Episode 3 Part 1: How Not To Get Away With Scamming

Chris: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of wine therapy. It's me, Chris Evans. My cohost Nancy is here with us too. Hello. Hello. It's been a while since our last episode, but we are back with what I think will be our best episode yet today we are talking about [00:01:00] scams. It's all about scams there. A lot of you out there have been scammed and maybe some of you are the motherfucking scammers.

Nancy: [00:01:10] And if you are unfollow or just. Forward some of that money to us,

Chris: [00:01:18] but today we're going to talk about some really interesting scam artists, some big, some small, and then we're going to talk about some ways that you can spot a scam so that you don't get scammed. So, first off, of course, we have to start with making sure we've got our wine ready.

So I've got my red wine. Can't find my class that I have, that you can pour the whole bottle in. So I'm just using this stainless steel goblet that I found.

Nancy: [00:01:55] How game of Thrones have you final season?

[00:02:00] Chris: [00:02:00] I think I actually did bite these once I started watching game of Thrones.

Nancy: [00:02:06] Final season,

Chris: [00:02:08] but I need to get one of those big, fancy, like Searcy goblets.

Nancy: [00:02:12] Yes. Opens Amazon.

Chris: [00:02:20] So the first one we're going to talk about today is probably the biggest profile one. So there's a movie that was made based on this story. The movie is called bad education. It's an NHL original, actually it stars Hugh Jackman, Allison Janney. There's a bunch of other good actors in it. Ray Romano is in it, a bunch of other people.

Oh, Anna Lee Ashford I think is in it as well. She plays Alison Jennie's niece. All right. Maybe a daughter in law or something, but essentially the movie is about, it starts off with you thinking [00:03:00] that Alison Johnny's character is the movies about her being the villain of the story. Essentially they are, they work at the school board and it's this school, it's his County in long Island.

That is apparently. One of the best at the time. Do you remember when this took tape took, take that? Where, where, when this took place, Nancy, was it in the nineties or are you having a stroke over there?

Nancy: [00:03:26] Do you smell toast? I thought it was like 2004. I can Goggle it real quick, but I thought it was later than that.

Chris: [00:03:34] Okay. Yeah, well, it was, but it was sometime ago. And the, at this time, this school was like one of the best schools, I guess, in New York and maybe even in the country, as far as the quality of education. And of course, as many of the. Quality of schools. The public schools tends to be tied to the value of the real estate because people always want to buy [00:04:00] houses in an area where their kids are going to be able to go to a good school for free.

So it was like the pride of this. County that they have such a good school system. And so Hugh Jackman I think, is like the superintendent or something. And I don't know what exactly Alison Jannie his role was, but she was someone that worked under him. But with him, like she, whatever her position was, they were both kind of high up 10.

So essentially you come to realize very quickly in the movie that Allison Janney is stealing money from. The school district and she's doing it by sort of back charging these different personal charges. So essentially what she's doing is creating invoices for supposedly school business, but in reality, the money is going [00:05:00] into her personal pocket.

And so when you see her have this, like, Lavish pool party at her house and they live this fancy lifestyle. And you're kind of like, how does it work, buddy? Who works at how does a public servant who works at the school board? Get all this money? Where does all this money coming from?

Nancy: [00:05:18] Even if it is long Island, you're still wondering how are they getting all this money?

So Wikipedia said it's 2002 that it takes place. That's when all of this occurred.

Chris: [00:05:29] Yeah. So essentially the big kind of turning point for the plot in this movie is, well, one of them is when Allison Janney, his son who owned a construction company, he goes to. The ACE hardware or whatever the hell he went for supplies.

And it was Keith was using the schools like he was using Alison Janney is like school [00:06:00] work, credit card for expenses that were supposed to be for the school. But he was using them for construction materials, I think, to do a renovation on their house

Nancy: [00:06:11] and upgrades.

Chris: [00:06:13] Yeah. And he was stupid enough. Yeah, I think he was having small talk with the cash and told them that it was a PR.

He told them the truth. There's a project for his family's upgrading their house, which they obviously thought was strange when he handed them the credit card. And it was her school card. So,

Nancy: [00:06:36] yeah, cause they were like treating him like a VIP customer because of the amount of money he just dropped in there.

So they were just questioning him on, well, what are you getting up to? What's the upgrade? And he was like, Oh yeah, just doing some stuff. Like my mom's house. And they were like, uh,

Chris: [00:06:51] so clearly her son is not the brightest crayon in the box, but that is what sort of triggered [00:07:00] everything coming down like a house of cards because.

Simultaneously, there's this sort of a subplot with this girl who is, I think, I don't know if she's a middle school student or high school student.

Nancy: [00:07:12] She's a junior. She's about to be a senior.

Chris: [00:07:14] Yes. Right? Yeah. So she's doing, I think she's working for the school paper and they want her to be doing fluff pieces about like spirit week and shit.

And instead she decides to. Do an article on Hugh Jackman's character or actually it wasn't really about Jacqueline's character. It was, I think it was just generally about how things worked

Nancy: [00:07:37] at the school skywalk.

Chris: [00:07:39] Oh, that's right. They were

Nancy: [00:07:40] building the massive skywalk and it was, it was a fluff article that she was doing, but she went to Hugh Jackman and was like, yeah, this is what they have me writing.

And he kind of unknowingly lit the fuse to be like, Well, it's only a puff piece. If you treat it that way, really dig and see what else you can get. So then she starts snooping [00:08:00] around and going through stuff and talks to Alison Janie and is like, Hey, I have a couple questions and she's okay. I'll give you one quote and then you can leave.

Cause this is a waste of my time.

Chris: [00:08:09] You want to know how many bids we got from contractors for the skywalk

Nancy: [00:08:13] construction?

Chris: [00:08:14] You explored several options,

Nancy: [00:08:15] right?

Chris: [00:08:16] I think we had four or five. Okay. For which firms? Exactly. Hang

Nancy: [00:08:22] on a sec.

Chris: [00:08:23] What's this article you're supposed to be writing.

Nancy: [00:08:25] Oh, it's a piece on the skywalk and the student paper wanted a deep dive into construction.

They're giving me free reign more or less.

Chris: [00:08:35] I guess I'm just looking for an interesting way in. Oh, okay. Ruth, Rachel. So let me give you a great angle for your story. Okay. You want to write this down? Are you taping? Oh, okay.

Nancy: [00:08:49] The skywalk is a great project. It'll be the first guy walk on all of long Island.

And yet one more reason. Roslyn schools put Jericho and say asset to shame and [00:09:00] it'll look great and make all our lives easier. Thank you the end. Good night

Chris: [00:09:03] and good luck. What else can I help you with? Do you have the bids handy

Nancy: [00:09:10] or are they not on you?

Chris: [00:09:12] No, they're not army. They're locked in the base, but lost in the annals of history.

Nancy: [00:09:16] Oh,

Chris: [00:09:16] I have next period free.

Do you

alright?

I think she starts saying, well, why are you guys spending all of this money on this skywalk? When. You know, we should be spending it on books or whatever the hell, basically she starts questioning why they were being sold. You're responsible with the spending as to put so much money into [00:10:00] something that is just for aesthetics basically.

Nancy: [00:10:03] And then they have shots in there too, of how. There's a major leak in the middle of the office, like near a printer and an electrical socket where her, Oh yeah, the school's just falling apart. And so that's what makes her pull the thread of if they have all this money being siphoned into the school to do this guy walk, like, why is everything else in such disrepair?

Chris: [00:10:24] Right. What I recall is I think they were, the skywalk was kind of being used as a. Cover for all of these personal expenses. So they were invoicing things that they were saying were for the Skyway that really had nothing to do with it. But because it was obviously a big item that was going to be expensive.

No one was questioning. There was all of these invoices were that were related to the sky, but this student doing the article. She is the one who [00:11:00] eventually breaks the story that not only is Allison Janney, a scammer, who's been stealing millions from the school district for her multiple homes. We got her, this, her that, but also Hugh Jackman's case character who you're led to believe is like the hero of the story.

He ultimately is also stealing money from the school. And there's a lot of other stuff that coming out as well about his character. It's an excellent movie. And Hugh Jackman is amazing in the role,

Nancy: [00:11:35] but I could watch Alison Janey do anything. I don't care what it is. I think she's so incredible.

Chris: [00:11:41] The plot  crack the fuck up was how Alison had been.

I think it was her knees. Cause I feel like I remember her. Calling her aunt or something, but the Annalee Ashford's character who she has some bullshit job in the office, some low level assistant or receptionist or something. And I [00:12:00] think she asked Alison Johnny's character for some money, for something related to like no wedding or hurt.

Nancy: [00:12:09] There was something kind of a base station for her boyfriend.

Chris: [00:12:11] Oh yes, it was. She wanted to play station four. Their kids or something for Christmas, the

Nancy: [00:12:18] box, whatever. Yeah. It's trendy. I don't know.

Chris: [00:12:20] Yeah. Whatever was trending in 2002, but, and she didn't have the money. And so Allison Janney hell's her. I think she told her to just put it on her corporate card, her school, but business card, which of course she was like, huh, that's weird.

But she wanted the PlayStation I got. So she just went along with it and Alison told her, and we'll figure it out later with an invoice or whatever the hell. So essentially once it comes out that Alison Janie, his character has been stealing all of the school board. People come into the office with this very dramatic meeting with Hugh Jackman.

And they're like, what are we going to do? Do we out her? Do [00:13:00] we call the police? Do what do we do? Call the mayor, whatever. And he's look, this is going to be a huge scandal and it's, they're going to, we're trying to get our budget through for the next semester. And they're going to completely not give us the money we're looking for.

And then our whole County and the entire reputation that we have will skydive. And then so will all of our property values and blah, blah, blah. He talks

Nancy: [00:13:25] about how the seniors won't be able to get into the good colleges anymore, because they're going to have such a tarnish on this high school.

Chris: [00:13:31] Right, right.

I think at that time, they still weren't even sure exactly how much money she gets stolen. I think that, I think at the time they thought it was just a couple of hundred thousand dollars or like 500,000 or something. And so they were like, we can find a way to just sweep this under the rug and keep it pushing and find another excuse to get rid of her.

And so Annalee Ashford's character, the knees to Allison Janney, she basically goes to. [00:14:00] Huge Jackman and tries to blackmail him into giving her a promotion or a raise or something like that. And she says, well, I know a lot of things about what's going on and I can tell people what. You know what my aunt was doing in public, blah.

And then he brings up the fucking receipts of her, of all her shopping trips to bed, bath and beyond, and all this other shit and leaves her with her face crack. She says, Oh, okay. Guess I'll just go, I guess I'll just go back this data entry that I was doing before lunch. Yeah. But it's a really good movie and it's, but it's just, when you look at me, Extent of the scam.

You're just like, how do people get away with this? The movie really only shows I think the two of them as having been the ones that were stealing money, if I recall, but I looked up and you were post article, there was talking about, was about the son and how his involvement [00:15:00] with the construction thing kind of blew the whistle.

And it said that there were dozens of people in the school district that were implicated. So, I guess like the movie just didn't have enough running time for that different. There were only like a widespread scheme. They

Nancy: [00:15:18] only had enough budget for Hugh Jackman

Chris: [00:15:20] and

Nancy: [00:15:22] they couldn't get any more heavy hitters in there.

So just parse it down.

Chris: [00:15:26] Yeah. But I don't want to give away everything that you learned in the movie, because then it's just come and take the file of it. But there's so many twists and turns and shit that comes up that you're just like it. If it weren't, if you didn't know that it was based on a true story, you wouldn't have believed that it could be real.

And my thing is how well, first of all, I just think it's incredible that some high schooler in the student newspaper who was the one who went and investigating and found out all this shit, we earned there. Where are the actual journalists in long [00:16:00] Island? My car y'all sleeping. Are you hibernating? Like what's going on that you missed it.

Nancy: [00:16:06] Come on. It's beach day,

Chris: [00:16:08] I guess. Maybe because the school district was just doing so well.

Nancy: [00:16:13] Well, I feel like the way that Alison Janie comes off in that movie, it seems like if anyone, one legit was around, I'm sure she would Stonewall the shit out of them. I think she thought here's this harmless little girl who's 15, 16.

Yeah. Here's a key to go look through the files in the basement. Like you're going to find anything idiot. So I think that she just had such low expectations of the damage. This girl could inflict when she starts

Chris: [00:16:39] digging. I think you're right. The fact that she was a student just doing a fluff piece, I think it was that's what disarmed her to be like, she's not going to find anything anyway, the guy that this is based on, I assume he must've gone to prison.

[00:17:00] Nancy: [00:17:00] We don't want to give it away for all the kids out there.

Chris: [00:17:04] The idea that people can steal this amount of money. And that no one's monitoring. They have, there's a character who I think is their accountant. Que Jackman keeps him from blowing the whistle on everything is the accountant comes to him and says, okay, I'm running the numbers.

And it's way more money that she stole than we thought. It's the 500,000 here, 500,000 there. I haven't even begun to start completely digging. We need to go to the authorities about this. And new Jack was like, well, you're the one who should have caught this. So. If we go public with it, you're really going to be the one that's going to have to take the fall because it's your job to find these inconsistencies in the financials and blah, blah, blah.

And he really is. He, that part of it is it's just the perfect costume of Hugh Jacqueline, who is it? Just a naturally charming and charismatic person, but you really buy into it at the beginning of the year that he's [00:18:00] this well to do guy who just. C's Navy cutting a few corners here and there has the means to an end, but you really start to notice how sinister and manipulative he is.

Once you start to get more into it. And it's, it's kind of unnerving to watch. Yeah. So that movie is called that education. If you look it up, I think the guy's name is Frank Abignail. I'm sorry. No, Frank Abignail is the guy who. Catch me, if you can, this based off of completely different scammer,

Nancy: [00:18:32] get your goddamn scammers straight.

Okay.

Chris: [00:18:35] No, it was the Roslyn school district in Nassau County and Alison Janie's character's name was Pamela Glaucon

Nancy: [00:18:46] and

Chris: [00:18:47] Frank Tessoni. You don't catch more long Island and more Italian than Frank testimony. So watch the movie. It's really good. It's on HBO. And there's so many more [00:19:00] details out there that are not included in the movie.

Cause naturally once you watch this sort of thing, you immediately want to go Googling to see where all these people are, what they've been up to and what ended up happening. So I did that and there's always articles that give you way more details and information, all the T about just everyone

Nancy: [00:19:17] speed shares the top 15 things on non-included and bad education, I

Chris: [00:19:21] guess.

I think that's what I ran into.

A month ago, I was at Dolson Pat's in Chicago and the usher says, where are you from? I said, Dixon. He goes, Oh, You're the town that the woman stole the 54 million from it is the biggest case of

Nancy: [00:19:51] municipal fraud in history.

Chris: [00:19:53] The tiny town of Dixon, Illinois lost an astonishing $53 million to one [00:20:00] government

Nancy: [00:20:00] employee

Chris: [00:20:02] fraud.

At this magnitude is happening in Dixon.

Nancy: [00:20:06] It can happen anywhere

Chris: [00:20:09] agents and local police carry the police for half a decade nine top officials wire $150 billion fraud, gold

Nancy: [00:20:17] national, and international problem. Over the past five years, we've seen a steady rise in fraud schemes,

Chris: [00:20:25] specifically embezzlement schemes, committed by an employee.

Nancy: [00:20:28] Within a finance position,

Chris: [00:20:30] allegedly embezzling

Nancy: [00:20:32] thousands of dollars from $4

Chris: [00:20:34] million. Embezzlement is a $3.7

Nancy: [00:20:37] trillion problem. Government entities are the second most

Chris: [00:20:42] frequent victims of embezzlement,

a nationally renowned horse breeders city employees, since the 1980s and a world class feat. So moving on to a different scam, but still keeping [00:21:00] in the same vein of things. There's a, another, this one's not a narrative film, it's a documentary called all the Queen's horses and the woman who directed the movie is actually a black guy.

Woman filmmaker. So find the movie and watch it and support her. But her name's Kelly Richmond Pope. I watched the movie on Netflix, but this was like a couple of years ago. I'm not sure where you found it NC. Did you, do you remember,

Nancy: [00:21:26] uh, you did just say to support her and I totally watched it on YouTube.

So now I feel like Dick, I guess I'll go tonight to make up for it. Sorry, girl.

Chris: [00:21:40] Actually, I think it's like sanctioned by the. Distributed that's on YouTube.

Nancy: [00:21:44] Oh, sweet. Okay. Yeah. So I was totally supporting her when I watched it on YouTube.

Chris: [00:21:49] Yeah. I think the distributor themselves put it up here.

Nancy: [00:21:52] Like it has ads throughout it that you can't skip, but to watch it for free I'll yeah, I'll sit through that.

But,

Chris: [00:21:58] so this was a [00:22:00] woman who our name's Rita Cranwell. And do you read.

Nancy: [00:22:08] Some fantastic beasts. Bullshit. We got going on in here. I can't with

Chris: [00:22:13] this

Nancy: [00:22:14] good luck,

Chris: [00:22:15] right? Fucking Dolores Umbridge

Nancy: [00:22:18] bitch. I can't I'll see y'all at Diagon alley. These bitches going to ask a man, they hit up green gods hard, honey. They go down,

Chris: [00:22:32] but do you remember where the town was or at least what state it was in? I forgot it. Okay. Right. It's like a small town in Illinois. It's the birth

Nancy: [00:22:43] of Ronald Reagan. They said that about 45 times.

Chris: [00:22:47] Lovely. So I'm sure it's a fabulous place. Um, the, so this woman was the comptroller of the city and [00:23:00] I think the population of the town is like 16,000 or something.

Like, it's not a very big place. And I don't know how many over the course of how many years it was, but

Nancy: [00:23:13] over 20.

Chris: [00:23:14] Oh my God, Jesus Christ. So over 20 years of her being the comptroller of this city, she stole more than 53 Milligan dollars from this city in Illinois. 53 fucking million. If I'm not mistaken, I think it is a biggest government embezzlement, like ever.

I don't think there's any other case of someone embezzling money from the city or something that was bigger than that.

Nancy: [00:23:48] You know what my favorite part about that is though that her bail was $4,500. She's still 53 million and her bail was [00:24:00] $4,500.

Chris: [00:24:01] Right. So I guess the way she was doing her scam was similar to the one in bad education where she basically now here's what I find really bizarre is that it's a small enough town that people know her.

Like people know her at the bank, people, everybody knows each other and they know that she's the comptroller and everything else. And. She created a personal account at her bank that was named, I forget what exactly it was named. It's an

Nancy: [00:24:40] acronym that was supposed to stand for like septic services and like water treatment.

I forget exactly what the acronym was, but it was something that was supposed to be legit, but that acronym purely just meant that it was completely her personal account. So she would just shuffle money out of the legit accounts [00:25:00] into that one. And then when the money would leave, she would say, Oh, well, we just had to pay for this fixing this road or the sidewalk down on main street.

Or we had to pay for that. It was all just going straight into her personal account.

Chris: [00:25:12] Right? So essentially these, this account that she created was supposed to be, the city was paying for services. So they were paying. Someone to fix the sewage wager to fix the road or this or that. And it looked legit on paper because of what she named the account when she would invoice the city and send the payments into this account.

So because of that, I guess the bank never flagged it as something unusual,

Nancy: [00:25:43] the bank and the auditors, neither flagged it as being strange.

Chris: [00:25:50] But I don't understand when you're talking about $53 million. Now I know that was over the course of two decades, but how does no one notice [00:26:00] once the money is in that acronym account that she created?

No, one's looking at what's happening to it after that, when I say no one at the bank.

Nancy: [00:26:09] Well, so they said on there that the bookkeeping was so. Complex and intricate that if anyone ever had a question about, did you see this charge that went to this or this money that just moved to that? Literally she made it.

So she was the only one who understood it. So she would have to explain to anyone else what those charges were. So it would, it read like jibberish to everyone else. So she was able to cover her own tracks until

Chris: [00:26:37] I get that. I get that part. But I'm talking about once the money actually. Is has left the city and it's now in this account, that's actually hers.

She has somehow she has to, then I don't know if she was spending money directly out of that account or she was doing [00:27:00] transfers from that into another personal account or what, but how does no one at the bank question? Where's the payroll for this company? That's making millions from their work for the city.

Where's there. Business expenses where I just don't get how someone at the bank wouldn't have seen that something was odd about the transactions of this particular account. Once she was actually able to access the money and start spending it on herself,

Nancy: [00:27:29] that's not really their job. They're not there.

The bank, isn't there to validate that these charges are all not suspicious and legit. If that money is there, they're going to move it. And under the guise of it being local government. Even if it looks weird, maybe we just don't understand it. All. This has taught me these documentaries. I'm just terrified of people that do the bookkeeping and are good at math.

Cause they're gonna Rob me blind.

Chris: [00:27:51] Right? That's a good point. The intricacy of some of this stuff, it's, once you give people access, you don't know what they could be doing with it. And it's so [00:28:00] some of it is so complicated that. They're going to be the only ones that understanding what they're doing,

Nancy: [00:28:05] but they even brought it up in a documentary that out of that shell account that she made, that she was using for personal use, that someone should have seen that it was weird that they were paying out these large lump sums to these different, like horsing associations that why would it be coming out of a city account?

And all this made me think of was I'm sorry. Horse girls are fucking weird. There was always one in my class, in elementary school and middle school. There's always one girl that's obsessed with horses and she was fucking weird. So yeah, this solidified scared of people that are good at math, scared of people that are obsessed with horses,

Chris: [00:28:43] but here's the other thing.

So her salary as a city controller was $80,000. So. It says on average, she stole two and a half million dollars per year from the city in 2008 [00:29:00] alone, she embezzled $5.8 million to give you a reference. The annual budget of the city was between eight to 9 million,

Nancy: [00:29:09] three years in a row starting with 2008 because hello recession.

That's when she thought she could cover herself more. Because, Oh, of course, they're going to have to cut budget. There. There's a recession going on. So literally 2008, 2009, 2010, she took more than $5 million each of those years, the balls on this lady,

Chris: [00:29:29] but what kills me is, so she's got all of this money that she's stolen and she's basically spending it on fucking horses

Nancy: [00:29:41] and stables and saddles and shit.

Chris: [00:29:43] Ah, Well, she's got several cars. She bought several cars. She had her own house and a second house. A multi million dollar motor home, which I didn't even know that fucking existed. Like how could, what motor [00:30:00] home could possibly be good enough? That's worth millions of dollars, but apparently it was,

Nancy: [00:30:05] it's just a motor home with millions of dollars sitting in it instead of the bank, you can't upgrade it that much.

The money's in it. That's what made it.

Chris: [00:30:13] Nancy said one of the biggest things that she was spending on was this horsing. Stable that she had some people thought that she had the money from family wealth and other people thought maybe it's coming from the money she's making from her little horse business.

But I don't see how you don't start asking questions. When you're talking about a city employee making $80,000 before taxes. And she's living like she's fucking Kim Kardashians in some small town in Illinois.

Nancy: [00:30:43] I felt like Garcelle when she went to dinner with Sutton. So how'd you get your

Chris: [00:30:46] mind, but remember that's rude to house.

Yeah. I'd

Nancy: [00:30:53] boost nor change the channel,

Chris: [00:30:54] but how does no one say girl? Huh? Well, where are you getting all these coins?

[00:31:00] Nancy: [00:31:01] Fucking horse people, dude, telling you.

Chris: [00:31:04] And here's the thing during the time that she was embezzling, the city was constantly broke. Like it, it's not like this was some, it's not like you're stealing money from, you know, the city of Chicago or something where you're talking about billions of dollars

Nancy: [00:31:23] in tourism.

Chris: [00:31:25] Yeah, but this is a town where every cent matters because they're so small. And so they had to lay off street repair workers, cut the maintenance to the streets that were falling apart. There were 65 blocks of road that needed to be repaired and replaced just all of this stuff. And while that was happening, the money was going into her pocket.

So that's what I don't get it. You would think the fact that they're so broke would be enough for them to be [00:32:00] like, let's start asking some questions here. Yeah. Essentially what happened is she went out of town on some vacation and while she was out, I think the woman who worked underneath her had to take over the accounting.

So

Nancy: [00:32:17] it was that she was the one, yeah. That would submit all the invoices every month. And then she had her city clerk who would compile everything after she gave it to her and send it out. And she remind her all the time, like only send the invoices that they're asking for, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then homegirl was out of the office on vacation.

And the city clerk was like overwhelmed with other stuff that she had going on. So she sent literally all the invoices. And including all the like shady, weird ones for coursing shit and home upgrades and all this stuff. So it was just all these invoices that made no sense. And she, after she saw that she was like, these numbers aren't [00:33:00] really making sense.

I don't know what that would be for it. And then she went right to the mayor with it while the chick was still out of town,

Chris: [00:33:07] then what they ended up doing was they went to the, the FBI. But they didn't like arrest her immediately. They had to go back to work and pretending like everything was normal so that they could spend six months building the case against her and understanding how her little scheme operation worked and watch it.

I think at that time, the clerk person was like paying closer attention to the invoices and everything. They were just in a way, working undercover for the FBI to help get evidence, to bring her down. So eventually they did. They gathered all the evidence. They just, one day showed up and arrested her ass and they charged her with wire fraud and all other kinds of shit.

And mind you, these are federal charges. This is not some like local state shit. This is the FBI, the federal [00:34:00] government and charging her.

Nancy: [00:34:00] Yeah. You're not going to get community service, cleaning up the stables for this

Chris: [00:34:04] too.

So I think with all the charges that they put on her, they had enough to basically send her to prison for life, essentially with the amount of charges they had. And so she pled guilty. I think they, they reduced the charges to just one charge of wire fraud in exchange for her pleading guilty. And she had to forfeit all of her assets, but at that point she had spent most of the money.

So if there wasn't that much, the city could recover from what she took

Nancy: [00:34:39] population of horses to auction them all off. And some of those horses were going for 600, $700,000. Holy shit. Yeah. Cause they were like, I don't know shit about horses, but apparently these were top of the line, pure bread, whatever.

Very impressive. Horses. So [00:35:00] they optioned all of that off immediately because the upkeep apparently, which this is again, not a fucking horse girls. I didn't know this, but apparently the upkeep between stabling them, feeding them, doing everything is thousands of dollars a month. So that was one of the first things that they.

Seized and started to auction. And one of the charges she had done in that shell account was a $6,000 custom made saddle. She just had crazy stuff, so they just auctioned all of it off.

Chris: [00:35:31] That's what I never understand. In these cases, it's obviously embezzling is wrong and I would never do it. But if I did, because part of what fascinates me about true crime, Is some people are all into the Gore and the murder and the criticize, the details of people getting killed.

I'm fascinated by the mindset. I'm fascinated by the criminal mindset and what would make an otherwise normal everyday person commit. A very serious crime. [00:36:00] And so I'm trying to, I try to put myself in the mind of an embezzler. I don't understand if I were going to embezzle. I would just be like, okay, let me get enough just to like, pay my house off and pay my kids' college education, maybe, and have a little nest egg for retirement and then keep it pushing.

And had she done that she would have never been caught. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, but that's,

Nancy: [00:36:21] I think about when you're. In Las Vegas and you go up to the blackjack tables and you play that firsthand and you win boom. Here's a hundred dollars that you just won and you realize how easy it is. So you're like, well, let me let it ride.

Let me do it again. Let me see if I can get away with it again. I understand investing and gambling are different, but it's, I think it truly is with these embezzlers they realize how much money they got, how easily, how few questions were asked. How many people didn't notice. And then I think that just likes a massive fire of greed where it's no longer, I just need this much.

It's [00:37:00] I want it all. I need everything. I think they just get overwhelmed.

Chris: [00:37:04] Yes. But for me, it's even when I go to gamble, like when we've gone to Vegas, I've been like, okay, this is the amount of money I'm taking out $300 for the whole weekend. And once this money is gone, I'm done. Like I'm not. And if I

Nancy: [00:37:19] didn't self control,

Chris: [00:37:23] but, and, but I have to do that because I'm not independently wealthy.

I don't just have an endless supply of funds coming in. So. It's more like a self preservation. You come away from gambling, which is a fun, it's a fun activity to do, but it's certainly

Nancy: [00:37:41] my ass always loses.

Chris: [00:37:44] She sits down with the fucking slot machine, puts in like $10 and immediately lose the fucking penny

Nancy: [00:37:50] slots.

And meanwhile, I look over and you're up like $38 and I'm

Chris: [00:37:54] like how I don't, but you know what, maybe that's part of my. [00:38:00] Control mechanism

Nancy: [00:38:03] so vividly in three D

Chris: [00:38:07] I'm gambling with you. And so I'm like, Oh great. I just won $30. And then you lose all your money. I'm like, wait, let me just talk while I'm ahead.

Cause I don't want to turn up like this, but, and then I'm like,

Nancy: [00:38:15] where are we going to dinner tonight? Cause

Chris: [00:38:18] I

Nancy: [00:38:18] have a dollar 48 left. That'll get me a

Chris: [00:38:20] McDouble. I guess it's like, if you compare it to a serial rapist or a serial murderer, there's a certain. Because they're not going home with anything tangible that just that they've committed an act.

And so for them, there's a certain height cat out of the, I guess, was it's a statistic thing or it's a. They like the danger of it, the fear of getting caught, but then this gratification of getting away with it and how usually they increase the risk of their crimes as they go on, because doing it again in such an easy way, isn't enough of a high for them anymore.

Maybe [00:39:00] that's the same thing as it's not necessarily about. Just greed, although I'm sure that's part of it, but it's also, she's clearly, there's clearly something psychologically that she's addicted to as far as the knowing that she's getting away with something right. In plain view, when was she caught in 2012, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. April, 2012. She was caught. And the I'm trying to see what the year was that she embezzled the most. Oh, well, Yeah. In 2008 alone, she embezzled 5.8 million. And I don't know exactly what the numbers are in all the years that followed, but it seems like there was certainly a succession of, as the years went on, she's did more and more because the very first one she ever did was cost.

You went back so far. This says 1991, she stole 181,000. Part of the bigger story of this, um, [00:40:00] documentary was number one, the fact that they actually did employ a third party or who was responsible for catching this sort of thing. And they didn't, and they're like a large part of the documentary is dedicated to talking about this, but I don't really remember.

What the reason was for why they didn't catch it.

Nancy: [00:40:19] Okay. Shitty at their jobs. It was literally one of the guys from that auditing firm that was doing her taxes and found one year, $300,000 worth of funds that he couldn't account for.

Chris: [00:40:32] Wait. So the same firm was doing her personal taxes. Oh my God.

Nancy: [00:40:39] You know what, though?

I can tell you out of all the money that she embezzled and all the shit that she stole. We know one thing she didn't spend it on face cream. God damn. Some of the angles of pictures they had her. I was like, Oh baby,

Chris: [00:40:52] she's a horse girl. Okay. Fucking horse girls, man. What didn't you expect from a horse girl?

Nancy: [00:40:59] Don't they wear the [00:41:00] hat? Isn't that part of it?

Chris: [00:41:02] Your question, you can have

Nancy: [00:41:04] no like cowgirl hat or some shit. Isn't that? What the cowgirl you or the one that came with the stepping

Chris: [00:41:10] horse. I don't know.

Nancy: [00:41:13] I don't fuck with any of that. I can't, I just can't.

Chris: [00:41:18] But so the, they tried to recover as much funds as possible from her when they, when they seized all her assets, I don't know exactly how much they were able to recover it.

Like Nancy was saying she had, I think 300 horses and some of them are worth a lot of money, but a lot of the money she spent over the years was like, I think she'd even like given her family members money that they bought like houses with and stuff like that. The last thing I want to say is they, so they were able to get as much money as they could from her assets, whatever the number was.

I'm not sure, but they also sued the third party accounting firm that was supposed to have [00:42:00] caught this. And I think they won a $40 million settlement. So they did between. Her assets and between what they got from the accounting company and recovered most of the money that was stolen from them. But on top of the federal charges, which were enough to send her to prison for life, they also brought charges against her on the state level.

So.

Nancy: [00:42:26] In for a penny in, for a

Chris: [00:42:27] pound, they, in the event that she was acquitted of the federal charges, they want it to be prepared to be able to charge her on the state level. But then once she was convicted, they dropped the charges. Cause they were like, we don't want to waste the state's time going through a child on the state level as well.

When I think the law is that if the sentences are meant to be. Serve concurrently. So it wouldn't have added any more jail time to her anyway, but they were waiting in the wings child ready to file those state charges for us. It's gone off. I kind of thought that she might get [00:43:00] away with it.

Nancy: [00:43:00] Yeah. I just

Chris: [00:43:02] kind of thought, well, she's a white lady and everybody in the town likes her.

So. I kind of just thought maybe she'd get off without any jail time, but clearly she didn't

Nancy: [00:43:14] Swift hammer adjusted.

Chris: [00:43:34] I have a story

Nancy: [00:43:35] for

Chris: [00:43:35] you. This story has got everything presented drugs,

Nancy: [00:43:41] Ronald McDonald's.

Chris: [00:43:43] Somebody went to the FBI and said, guess what's happening? The McDonald's monopoly game was fixed. The Bureau thought it was just some BS story.

Nancy: [00:43:51] Fast food fraud was not making any list

Chris: [00:43:54] of priorities. Are you kidding me?

This is what makes my phone meter go. [00:44:00] McDonald's monopoly game gave millions of people, a chance to win, but from 1989 to 2001, there were almost no legitimate million dollar winners. The

Nancy: [00:44:09] FBI told us the game pieces are being stolen. Conversations on the wire were coming in.

Chris: [00:44:17] I'm hearing the name uncle Jerry thrown around on the phone.

He

Nancy: [00:44:20] started focusing more on trying to. Figure out who he was.

Chris: [00:44:24] He's a fricking gangster uncle. Jerry was getting to take it and selling them to other people. This is a million dollar winning ticket and he's got it in a Ziploc sandwich bag. That's not even sale. Somebody offers you a million dollars. You're going to take it unless you got to kill somebody and you might not.

And I might not be interested. We had eight original individuals, which turned into 53 majority of these winners. They're good people. One of my biggest regrets been involved in this McDonald's thing. [00:45:00] I just wanted a better life. And I feel like this couldn't come to me. If it wasn't meant for me, I'm lost this thing wrecked.

So many people's lives.

Nancy: [00:45:12] How much bigger

Chris: [00:45:13] can this get and it would get bigger.

Nancy: [00:45:15] How much further back could it

Chris: [00:45:17] go? And it would go back further

Nancy: [00:45:21] things go wrong.

Chris: [00:45:22] They always do. You can get away with something over and over. You only gotta be caught once

Nancy: [00:45:30] I've watched the founder the other day, which I really loved.

I love Michael Keaton and BJ Novak. And it popped up in my suggestions after I watched the founder of have you watch McMillian and it's six part mini series on HBO, and it just goes over the entire, the scam that these people they got, what was it? Over $25 million they got out of McDonald's. So [00:46:00] back in, I believe it started in the nineties, a McDonald's started running the promotional campaign of we're going to have the monopoly game and different food items that you buy are going to have these to peel away.

Stickers and each sticker is one of the pieces on the McDonald's board. So you can pull back boardwalk and park place. And, Oh my God, you've instantly won a million dollars or here's Illinois Avenue, or I got these two railroads, so I just want to Dodge Viper. And it was a really massive campaign for McDonald's for a very long time.

And it turns out all the shit was fixed. It was rigged by. Oh one guy who was in charge of just doling out all of the different winning pieces to friends and family. Yeah. And it went on for however many years before anyone realized, Oh shit, like all these people are connected, so I'm still shook. I just finished it [00:47:00] last night.

I like put it on.

Chris: [00:47:01] Yeah. So everybody remembers that game. It was, you would want to go to McDonald's just to get those fucking pieces and then they would give you a non-police board, not a real one, but like paper one, they wouldn't give it to you, but you could find it in the newspaper and you would, people would put it on there.

Refrigerator. And then you could add your pieces to it. Cause the pieces were attached to either your drink or to your thing of fries or whatever, and you would peel it off and it was a sticker. And then you could stick it onto your little game board. So you could try collecting just like in the game of monopoly, once you were to get park place and boardwalk, you could put a house on your properties.

It was similar to where I think some of the prizes were just straight up, like. You would peel it off and it would just be a free thing of fries or something, but, or a

Nancy: [00:47:50] free ice cream that you could never redeem. Cause the goddamn is always broken,

Chris: [00:47:56] but, but your goal was to get all the [00:48:00] pieces of one color, just like it is in the game.

And then you would get the real prizes. But nobody that I ever knew in those years ever, one, everybody always, we always thought we were gonna win, but Nope. It was like, does anybody know of anyone who actually got the pieces? I think I'm not mistaken. They. And did it in such a way to where, like you would never be able to go to the same.

McDonald's like you could go there a million times. You would never get all the bright pieces that you needed. They intentionally spread them out per region so that you would, people would never really win. Yeah. I think there may have been a couple of legitimate if I'm not mistaken, I'm

Nancy: [00:48:47] mistaken. So

Chris: [00:48:49] I thought I remembered them saying in the documentary that there were people that won or maybe that was part of them, like trying to throw people off so that not all the [00:49:00] winners were connected to them

Nancy: [00:49:00] to restore trust.

McDonald's did a 25 like instant winners after this broke.

Chris: [00:49:10] Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. To

Nancy: [00:49:12] establish trust with the community.

Chris: [00:49:16] So, but can you explain basically who the guy was and how he had access to be able to read

Nancy: [00:49:26] so well, I don't. Let me know if I'm giving away too much, but pretty much for any of the promotions offers that are run out through these fast food chains.

But most of the time they will hire these consulting firms that will come up with, and it was Simon marketing was the one for McDonald's. They did the monopoly promotion. They did the, who wants to be a millionaire promotion. They did all this stuff from McDonald's and. The monopoly promotion for McDonald's was literally like printing money.

Like they made so much money. They had such an [00:50:00] uptick in sales after they ran the first one, literally they just had to look in the books and be like, Oh man, profits are kind of down this corner. Y'all want to run monopoly again. And then sales would shoot right back up because everyone was just so excited about the potential of being an instant winner of a million dollars from McDonald's.

So there was this one printing company called Dittler brothers, and they were responsible for doing the printing of all the labels. So as part of the security for the market consulting firm that was, was running the promotion, their head of security would come to the printing plant to oversee, to make sure there was no way that the game was being compromised.

So the best part, I will say about the way that McMillian is laid out is I literally, I watched the whole thing. They don't give away how he was able to get all the pieces until the very end. So I'm not going to tell you how he was able to get the pieces, but it was [00:51:00] literally the head of security for Simon marketing.

Was the one uncle Jerry was his name. He was the one that was the head of the entire scam and who was selecting the people that were going to get winning pieces. But when he would select who you were. So if I was like, Hey Chris, I'm uncle Jerry, and I have this million dollar ticket. I'll give it to you for $50,000 upfront right now.

And then every year you're going to pay me a certain amount of money. And since you live near me, But we have different last names. I'm gonna need you to set up a PO box in this completely different state, all drive you to this. McDonald's you walk in and you redeem the ticket. It's these people that run these scams, I'm jealous of their brains.

Chris: [00:51:46] You felt bad for the people who were a part of it, the ones who were the actual winners, or at least I did. Cause there was that one woman in the black woman who was, I think she [00:52:00] was just amazing.

Nancy: [00:52:00] She was a social worker and she was friends with the other guy helping run the scheme. Jerry Colombo. There are two Jerry's in the documentary, so it does get confusing, but she was friends with his wife.

What was it? Karen Colombo.

Chris: [00:52:17] Yeah, one of the best characters in the entire thing. She's just.

Nancy: [00:52:22] I have seen my future and is bright. Let me tell you her chain smoking with that weird ass red and black dress on. I was like, Oh my God, that's me. In two years. I'm really excited about it with all of

Chris: [00:52:36] the guardian jewelry and shit

Nancy: [00:52:38] amazing chain smoking.

Those would like marble light, one hundreds in her house with her terrible hair dye. Ugh. It was that like chocolate cherry Lorielle Feria hair died all the time in high school. And you used to make fun of me mercilessly about it, but [00:53:00] yeah, she's, she is by far my favorite part of the entire documentary, but yeah, I forget the black woman's name.

I think it's, I want to say it was like Gloria or I probably should have looked this up. She was already in dire straits financially and. She thought that this would really turn her life around. I did feel really bad for her and I felt bad for the foster son who was pitched this whole story of, Hey, like your foster father, he got the million dollar ticket, but he's going through a really brutal divorce.

So he doesn't want to split any of this with his ex wife. She didn't earn it. So like, can you just cash it in and then we'll just go from there.

Chris: [00:53:38] Yeah, he was out of everyone. He was the only person who really was like a completely unwitting. Participant in it. He just had no idea of what was going on until after the fact, I think, but they still ended up bringing charges against to my thought,

Nancy: [00:53:55] Oh yeah, honey.

They sure did.

Chris: [00:53:57] Yeah. But what [00:54:00] I spent to really, it was hilarious, but also kind of sad. Cause I felt bad for them as it was happening was when they would have to do Oh, because the FBI. As part of their investigation, they pretended to be

Nancy: [00:54:18] production crew.

Chris: [00:54:19] Yeah. Production crew working for them, the McDonald's that wanted this footage of the winners for their, for marketing purposes or whatever.

So they would go to the winners and say, Hey, tell us your complete story of how you want and how you redeemed the ticket. And take us to where you were when you found it and we'll take a picture of you holding it up. So they essentially, we're trying to gather evidence under the guise of pretending to be a production company, because if they had just come in and said, we're the FBI, like tens of people would have just clammed up and not told them anything.

So you would watch these people as they were trying to explain their [00:55:00] story and that there was that video of a black woman trying to explain her whole thing and it wasn't adding up. It was so clear that she was lying. Cause it just the story wasn't making sense. And they would put like a little map up on the whiteboard and ask them to explain, I don't know where she went or how she spent the money or something, but it was painful to watch because it was obvious that she was just thinking all the shit up well, and we

Nancy: [00:55:23] printed out a picture.

Of the McDonald's because she said that she lived in North Carolina. She didn't, she lived in Florida. She set up like a PO box in North Carolina and stayed in someone's house in North Carolina and set up like an answering machine to make it seem like she lived there. So they were like, so which McDonald's was it?

Was it the one over on whatever it was like Drury lane or whatever. She was like, Oh my God. Yeah. And they hold up a picture. She's Oh my God. Yes. That is the one. And they're like, why don't you just sign it, go ahead and sign it. And the picture that they printed out, it's a one in Florida. She's I never forget [00:56:00] what it looks like.

That's exactly. It's so cringe. It's amazing. I don't know why I waited so long to watch this documentary series and the one FBI agent. I forget what his name is.

Chris: [00:56:13] Yeah. I know who you're talking about. I loved him. He was just hilarious.

Nancy: [00:56:17] I just want to hang out with him and his commentary on all the pieces.

Well involved. I am obsessed. I loved that documentary and I was blown away. And also, so after I watched all of make millions, I was like, well, I feel like I remember, like in recent years, them still running the monopoly promotion, like when was the last time they even did it. So the last time that they did the.

The McDonald's monopoly promotion was in 2016, which was a dumpster fire of a year. They were supposed to do it in March of 2020, and they suspended it because of coronavirus. That tracks. That makes sense. So here's Doug Matthews is the FBI agent, Doug Matthews. He is my absolute [00:57:00] favorite. I want to hang out with him and Mark Devereaux, that prosecutor.

I am a huge fan of him as well. I would love to hang out with him. Robin Colombo is the name of my spirit animal, not Karen, Robin Colombo. She's incredible. Truly an

Chris: [00:57:19] icon Robin. So, but the thing is, and which is probably part of the reason why nobody raised any red flags or gave a shit was because I think you said the total amount that was stolen over the years, it was like 25 million or

Nancy: [00:57:34] something.

Yep. 25 million.

Chris: [00:57:37] I mean, that was like a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of money that McDonald's was making from emotion. So it was like, for them, it was, do we really care if it's a ring because it's,

Nancy: [00:57:50] I just lost a million dollars on the 150 million I just made.

Chris: [00:57:55] Right? Yeah. So w I forget, do you remember exactly how.

[00:58:00] They were first initially tipped off. Was it just like a random tip or

Nancy: [00:58:04] it was so I'm not going to spoil this because I want people to watch this. It was a anonymous phone call to the FBI and it was to one of the, uh, special agents who literally just wrote down on a post it note McDonald's monopoly scam, and he put it on his computer monitor and special agent Matthews.

Who's my favorite. Yeah. He was like young gun freshly, a special agent was looking for something to do. He had been dealing with a health insurance case that wasn't interesting to him. So he walked over to his car coworkers desk and saw the post it note. And it was like, that sounds way more fun than what I'm currently doing.

So he just ran with it and then everything started to come together and more and more special agents were pulled off of what they were doing to give more manpower to investigating the McDonalds. Conspiracy.

[00:59:00] Chris: [00:59:00] I think McDonald's when it was first brought to their attention. Obviously, if it gets out that the integrity of the game is compromised, it kills the entire promotion.

Nancy: [00:59:11] Well, in the beginning, remember they did not know the FBI was not sure the level of involvement that McDonald's had. Was it someone within the corporation of McDonald's that was responsible for the scam. So they were very tight lipped. They only spoke to, I think the first people that they reached out to at McDonald's for their global security and to other people within that little department.

And they told them like, you cannot share this with any of your coworkers because you guys might have a bad Apple in your rank. So we need to figure that out. So don't share this information, right. So they weren't sure at the beginning and then during the investigation, right. I feel like it was, I feel like it was late by the time they started.

Yeah. Like clearing more and more people from McDonald's. Oh, no. Okay. You guys aren't in on it.

[01:00:00] Chris: [00:59:59] Well, there was still one woman who, uh, I forget what department and within McDonald's she worked for it. Maybe she was like head of marketing or something

Nancy: [01:00:08] PR she wasn't now she's top of communications or something for McDonald's.

But back then, yeah, I think she was doing like communications or PR for McDonald's, but she was the main person that would go interview and talk to all the

Chris: [01:00:22] winners. You mean with the FBI?

Nancy: [01:00:26] No prior to the FBI getting involved. That's what her gig was. Part of her job was to interview and talk to the winners, which is why when they were reaching out to McDonald's to figure out like, if we're going to figure out if this is legit or not, who's the best person who knows the most about going to see the winners and the process.

So that's when they tapped her. And then she started going with them for the quote unquote reunion of winners, because I think at that point they had 17 winners or something. So they said that they were going to. Go back and interview all of them and have this huge celebration in Las [01:01:00] Vegas. So they tapped her to accompany them so they could look like a legit production company because they were all going to remember

Chris: [01:01:06] her.

She was nervous because she didn't know if she'd be able to say this is what's essentially an undercover operation. And she was sort of nervous cause she's like, Oh my gosh, I have to keep my cover and not let them know that this is actually an investigation. And left. So she was freaking out when they had to do.

And Doug, what was his name? Doug. Matt nephews. He was like, look, you're essentially doing exactly what you were doing before. You're going it. Yeah. You're just, you're talking to the winners, which is what you were already doing before. It's just, now we're here with you and we're recording this and recording evidence, but yeah, I mean, that whole thing was just insane.

That just the. The level of intricacy of the scam of his steps they had to take. And the number of people who were involved, wasn't there, something at the end of it, there was something they wanted to know that the son was [01:02:00] being coy about whether he did it or not remember

Nancy: [01:02:05] about. Where the anonymous tip came from.

Chris: [01:02:08] Okay. So I'm not going to get into that, so we don't spoil it, but yes,

Nancy: [01:02:12] I'm just kidding. Just edit this part out. I can tell you and you just edit this part out.

Hello, are you lovely people? So, uh, Chris and I had so much to talk about and enough wine that this episode is going to be a two parter. Uh, if you liked part one, head over to your podcast, feed and download part two now.