?

  to the location of the man's body and they find his remains. To this day, Joe Hunt maintains his own innocence. He claims Ron Levin really did fake his own death. And if you Google this case right now, you'll find a website called FreeJoeHunt.com. You can read it yourself and decide whether the story he tells now is more convincing than the stories he told then. But the courts haven't agreed. Every appeal, every petition, every attempt at a reduced sentence has been denied. And when you take a step back, the pattern is unmistakable.

• 32:53Harvey Guillén?

  A man chasing wealth and influence, a trail of people hurt along the way, and a belief, even now, that he was destined for something greater. Which brings us back to Ken Midas, a man who mistook destruction for success, who believed his golden touch made him special right up until it ruined everything he cared about. Midas eventually realized what he had done. Joe Hunt never has. Because in true crime, unlike in myth, there's no divine moment of clarity. There's only the record,

• 33:37Harvey Guillén?

  what could be proved, what was adjudicated, and what actually happened. Thanks for tuning in to Killer Stories, a Spotify podcast. New episodes release on Mondays. If you liked today's story and want to learn more, we dropped some of our favorite sources in the episode description. Until next time, I'm Harvey DiEn. Stay safe out there.