Pod Insights Betrayal Andrea | Featured on ABC's Betrayal: Secrets and Lies About this episode You can now watch Andrea’s story on TV! Check out Betrayal: Secrets and Lies. Episodes air every Sunday at 10pm EST/9pm CST on ABC.
The “Mormon Madoff” conned everyone, including his own wife.
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Transcript 7,867 words · 15 speakers
0:00 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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1:17 Speaker 02 That's orderlymeds.com. Orderlymeds.com. Gain confidence and choose better habits this fall. Compounded medications are not FDA-approved. Eligibility required and determined by a licensed provider. Individual results may vary. See website for details.
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2:48 Speaker 00 Hi, it's Andrea, and we are re-releasing some of our past weekly episodes, and there's a good reason why. For the last year, I have been working with ABC on turning some of your favorite episodes of Betrayal Weekly into a TV show. The show is called Betrayal, Secrets, and Lies, and it airs every Sunday at 10:00 PM on ABC. Some betrayals don't just break your heart, they change your entire life overnight. Andrea thought she knew her husband Sean. She trusted him, built a life with him, a family, a future that felt secure. And then came the confession. What followed wasn't just emotional fallout. It was legal, it was public,
3:29 Speaker 00 and it was completely out of her control. The life she thought she was living in an instant was gone, replaced by something she never chose. Andrea's story is one that really stays with you, because it forces you to ask a difficult question. How much responsibility do you carry for something you didn't even know was happening? This is something we don't talk about enough: how often women are held accountable for the actions of men in their lives, even when they are completely in the dark. It's complicated, it's frustrating, and it's incredibly important. So please check out Betrayal, Secrets, and Lies on ABC and Hulu to see Andrea and where her story takes place. Enjoy the episode.
4:10 Speaker 05 Pretty soon up over the hill, I saw a caravan of dark vehicles with dark tinted windows. They're all in FBI or US Marshals jackets. They've got their sunglasses, they've got their weapons, and they come to my house. They rang the doorbell. I let them in.
4:42 Speaker 00 I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything.
4:52 Speaker 00 Andrea Merriman came from money, a lot of money. As a kid, her family had a huge house, a vacation home in Hawaii, and even a private plane.
5:02 Speaker 05 We flew everywhere. We didn't do road trips. It was so my family to hop in the plane at midnight and fly to Arizona for the weekend to enjoy the sun and then be back when school started on Monday.
5:17 Speaker 00 But if you met Andrea, you wouldn't know that's how she grew up. She's not flashy. She's hardworking and honest. Her parents raised her that way.
5:25 Speaker 05 We had jobs around the house. We didn't get allowance for it, or if we did, it was a dollar a week because my parents wanted to teach us responsibility and accountability.
5:38 Speaker 00 Her family belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some people call it the Mormon Church, but that's not the name she uses.
5:47 Speaker 05 That's a name given to church members who are not of our faith. It's just a mouthful to say the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
5:58 Speaker 00 From a young age, Andrea took her faith very seriously.
6:02 Speaker 05 When you're a child, they give you a ring and it says CTR on it. That stands for choose the right. So part of the culture was to be obedient to good principles, doing well in whatever I attempted to do.
6:21 Speaker 00 And in her religious community, she felt empowered as a woman. The women around her were ambitious and well-educated. Many of them had both families and careers.
6:31 Speaker 05 My mom had a master's degree and I remember going to my dad asking for help with homework. My dad would say, "I can totally help you, but who really could help you? The person who's the smartest in our family is your mother." So I was raised that women could do and be anything.
6:52 Speaker 00 She was a straight A student, a great athlete. She played three instruments and excelled at piano.
6:59 Speaker 05 Anything I did, I did to the best of my ability.
7:03 Speaker 00 When she got older, she took that determination to Brigham Young University, where she immediately got to work on building her future.
7:11 Speaker 05 My dad wanted me to be a lawyer, and that's what I went to school thinking I would do.
7:17 Speaker 00 Along the way, she found a dream of her own. She wanted to start a career in advertising and public relations. And her work ethic extended outside the classroom. She got a job in her apartment complex. That's how she met Sean.
7:32 Speaker 05 He came into the office to pay his rent, and I processed that for him.
7:37 Speaker 00 She would see him around the building, but they'd never really talked before.
7:42 Speaker 05 My roommates in my apartment were good friends with the guys in his apartment. People thought highly of him and his roommates, and they did fun things and seemed to be good people.
7:55 Speaker 00 Soon after they met in the office, Sean asked her out, and right away, he impressed her. He knew she liked music, so for their first date, he took her to the symphony. After that, they started going out together every weekend.
8:10 Speaker 05 He did not do the typical, cheap, low-budget, crazy college dates. He took me to the best restaurants, to concerts. And then he'd take you out into his BMW.
8:28 Speaker 05 He was always a very engaging, outgoing, charming person.
8:34 Speaker 00 On one date, she wore a pearl necklace. Sean complimented her on it, and she told him it was borrowed from a friend. So, a few days later...
8:44 Speaker 05 He just showed up at my door unexpectedly with a jewelry box. I opened it up, and it was a pearl necklace. And he said, "Any woman as beautiful as you should not have to borrow pearls." I mean, that was what it was like to date Sean Merriman. I remember thinking, wow, all the other boys I've dated, if they tried to do these grand gestures or date this way, it would seem really cheesy and corny, but it works for Sean, and it was just like in the movies.
9:20 Speaker 00 Even though he had expensive taste, Sean didn't come from money.
9:25 Speaker 05 His dad was a construction worker. They had moved all around the country during his childhood, 11 times in seven or eight years. There was a lot of alcoholism, divorce, and he was one of the first members of his family to go to college.
9:48 Speaker 00 Getting into college wasn't easy for Sean. He didn't have the grades, but he made up for it with his trademark charm.
9:56 Speaker 05 He started sending flowers to the woman in charge of admissions. And eventually, he got admitted.
10:05 Speaker 00 He was proud of this story, and he always had fabulous stories to entertain people with. He was interested in things most college kids weren't.
10:15 Speaker 05 He was into photography. He was into cars. He was into building things.
10:20 Speaker 00 Still, Sean didn't let his interests take over their relationship.
10:26 Speaker 05 We did everything that I loved. He knew that I loved the beach. He knew that I loved 80s music. He knew that I loved travel. And I thought that I was finding someone who believed the way I did on everything.
10:43 Speaker 00 After a few months of dating, the two took a trip to California. And there, on the beach, he got down on one knee.
10:52 Speaker 05 Going through my head mostly was, wait, I'm only 22. I'm too young to do this.
11:00 Speaker 00 Andrea was still in school. She'd always planned to graduate, start a career, and then get married. But saying yes to Sean just made sense.
11:10 Speaker 05 I don't know that I thought he was the one, but I thought that he would be a great friend, great partner, great companion, great provider, great father. And am I gonna find somebody just like him again if I pass this by? I saw enough of those good qualities and the things that I wanted as part of my future. So when he proposed, I said yes.
11:39 Speaker 00 So they got married and graduated college, in that order.
11:44 Speaker 05 We were on a good course together. We were equally yoked as a couple to move forward and create the life of our dreams.
11:59 Speaker 00 Shawn had a vision of moving to DC. He even interviewed with the CIA. He also considered getting an MBA at an Ivy League school. But ultimately, they decided to plant roots in her home state of Colorado.
12:14 Speaker 05 We chose to move to Denver for my career. I got a job working for a government agency, doing public relations for them.
12:23 Speaker 00 Shawn came to love Denver, and he found a great job at an investment firm.
12:29 Speaker 05 He had immediate success. So then he actually started being a stockbroker that fall.
12:37 Speaker 00 When it came to investing, Shawn had a mind of his touch.
12:41 Speaker 05 And I will tell you, from September to December, that quarter, he made $50,000. And that was in 1990.
12:51 Speaker 00 That's a lot of money, especially right out of college. Shawn was bringing home 200K a year. But that was the 90s. In today's money, that's the equivalent of $480,000 a year. And the money just kept coming.
13:06 Speaker 05 Other firms would reach out to him and say, hey, come and work for us. We'll give you a signing bonus. And so he would take a 50, 60, 70, 80,000 dollar signing bonus and go work for a different firm.
13:20 Speaker 00 He hopped from firm to firm for a few years. And then, soon after they had their first child in 1993, Shawn came to Andrea with a business idea.
13:31 Speaker 05 He came home from work and told me that he had some very wealthy, blue-blooded, old-money clients in Kansas City that had been so impressed with the money management he had done for them that they had asked him to step back from his career as a stockbroker and manage their money privately for them.
13:56 Speaker 00 She supported him 100%, so he made the leap and launched what became Market Street Advisors. It started with those Kansas City clients, but pretty soon he was investing for family, friends, and neighbors too. And even in the madness of starting his own firm and finding new clients, Shawn made it a point to spend time with Andrea at the end of every day.
14:21 Speaker 05 He came home at night, had dinner with me, had great stories about trades that he'd made that day. He had no shortage of stories he could tell, conversations he could share, ideas that he had.
14:37 Speaker 00 Life was good for the Merrymans. Shawn's investment firm was taking off, and the two of them were living comfortably, more than comfortably even. The house got bigger, cars got nicer. And for Andrea, there was only one thing missing: more kids.
14:54 Speaker 05 One of the things we talked about before we got married was that I wanted four to six children. He was like, "Oh, that's great. That's what I've always wanted."
15:07 Speaker 00 They had another child, a baby girl, and Andrea was the happiest she'd ever been. When Shawn got home after a long day at work, he didn't have the bandwidth to help with the babies.
15:20 Speaker 05 He was fine to play with the baby when he was home, etc., but he was not a hands-on, "Let me help bathe the baby. Let me change diapers."
15:31 Speaker 00 And when she asked him about having a third kid, he was hesitant. She assured him she'd take on the responsibilities that he couldn't.
15:40 Speaker 05 And so I did everything, handled everything for the baby, so that it wouldn't impact his life too much and I could have another child. And I continued to do everything and manage the kids so that it didn't impact his life.
15:57 Speaker 05 By the time we had our fourth kid, I could count the number of dirty diapers, on one hand, that he had changed. It really became, he was busy. He was working on his career. And I was the partner in the relationship who was focused on home and family.
16:16 Speaker 00 All in all, they had four kids together. She was the homemaker. He was the provider. And he provided very well. It was the life she always wanted. Over time, Shawn started to be more open about the life he wanted.
16:32 Speaker 05 I found out he didn't like dancing. He didn't like beaches. Let's go on a trip to California. No, I hate the beach. What? Yeah, I hate the feel of sand between my toes. I'm not doing that.
16:46 Speaker 00 He started developing expensive new hobbies, ones that required him to travel.
16:53 Speaker 05 He was a big African safari guy. He would go to Cameroon and Tanzania and South Africa and Zimbabwe, all over the world to hunt and go on safaris for animals. And coincidentally, very wealthy people are engaged in those hobbies. He sold it as, well, I'm actually doing this for work to get more clients to build my business.
17:20 Speaker 00 These trips could be dangerous. One time, when he returned from a safari in Ethiopia, Shawn was acting strange.
17:29 Speaker 05 He was keeping his distance. And I said, why? And he said, I have got to go to the doctor.
17:37 Speaker 00 He was worried he could have contracted something. He told Andrea a wild story.
17:44 Speaker 05 We were climbing a mountain and one of the people in the party slipped and he was going to fall off a cliff. And so I reached down and I grabbed him and saved his life. But he and I both got caught up in the process. And I need to go and get tested to make sure I'm OK.
18:06 Speaker 00 Thankfully, Shawn was negative. And even though the story was far-fetched, Andrea believed him.
18:13 Speaker 05 He had so many stories about saving people's lives or dramatic things. I used to tell him, if I didn't live with you and see that your life is true, I would never believe your life.
18:26 Speaker 05 What I didn't know was, most of those stories were probably lies.
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19:14 Speaker 02 Ready to feel energized and in control again? At Orderly Med's, we have helped thousands just like you take charge of their health with a GLP-1. If you've tried dieting, exercising, and relying on willpower and nothing seems to stick, then it might be time to talk to a licensed provider about your options. That's what Orderly Med's is for. This fall, choose healthier habits for yourself with a visit to orderlymeds.com. You don't need to visit with a physician in person to become eligible. Orderly Med's has a simple virtual process. Connect with licensed medical professionals who can determine whether a GLP-1 treatment may be appropriate for you wherever you are. Getting started from the comfort of home, online. Change your habits and consider a new approach to feeling your best. Visit orderlymeds.com to learn more.
19:58 Speaker 02 That's orderlymeds.com. Orderlymeds.com. Gain confidence and choose better habits this fall. Compounded medications are not FDA-approved. Eligibility required and determined by a licensed provider. Individual results may vary. See website for details.
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21:05 Speaker 07 Hello, hello, I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with IBM's Ana Paula Assis about what digital sovereignty actually means in the age of AI.
21:16 Speaker 08 AI now moves from somebody operating a system to the technology actually making decisions. So you have to have a much better visibility of what AI is touching, data it is accessing and where.
21:33 Speaker 07 Hear the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts.
21:40 Speaker 00 As Andrea and Sean built a family together, Sean started to change. He was around less and less, working at his investment firm. And when he wasn't working, he was taking extravagant hunting trips on his own. It became Sean's world and sometimes that bothered her. But she was committed to him, no matter what.
22:02 Speaker 05 For a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, you marry forever and you make your choice and then you love your choice and you figure out how to make it work. I was taught that pretty much the only reason you would ever divorce is if in the case of like physical abuse or something. Beyond that, you marry forever.
22:30 Speaker 00 His behavior was a challenge, but not marriage ending.
22:34 Speaker 05 It wasn't anything that I would have divorced over. It was more, oh, I guess I'll make this work.
22:43 Speaker 00 And she really did want to make it work. There was still so much good in what they had together.
22:49 Speaker 05 I felt like we were very connected. We went on dates every weekend together. He would call me when he had downtimes at work. Once every morning and once or twice in the afternoon. He'd just call me to check in, see what I was doing, see how I was.
23:07 Speaker 00 And when he did have the time, she could see he was really trying. Especially as the kids got older, he became more involved. He led 50-mile hikes for their son's Boy Scout troop. He drove their daughter around on errands. He joked with them, talked with them. And above all, he made sure his kids had everything they could ask for. All the things he didn't have growing up.
23:30 Speaker 05 My son played baseball and they won the championship of their league. So he bought a batting cage and pitching machine that he put in our backyard. We put in a pool, we put in a sport court so that our kids would have a great fun place to bring their friends to.
23:50 Speaker 00 Shawn wanted their kids to be cultured. He took them to museums around the world. And he even started their own private art collection.
23:58 Speaker 05 We ended up with a collection of Rembrandts that was worth quite a bit of money. And sculptures by Frederick Hart. All kinds of things like that to make things beautiful and to help educate our children.
24:14 Speaker 00 The batting cages, the private courts, the Rembrandts. Sure, it was a lot, but they could afford it. In Shawn's hands, Andrea had watched their money multiply.
24:26 Speaker 05 I had watched our account slowly grow up to a million. And then I watched our account slowly grow to 3 million. And then I watched my statement grow to total about $10 million.
24:42 Speaker 00 In the early 2000s, that was closer to 18 million. Andrea also invested her own inheritance with Sean's firm. Everything she had saved and everything she got from her parents.
24:55 Speaker 05 I had my own money. My parents had passed away at this point. Unlike all of his investment clients, I was getting, you know, monthly financial statements.
25:05 Speaker 00 Still, she wanted to make sure that they were being smart with their spending.
25:14 Speaker 05 I am very conservative financially. So my first goal was, I want our home paid off. And so I remember, I think it was my 40th birthday, he gave me the deed to our house and our house was paid off.
25:31 Speaker 00 And Sean kept making the house better and better.
25:35 Speaker 05 He ended up building a building behind our home that he called his shop. It was actually bigger than our home. His work office was in the top level and then the bottom was just cars and trophies. He had an Aston Martin. He had several Porsches, a Ferrari, Mercedes sedans, BMWs, you name it.
25:56 Speaker 00 Sean spent pretty much all his time in his shop, working on business or taking care of his cars.
26:02 Speaker 05 He would go out to his office from probably 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., come in, have dinner, and then he'd be like, oh, I'm going to go out to my shop and do this. And then he'd come in at 10:00 at night.
26:16 Speaker 00 Andrea knew all that hard work was funding their lifestyle. But she missed him. She wanted him around more.
26:23 Speaker 05 After 17 or so years of marriage, I said, we don't need more money. We have plenty for our needs and our wants and things we've never dreamed of. But we need you.
26:38 Speaker 05 And he just said, I can't. I've got to build my business.
26:44 Speaker 00 He'd spent 20 years prioritizing his work above everything else. He didn't know how to shift gears. Maybe he didn't want to. So Andrea made peace with the fact that her husband would be around when he could be.
26:57 Speaker 05 I was kind of raised, if you look for the good in others, you will find it. If you're looking for bad things and looking to tear people down and to hate them, you'll find reasons for that, too.
27:11 Speaker 05 He was gone a lot of the time, but when he was home, he would be there for dinner and do other things with us. Now, I don't think any life is completely perfect, but it was a good life.
27:27 Speaker 00 March 17th, 2009 was a really good day. It was St. Patty's Day.
27:33 Speaker 05 There is a little Irish in the Merriman side of the family, so I always tried to make it a fun day. I had gold coins and I made green pancakes and green milk for breakfast. As I sent my kids off to school, I took fun photos of them dressed in their St. Patrick's Day attire. What I didn't know at the time was those were the last Merriman family photos that I would ever take.
28:10 Speaker 05 The next day, March 18th, unexpectedly, I was headed out on some errands. I'd dropped my youngest child off at daycare to have a babysitter while I quickly got some things done. And Sean called me as I was driving down the highway and he's like, what are you doing? And I said, why? Do you need something? He said, well, actually, I was hoping to spend some time with you this morning. And I said, oh, well, I can turn around and I'll come and get you and you can do my errands with me. And he said, no, I need you to come home.
28:49 Speaker 00 So she turned the car around and went back to the house. He was waiting for her in the kitchen.
28:56 Speaker 05 And he said, "I've been running Market Street Advisors for the past 16 years, but I need you to know that every day when I got up and left and went to work and was gone all day, I was actually running a Ponzi scheme."
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29:59 Speaker 09 Looking for a new way to take control of your health? If diet, exercise, and willpower alone haven't gotten you where you want to be, visit orderlymeds.com to learn about GLP-1 treatment options. With a convenient virtual process, you can connect with licensed medical providers from home and see if treatment may be appropriate for you. Visit orderlymeds.com today. That's orderlymeds.com. Compounded medications are not FDA-approved. Eligibility determined by a licensed provider. Individual results may vary. See website for details.
30:29 Speaker 03 Quick break from the case. If there's a kid on your gift list this year, here's one you can close fast. Guardian is the number one kids' bike on the market with over 1 million happy riders and the easiest way for kids to learn to ride. They're lightweight and low to the ground with a wide wheelbase for balance, so kids are riding in just one day. No training wheels needed. Guardian bikes are designed and assembled in the USA, and the New York Times Wire Cutter has named them its top pick for kids' bikes for Four years in a row. This holiday season, save over 40% on kids bikes and get $100 in free accessories with every bike. A lock, pump, bell, grips and clamp. That's stocking stuffers covered. They've got helmets and adult bikes, too.
31:13 Speaker 03 Shop guardianbikes.com and it's case closed on the best kids gift this year. That's guardianbikes.com.
31:21 Speaker 07 I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with Dr. Laura Jayhai of Cleveland Clinic about how advanced computing is helping shorten the path from medical discovery to treatment.
31:34 Speaker 10 The moment that there is a compound that someone in a lab thinks it would be effective to treat a certain disease, it takes about 10 to 13 years from that moment to when that drug is on a shelf for a patient. A big part of that gap could be computationally solved. Better simulation of compounds, designing drug trials that are more efficient, that would finish faster. That was the motivation to bring computational tools and technology closer to biomedical researchers.
32:08 Speaker 07 Learn more about how Cleveland Clinic and IBM are using AI and quantum computing to revolutionize biomedical research at ibm.com/smarttalks.
32:22 Speaker 00 Andrea thought that her husband Sean had dedicated his career to running his own investment firm. But then Sean confessed that it was all a lie. Their life of luxury was funded on stolen money. For the past 16 years, he had been running a Ponzi scheme.
32:40 Speaker 05 I didn't even know what a Ponzi scheme was. I had heard of Bernie Madoff. I didn't pay too much attention to those types of things. I knew he'd done something wrong, but that's pretty much all I knew about it.
32:52 Speaker 00 Sean explained that when he first started, his firm was legitimate. But in his first year, one of his investments went south and he panicked.
33:00 Speaker 05 So he omitted the $5,000 loss from his statement. And I'm sure he thought that he could make that up with another trade. And then he never did.
33:12 Speaker 00 So he kept fudging the books, selling people on his big wins and using money from new investors to pay old ones. There were no million dollar trades or miracle investments. The conversations he told her about and all the financial documents she'd seen were fake.
33:29 Speaker 00 He was a total fraud. His clients had lost millions of dollars. Some of them lost everything they had. Not only did he lose other people's money, all of their own money was gone, too. The money she'd inherited from her parents and their kids' college funds. It was gone.
33:49 Speaker 05 Then he said, "Yesterday, I, in the company of my attorney, turned myself in to the US Marshals to representatives of the federal government, and I will be going to prison." And when he said the word "prison", I about died. My mind was just swirling when he said that. I thought, "This cannot be real."
34:19 Speaker 00 She thought back to all the outlandish stories he told over the years, like the one about saving someone's life on a safari. Was any of it real? As the reality set in, she tried to cling to anything she could.
34:36 Speaker 05 I was trying to find the positive, like I'd been raised to do. And I said, "At least the house is paid off." And he said, "No, you don't understand. The house is gone. The cars are gone. Everything's gone."
34:55 Speaker 05 I just kind of felt like I was witnessing the apocalypse. I remember apologizing, saying, "I'm so sorry, but I have to get out of here." And I got up, and I ran out, and I got in my car, and I took off up my driveway and started driving out of my neighborhood. Uncontrollably, tears were just streaming out of my eyes.
35:22 Speaker 00 Andrea pulled over just minutes after leaving her home. She couldn't see, much less drive. And as she sat there alone in her car, the weight of it all finally hit her.
35:34 Speaker 05 I felt like everything had been destroyed. Everything was a humiliation to me, as well as a shock, as well as deeply sad and devastating. My biggest wish and desire would have been to just walk to the edge of the horizon and drop off the face of the earth. But I couldn't because I had four kids relying on me. I was their only resource. She had to keep going, so she made a plan.
36:07 Speaker 05 When I went back to the house, I told him that he was going to be the one to tell the kids. So that night, we gathered our family together. He was in a chair in the corner of the room. I was on the couch across the room from him. And he told the kids, I have done something wrong. I've made a little mistake. And from across the side of the room, I am just furious, shaking my head going, you've committed a crime. You've made huge mistakes over and over every day, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. That is not one little mistake.
36:51 Speaker 05 Andrea was angry. The kids, they were terrified. I was standing there with four kids, ages three to 16, tears streaming down their face, looking at me for answers and strength. Before I could even say anything, my little third grader said, does this mean you're going to divorce Dad? She knew in that moment that the answer was yes. It wasn't an easy answer, though. I was so humiliated, humiliated to be married to a criminal, humiliated at what he'd done, humiliated to know that I would be getting divorced.
37:36 Speaker 05 I was raised that divorce is not what you do. Knowing that I had been married in a temple forever added a layer of difficulty, a layer of guilt, a layer of regret.
37:52 Speaker 00 But she was done. She couldn't be with a man who had spent decades cheating so many others out of millions of dollars. She would walk away while making the transition as easy as she could for her kids.
38:05 Speaker 05 I felt like my kids had been in such shock that they probably needed things to be as normal as possible in whatever ways they could be. So I fed them that night. Shawn stayed in the home with us.
38:23 Speaker 00 And he continued to stay in the home and come to family dinner, just as he had for the last 20 years. Even though Shawn had turned himself in, the feds still needed time to build a case against him. So they waited.
38:40 Speaker 05 I even remember cooking dinner for my kids, saying, "Would you like to call your dad and let him know dinner's ready? I am appalled that I am doing this for this man who's done this." But it was for my kids. I was trying to be kind. Set an example of divorce and not changing who you are just because you've been betrayed. You choose the right, you are kind, you are good to people no matter what.
39:08 Speaker 00 The destruction of her life didn't happen all at once. She watched it being taken apart, piece by piece.
39:18 Speaker 00 After a few weeks of this purgatory, she got a call from the U.S. Marshals. They set a date to come to her house and seize the family assets.
39:29 Speaker 05 Pretty soon, up over the hill, I saw a caravan of dark vehicles with dark tinted windows. They all pull up in front of my house. Everybody starts getting out of the cars. They're all in FBI or U.S. Marshals jackets. They've got their sunglasses, they've got their weapons, and they come to my house. I think the only difference is I knew they were coming and they didn't break my door down. They rang the doorbell. I let them in.
39:54 Speaker 00 The authorities took everything of value. Sean's computer, his cars, his art collection, and most of what Andrea owned too.
40:01 Speaker 05 I had the thought, "You should hide some of your jewelry." And I thought, "What? No, that would be stealing. No, you don't know where you're gonna live, how you're gonna keep your kids alive. You don't have a job, your parents are dead. If you could just end up with something, then you'd have something to sell to start a life with." And I went back and forth in my mind a couple of times, and then I thought, "Nope, I am not going to abandon my integrity just because the person I'm married to has." And I left it. I left it all in my jewelry box because I am not compromising my ethics.
40:41 Speaker 00 She watched all their belongings get carted away. And she wasn't the only one.
40:46 Speaker 05 Several of my neighbors at the house next door, up on the deck, drinking, barbecuing, having a great time, rejoicing in the downfall of my family and the asset seizure.
40:59 Speaker 00 Sean had scammed so many people, neighbors, friends and family alike. She couldn't blame anyone for wanting him to pay, and yet people wanted her to pay too, even though she had done nothing wrong. She'd been married to the Mormon Madoff, as the media soon dubbed him. Even neighbors and friends assumed that she must have known something.
41:22 Speaker 05 One time I was out front with my three-year-old. He was just playing, you know, around the trees or the bushes. And I could hear "kachink, kachink, kachink." And I turn around, and one of my neighbors is over the fence with a lens photographing every move I make.
41:38 Speaker 00 For the short time she had remaining in their house, she was paranoid for the safety of her family, and for good reason.
41:45 Speaker 05 One of the victims, who was also a neighbor in the neighborhood, and who had lost probably all of his money, came all the way up, my steps, to my front porch, to my front door, with his loaded gun, ready to blow Sean Merriman away, and who knows who else, before he came to his senses and he turned around and went home without hurting anyone.
42:09 Speaker 00 Andrea wanted nothing more than to take her kids and get out of that house, especially since Shawn continued to live there, waiting to be taken to prison. It took time, 90 days, for the divorce to be processed. But then finally...
42:24 Speaker 05 On July 13th, I drove to the courthouse with him to finalize the divorce. We came home, I packed my car with my two dogs and my kids, and I moved that day. And I didn't say goodbye to anything. I did not look back. I drove away, and I didn't look in the rearview mirror the whole way out of Denver.
42:49 Speaker 00 While Shawn went away to prison, Andrea went to Utah. Thankfully, she was able to leave her old life behind without her husband's debt hanging over her head.
43:00 Speaker 05 I had to write my own divorce because I couldn't afford an attorney. I made sure that I wrote that he was responsible for his debts and I was responsible for mine. Now, credit card companies don't apparently have to abide by that, but I think they saw that I was penniless, so they didn't actually come after me.
43:22 Speaker 00 She and her kids moved in with her brother, and a friend connected her with a job in marketing so that she could rebuild. But she was starting from nothing. For the first time in her life, she was worried about having the money to eat.
43:36 Speaker 05 For years, I would just have a knot in my stomach every time I drove to the grocery store, thinking, "Oh, my gosh, I have to buy this food, but it's so much, I don't have money." I mean, we just had to adjust.
43:52 Speaker 00 Part of that adjustment meant facing her own self-blame.
43:56 Speaker 05 I was ridden with guilt that I had enjoyed a nice life at the expense of others. I remember Shawn said to me before we parted ways, "Well, at least you got a lot of good trips out of it." And I just looked at him and went, "I hate every trip I went on. I hate every photo. I hate every memory." There was all kinds of guilt. Guilt that I'd brought him into the lives of my friends and family that got shafted by him. Guilt that I had chosen him to be the father of my children.
44:31 Speaker 00 She turned to the church for support and started meeting regularly with a church leader.
44:37 Speaker 05 And he said, "How are you doing?" And I said, "Honestly, I am trying to figure out how this happened. I've tried to do everything right in my life. I've tried to be a good wife, a good mother, a good citizen, a good person. How did I get here?" And he goes, "Well, in all of that, you forgot one thing: the agency of the other person, the other person's opportunity to choose. This is not on you. He did this. There's nothing you could have done. What I had to do was recognize and forgive myself for the fact that I made the best decision I could with the facts I had at hand."
45:22 Speaker 00 But she also knew that she wanted to forgive Shawn. That was the only path forward.
45:28 Speaker 05 I had a couple of friends who'd gotten divorced and who had not gotten past it. They were very, very hateful toward their former spouse. And I saw how it was impacting their kids and destroying their family. And so the one thing I knew was, we are going to forgive, not for him, but for us, so that our hatred doesn't destroy us.
45:56 Speaker 00 Shawn was ordered to pay $20 million to his victims. On top of that, he was sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison. During that time, Andrea was a single mom. She raised her kids with honesty, kindness, and forgiveness, just like her parents raised her.
46:14 Speaker 05 And my kids have turned out to be everything I could have hoped for: hardworking, educated. They all help others. They all have skills. They're kind, good people, and couldn't ask for anything more.
46:29 Speaker 00 Andrea's been able to rebuild her own life, too.
46:32 Speaker 05 I can honestly say I am super happy today. I am a homeowner. I have a great career that's been so memorable. I've gotten to travel. I have done many things that I've dreamed of. I've actually even remarried, if you can believe it or not.
46:51 Speaker 00 She ended up married to another man in finance.
46:55 Speaker 05 Someone who is everything I thought I was getting but didn't get the first time, and more. He's even tall and handsome.
47:03 Speaker 00 And here's the kicker. After they got married, her new husband started a second career.
47:09 Speaker 05 As a fraud investigator, busting Ponzi schemes.
47:14 Speaker 00 We end all of our weekly episodes with the same question. Why did you choose to tell your story?
47:21 Speaker 05 Life can be good. That's what we're all here to have and to be. I believe in being happy. So yeah, maybe I chose to be optimistic more than I should have. And I did smile when the smiles were totally fake. And I remember having my heart so broken, it literally ached in my chest. But I've plotted one foot in front of the other for a decade when I wasn't sure if it was making any difference. But when you lift your eyes up and you see you're on the top of a mountain, that's a view worth all the persevering for.
48:05 Speaker 00 On the next episode of Betrayal.
48:08 Speaker 11 The minute I did that, I had this deep shame flood over me. Like, you've made a really grave error here. You've divulged something super private, and you'll now never know why this person's in a relationship with you, because is it for the money, or is it for you?
48:33 Speaker 00 If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team or want to tell us your betrayal story, email us at [email protected] . That's [email protected] .
48:44 Speaker 00 We're grateful for your support. One way to show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts. And don't forget to rate and review Betrayal. Five-star reviews go a long way. A big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Caitlin Golden, with additional production by Monique LaBord and Ben Vetterman. Our associate producer is Kristen Melchure. Our iHeart team is Ally Perry and Jessica Krychek. Audio editing and mixing by Matt Del Vecchio.
49:26 Speaker 00 Additional editing support from Nico Aruca and Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Baines. Music library provided by MyB Music. And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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