Behind the Bastards - Jacob Wohl And The Krassensteins: A Tale of Several Grifters

Episode Date: December 18, 2018

Grifters and conmen thrive in times of unrest and chaos. In Episode 38, Robert is joined by Shereen Lani Younes to discuss the tales of several grifters. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian-trained astronaut?

That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know, because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space. With no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello friends, I'm Robert Evans, and this is Yet Again Behind the Bastards. The show where we tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history. Now, my guest for today's episode, who is coming in cold to our tail about several bastards, is Shereen the Machine, Lana Eunice. I think I'm the first person to give you that nickname, but probably not. Now, you are a filmmaker whose work is currently being featured at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, right? Yeah, it was in New York.

It was in July in New York. That is very cool, and you are also the co-host of the ethnically ambiguous podcast on the stuff network, the very network that we're all a part of. Correct. So that's cool. How's it going? You know, I'm glad to be here, but I'm also terrified to be here. Do you like Kahneman?

Do I like Kahneman? I like watching movies about Kahneman. Well, then you might like, you like grifts? I mean, I feel like a grift in my own life. You know, I'm just a fraud. Yeah, that's how everyone who gets to do what they like for a living feels. It's natural. Does the name Jacob Wall mean anything to you? You know, I've heard it about, but I could not tell you anything about it, other than that he's white.

He is white. And the working title of this episode is A Tale of Two Grifters. Even though there's more than two grifters, I was trying to force it. Alright, let's talk about some grifters. So, grifters in Kahneman thrive in times of unrest and chaos. This is obvious enough that I'm probably wasting a little bit of my time by even saying it. The current president of the United States is a man who ran a fake university that defrauded thousands of people out of tens of millions of dollars. But we're not talking about him today.

Our subjects for this episode are grifters of a much lower and a much sadder cast. Let's start by talking about the Krasenstein brothers, Brian and Edward. You know about these guys? Please tell me. Oh, together they have more than 1.3 million followers on Twitter, and they operate a left-wing media empire's not the right word. Can I ask a question? Do they have a shared Twitter? No, they have two different Twitters.

I was going to be like, yeah, so I'm judging very hard. But they retweet everything each other says, and it's really obnoxious stuff. Get your own identity. You know, your left-wing, your right-wing, or whatever. The Krasensteins are like the shrillest and least effective chunk of the... They're like the Drumpf chunk. Like that sort of... Like Donald Trump again, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That kind of thing that should have been played out two years ago, but it's still... Yeah, they're crappulent. So they're frequent and vociferous critics of President Donald Trump. As of the writing of this episode, Brian's Twitter image is a graphic of an impeachment clock with the president's face on it. So not a lot of subtlety. But starting back in 2003, the Krasensteins worked a different gig, running the websites TalkGold.com and MoneyMakerGroup.com. It seems a little bit scammy right off the bat.

Yeah. It's going to get scammy-er. So both of these sites were presented as independent aggregators of different online investment programs. Basically, someone would visit MoneyMakerGroup.com and read about different opportunities and various investment, you know, programs and whatnot. Most of what the Krasensteins brothers hawked through their websites were what are called high-yield investment programs, or HIAPS. According to Investopedia, quote, a high-yield investment program is a fraudulent investment scheme that purports to deliver extraordinarily high returns on investment. High-yield investment schemes often advertise yields of more than 100% per year in order to lure in victims. In reality, these high-yield investment programs are Ponzi schemes, and the organizers aim to steal the money invested.

Like a pyramid scheme, essentially? Yeah. Like a pyramid scheme with a little dash of lemon. So the SEC takes a somewhat milder tone towards high-yield investment programs, calling them unregistered investments typically run by unlicensed individuals that are often frauds, but not always frauds. In an interview with The Daily Beast, Ed Krasenstein really dug into the tiny bit of daylight provided by the word often, quote, 100% of HIAPS aren't scams. I know of several that have been legitimate. The FBI's definition is not that they're all scams. It says a large amount are scams, and that is true.

So if you're defending your business by saying only a large amount of it is fraudulent. But I'm a good one. Yeah. The Krasenstein brothers defended themselves from charges of being scammers and charlatans by basically claiming that they didn't actually run any of these scams. They just took ad dollars from the people who did, and in Ed's words, freedom of speech protects advertisers, which sort of true, partially true. Of course, in actuality, sites like talkgold.com and Money Maker Group were in a little bit more of like a swampy area. On Talk Gold and Money Maker Group, moderators hosted discussions of various HIAP opportunities. Through paid ads and organic comment threads, users would be informed of various potential HIAP investments.

Eventually, many of the HIAPs would stop paying out, as all Ponzi schemes do, and HIAP threads would begin racking up customer complaints into the thousands. The moderators would then move those HIAP threads into a separate section of the website marked Close Programs and Scam Warnings. Basically, the business is that these guys operated a giant website where they would talk about different Ponzi schemes that you could invest in. And then once enough people realized that it was a scam, they would move it to a section of the site that said it was scams. It's like, oh, we got, we were protecting you. We spotted this one. We're protecting you. Like, that's their scam.

We're protecting you all. Don't worry. We got this. But they're getting money from all of these people in order to host them on their site. They're scammers. They're scammers. Yeah, I'd say so. Yeah.

Or they're legally distinct from, but ethically the same as scammers, I would say, in order to protect ourselves legally a teeny bit. By August of 2017, the Scam Warnings section of their site had more than 13,000 threats. But investigators found that only a minority of the scams advertised actually made it over to the Scam Warnings section, which means that Krasnstein's probably guided their readers to quite literally tens of thousands of fraudulent investments. One of the high-ups on talkgold.com was the Leopard Fund, which was created by a guy who was convicted of five counts of wire fraud in 2012. CSM Finance, another high-up scam, asked its investors to download special software that in reality was a virus that stole money from their Liberty Reserve accounts. Now, Liberty Reserve, it was like a digital currency exchange before Bitcoin. And the guy who found that was actually like busted back in 2016 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

So this whole ecosystem is nothing but scammers. And they're essentially positioning themselves as like scam brokers rather than operating a scam themselves because that's too risky. Yeah, exactly. It separates them from actual accountability. Yeah, exactly. Just enough that they're probably not going to go to prison. Which, of course, if you're in the scam business, that's really where you want to be just outside of prison. Getting all the benefits, but not actually going in. Yeah, exactly.

That same year, 2016, federal agents raided several homes in Fort Myers, Florida that were owned by the Krasenstein Brothers. They took computers, financial records, and a bunch of other stuff. Much of this was later returned, but late last year, the DOJ seized about a half a million dollars worth of their assets on suspicion of massive wire fraud. I found a breakdown of the DOJ's asset forfeiture case on the site behind MLM, which essentially seems to act as a watchdog group for the whole MLM industry. Since everything to do with these kinds of scams is purposefully complex, I've relied on them and the Department of Justice to actually help me break down what the Krasensteins were doing. Behind MLM describes their websites as, quote, easily the two largest publicly accessible Ponzi promotion platforms on the internet. The Department of Justice alleges that the brothers actually ran a huge constellation of websites, all purporting to report independently on the Hyatt Marketplace while actually just being funnels to direct rubes to scams in exchange for kickbacks. Quote from the Department of Justice.

The Krasensteins' various Hyatt-related websites overlapped extensively in their functionality. For example, Tockle.com and MoneyMakerGroup.com served substantially identical functions, and Goldrader.com and WebLife.org served substantially identical functions. To the casual visitor, it would have appeared that these sites were being operated independently from one another. The Krasensteins network of apparently unrelated Hyatt sites promoted the appearance of a thriving Hyatt industry with numerous independent players. They're fucking shady! They're fucking shady as hell. And yeah, so, when Ed Krasensteins was asked, in essence, if the fact that they'd consented to forfeit half a million dollars and seized property to the DOJ, meant that he and his brother were guilty, he said, quote,

This was an agreement we made with the government because the cost of fighting the civil complaint would have likely cost us more money stressed than what the government was requesting via the forfeiture. We both have newborn children and couldn't keep dragging on the civil matter any longer, and as attorney fees were adding up. This is why civil forfeiture is such a hotly debated topic in America, which really pisses me off, because civil asset forfeiture is fucked up for a lot of reasons, namely the fact that it's primarily used as an excuse for cops in the south and the southwest to take cash and vehicles from brown people and anyone who's not white, and like, then, you know, it'll be like the case of the state of Arizona versus a 2007 Toyota Camry, or the case of Texas versus $14,000 in cash. What's happening here is the Krasensteins were caught committing massive wire fraud and the DOJ rightfully took the, yeah.

But you see the little... What year was this when this happened? 2016. That's not a long time ago. That's not a long time ago at all. It's a kind of appropriation, right? Like, getting caught for committing a really shady act and then trying to attach yourself to a legitimate injustice. I don't know what the word for that is.

They're posers, man. I don't know what's a better word than that, but like, there's obviously awful people that are just using oblivious people to their advantage. It's just like, yeah, oblivious and desperate. Like, you wouldn't be on those sites unless you were desperate. And speaking of oblivious and desperate, starting in, you know, the end of 2016, the beginning of 2017, all of us were a little bit desperate because, you know... A great segue, Robert. Yeah, thank you.

Thank you. And so the Krasensteins, since they seemed like they couldn't scam in the old way, realized that with all of this desperation over the election of Donald Trump and all of the fear and the left and big chunks of the center, there was another opportunity for them to make a bucket of money. So they landed on making themselves into figureheads of the hashtag resistance. Wow. I hate them. Yeah, they're pretty shitty.

Both brothers built up their vast Twitter following by repeatedly tweeting variations of impeach Trump. At one point, Brian posted it 11 times in a single tweet. They also followed over 400,000 accounts, you know, to get people to follow them back and such. On his LinkedIn profile, Brian currently calls himself a Twitter personality, which... That's a job title? You've aired if you list that as a thing on your resume. Oh, man. Now, the former finance advisors have rebranded themselves now as journalists.

In 2017, they launched a news website called Independent Reporter at IR.net, a website that used to be titled Investor Relations, but was repurposed in order to capitalize on the profitability of partisan news. Yeah. Here's think progress. Quote, Among the nine writers listed on the site, two were the Krasensteins, three haven't written anything in six months,

and two haven't contributed anything since 2015. The two remaining writers, Whitney Hippolyte and Heidi Milkert, have likewise written nothing on the site since 2015. They are also the Krasensteins' wives. Oh, it just got worse and worse the more you talked. It's about to get so much worse. So last October, the Krasensteins embarked on their griftiest grift yet. A children's book titled How the People Trumped Ronald Plump.

They brought children into this? Yeah, they did bring children into this. Here's how they explained the genesis of their opus in the book's press release. Oh, no. President Trump is a counter example to the examples I try to set for my children, co-author Ed Krasensteins stated. It's difficult when we teach our children how to act one way, but then the president of the United States acts the complete opposite way.

This man is supposed to be a role model for our kids, but in my opinion and in the opinions of many other parents, he is simply teaching kids bad lessons and poor morals. I mean, like, yeah, it's all well and good, but knowing where it's coming from makes it, like, awful. Yeah, knowing that this is a guy who committed massive wire fraud. Come on, dude. You can't take anything he says seriously after that.

No, no, no, no. So that's what Ed claims led him and his brother Brian to write a humorous children's book, which is essentially Bill was trying to make sense of and explain the actions of President Trump through a character named Ronald Plump. They're very, very clever. Right, rhyming. They don't have a rhyme. Very smart guys. They do.

Well, they don't even know how to rhyme that good. It gets really bad in a second. Here's another quote from the press release. Quote, Ronald Plump is a man who has elected leader of the town, Dework City. Do you get it? Because New York?

Oh, Dework. That's not that great. They're very smart. They're trying very hard, yeah. Plump's actions go against the morals which we teach our kids, but in the end, hope, quality, love, and basic human values prevail. Parents will love this book's humor and storyline just as much, if not more, than their children.

So, you have this horrified look on your face. Oh, I just hate them. Yeah, they're so gross. The thing I'm thinking about is not only is like, one person has to exist to be awful, like one of the brothers, but not only that, there's another version of him, a brother, who's equally as bad, and not only that, two women married these people.

So, are the women also like, complicit in all of this or like, or aware that their husbands are just like actual garbage scammers? They have to be right. And they're just like, yeah, put my name on the website, or do they know their names are on the website? You think like there's like,

not everyone's shitty, but then they're like, oh no, maybe they are. Yeah, I mean, I think everybody in this case is probably shitty, except for their kids. Well, who knows? They're teaching them with Robert Plump. Ronald? Ronald Plump.

Sorry, Robert, for bringing you into that. No, it's okay. But if you think Ronald Plump is not the most creative name for a fake Trump character, it's about to get, it gets real bad. So characters in the book include Weave Bannon, a squirrel who acts as, who acts as Plump's hairpiece and controls his thoughts.

Even though the book came out more than a year after Steve Bannon stopped working at the White House, the Crescent scenes knew that some jokes are just so good that they never age. If you guys had seen my face, when I heard the name Weave Bannon. Weave Bannon. I almost walked the fuck out of here.

It's offensive, right? Oh man. I fully expect that like a good 20% of people had to pull their headphones off of their head, just hearing that, like it hurt to write. Weave Bannon. I will never unhear that. No, you can't.

Other hilarious ripped from the headline's character names from this wonderful storybook include. Oh no. Loudmere Tootin, a fart-themed Vladimir Putin. Oh my god. Whose fart's rockets, for some reason, that I don't think has ever leaked part. You know, Putin is a better joke on fucking the party.

I know. The joke's already there. It's already there. You're gonna make a fart joke. Poopin is even more clever. It's not that clever, but it's better than- Loudmere? Loudmere.

What the fuck? What the fuck? Oh. We're not done. Okay. So, you were complimenting them on their rhyme scheme with Ronald Plump. Uh-huh.

I'd love to rhyme. You want to guess what their Jared Kushner standin' is named? Um... Flaccid... Bushner. See, that's good. That's a fun name.

They call him Jared Nepitism. What? That was unexpected. Wait, what the hell? Well... Yeah. That wasn't turd. We took a turd.

Yeah, it's just poop. It's just poop that somebody turned into a book. No, no, no. There was like funny attempts at cleverness, and then there's like, oh, I don't know. I can't think of one for Jared. Nepitism.

There was more creativity involved in the name you came up with in two and a half seconds than the entirety of the book that they spent months working on. Thank you. I will think about it as a compliment, but also sad. So, now, the hero of the book is a six-pack having shirtless Robert Mueller stand-in, whose name is Robert Morrill.

Oh, of course. That almost sounds not terrible next to Jared Nepitism. Right. I'll take Morrill, sure. Now, I was not willing to purchase a copy of this book because I didn't want to include... I'm glad you have your own morals.

Yeah, I have some standards, and this is one of them. But I did read several reviews of it. Gizmodo editor Tom McKay was the first person to point out that the book includes a rape sack, which Ronald Plump uses to kidnap Elizabeth Warren. I'm going to show you a picture from this book. I want you to just take it in, and then I want you to read the text on the page.

My eyes are so wide and scared. What the fuck? You want to describe that? It'll be on our website, BehindTheBastards.com, if you want to look at it. So, this obviously... It's Trump. It's a cartoon of little Trump.

He has something on his head. That's Weave Bannon. It's the squirrel that's his hairpiece. Oh, he exists on his head. Yeah. Oh, he is the hairpiece. He is the hairpiece. Oh, I thought he made the...

Oh, my God. Yeah, Elizabeth Warren is literally busting out of the sack. A rape sack. He's carrying her like he's like fucking Santa Claus. Yeah. And she has a shirt on that says persist. Her arms are jacked. Good for her.

Yeah, she's buff. And the fucking thing... He's going into Trump Tower. He's turned... He like, his head's over his shoulder like, Hey, she's getting out of my rape sack. And then the text on the thing says, Ronald Plum believed that he could, every day,

grab any woman and just take her away. Await to his tower and his big burlap sack. Plum took every woman he wanted until one fought back. Oh, my fucking God. Yeah. I can do as I choose Plum Pinsisted. I almost said Trump. Plum Pinsisted.

Nevertheless, this woman, she persisted, proving a point and proving she's equal. This woman succeeded in showing the people that women and men are created the same and theory quality that's a lot to gain. Okay, surface level, good points. But when you really look at the text, that's...

What? There are way better ways to make the point about sexism than having a rape sack. I just have... This is so troubling. Yeah. This is for kids? Well, yeah, and that's part of the thing,

is that it's clearly written. Until one fought back? Yeah, like Elizabeth Warren was the first person also, which is... But it's also like, what is a kid going to get? A kid's not going to know anything about, like, nevertheless she persists or something, like a fucking six-year-old.

They're not going to get the references being made. It's just, it's maybe the worst writing that anyone's done. I... It's bad. I'm disturbed. You should be. It's really bad.

I thought Weave Bannon was bad enough. I didn't know his face was on it, like... Weave Bannon's almost the highlight. Yeah, it's the saving grace. That's a little bit of humor. Speaking of a little bit of humor, you know what I love, Shereen, when I get horrified about grifting?

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Trauma. Pure trauma. We keep a reverse pressure flow in this room for that exact purpose. So I googled around for some other reactions to the book because again I was not about to read this piece of shit myself.

And I found a Reddit thread about it where one user states you have to admire their talent for grift. Ed Krasenstein himself jumped into the Reddit thread and responded to this. We ordered 2,000 copies. All profits from the sale of these copies

will go to charity. If I'm a grifter, then I'm grifting for the children who are separated from their parents. If I'm a grifter, then anyone who promotes themselves for their work on Twitter are also grifters.

At least mine is for a good cause. And the immediate response to that was someone quoting, we ordered 2,000 copies and saying, literally what a grifter would say. Yeah, that sounds good. You're a grifter.

You're a fucking grifter. Why are you creeping on Reddit anyway? There's ways to promote your work without being a grifter. You're just a grifter. Yeah. Also show them fucking receipts, Ed. Yeah.

Fucking Ed. Piece of shit. So, yeah. This book is an eyesore and a piece of unfathomable garbage. And yes, it's pretty offensive that in addition to trying to appropriate civil asset forfeiture,

they're now appropriating the separation of families at the border as like... These are like causes that deserve attention and causes that... Real serious attention. Yeah. And they're profiting.

That's infuriating. They're horrible people. That's infuriating. They're horrible people and they are only the second grossest, most shameful, low-rung con artists of 2018. Because this year's a deathless pit of despair, Brian and Ed Krasnstein actually wound up

confronting the only grifter on the planet worse at grifting than they are. A young man named Jacob Wohl. So they were like, you think you're better than us? They reported him to the FBI. We're about to get to why. Oh my God.

So Jake Wohl's story proves that, regardless of what side of the political aisle a con artist winds up on, they all have more in common with each other than anyone else. Wohl was born in 1997. I've seen pictures of his child and stuff. He played football at school.

There's pictures of him posing with guns at shooting ranges. He seems to have grown up pretty affluent kids somewhere in fucking California. Class Act. Yeah, Class Act. He's a rich little shit who at age 17 started the Wohl Capital Investment Group.

17. 17. A hedge fund. His dad helped. His dad is a stock market analyst. Right, yeah. He never talks about that in the interview. Yeah, yeah.

At 17 years old, and it's all by myself. The help of my dad. Well, that's how we wanted to get famous, as the teenager who runs a hedge fund. So he started showing up at age 17 at a bunch of financial news shows to be interviewed because it's hard to fill time if you're doing a financial news show.

Here's a clip of him on Fox News. Jacob, the wall of Wohl Street. You might want to see his face. Wall. He's a 17-year-old high school football and basketball player, and by the way, hedge fund manager. All right, first of all, before we even get to biotechs,

we got to ask, how did you get started? Well, I've always had an interest in finance and getting started, I thought, what better way than to put myself out there and to just start a hedge fund? And that's what I did. You want to describe his face to me, Sheree? Punchable.

Punchable little fucking insect. There's a German word, and it's like Backsheig or something like that. I can't pronounce it. There's a German word that the literal translation is a face in need of a fist. Yeah, that's that. That's how Jacob Wohl looks.

A face in need of a fucking fist. In need of a fist, like he needs to be punched. You know, I'm just 17 years old, guys. I thought, why not start a hedge fund? Why don't you fucking fuck yourself? Are you kidding me? Also, the fact that he appeared on Fox News, isn't that telling enough?

Yeah, well, he appeared on a lot of shows. I also watched another interview that vice did with him. In this interview, Wohl argued that the capital requirements on hedge fund investors were too high, and that's why the rich keep getting richer, because poor people aren't allowed to invest in hedge funds. Which seems to me, him basically saying, I should be able to trick poor people

who aren't as financially literate into taking their money. Like, you can do this too. I can help. Yeah, exactly. Also, I do want to say, I feel like I get in trouble on my podcast for saying fuck a lot, and I don't get taken as seriously, so I'm going to try to not say fuck as much.

What if I just say fuck a bunch of times? So it evens out? Yeah, well, that way, if anyone doesn't take you seriously for saying fuck, then it's just sexism. There's no getting those people on board either way. I like this war. All right, I'm going to say fuck seven times. Okay, let's do it.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. I'm going to say fucking like three. Fucking, fucking, fucking. Great. Cool. All right, we're good. All right, let's roll on. Okay, so, so yeah, that's why Jacob Wohl thinks

that rich keep getting richer, and the poor keep getting poorer, because poor people can't invest in hedge funds. That's what they're thinking. So in pretty much every TV appearance he did, it was noted by someone that his nickname was the wall of Wall Street. Barf.

Yeah, Barf is the only response to that. Now, in the Vice interview, when they brought this up, he assures the interviewer that he doesn't like that nickname. He actually hates it. So we're going to run a clip from that Vice interview and see Jacob responding to talk of his nickname. So here's the clip from Vice titled Meet the Teen Finance Guru Who Makes More Money Than You.

Wall Street, how do you feel about that? I think that most of the behavior you see in that movie is completely reprehensible. It plays a bunch of clips from the thing. So he's anti the wolf of Wall Street in the interview, and he says that, you know, it's gross what they did. It's gross, don't call me that, don't call me that, but also keep calling that.

Yeah, it becomes very clear throughout his life that that's actually exactly how he wants to be seen. In 2017, Jacob Wohl interviewed Jordan Wohl interviewed Jordan Belfort, the actual wolf of Wall Street for his podcast, Offended America. In the podcast, he reveals a deep familiarity with Belfort's writing and ideas, and it's pretty clear to me that, in fact,

there's nothing Wohl wants more than to be seen as his successor. Back in 2016, as the presidential election heated up, Jacob Wohl continued to show up on financial news shows. He quickly pivoted to identifying as a Trump supporter and became known for claiming on TV that huge numbers of young people were secret Donald Trump fans. Just for some reference, an estimated 37% of millennials voted for Donald Trump, which is the same percentage

of millennials who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012. There's no evidence for Jacob's constant claims that young people are secretly beloved. I mean, a lot of far-right wingers will make a lot of claims without any evidence at all. Really? Yeah. I haven't heard of that. Well, climate change is real.

We were talking earlier today, I'm cold, and I wore a long-sleeved shirt today, but it's mesh. Well, now, doesn't the fact that you're wearing a long-sleeved shirt disprove climate change? But it's mesh. Oh, okay, so climate change is real again. In LA. Yeah.

In LA, this is cold weather apparel. This is cold weather while the city burns down. Yeah, R.I.P. By the way, we have a history of doing free ads on this show. Oh, you do? Yeah, we do. So I just wanted to let you know that I'm drinking a cherry-lime LaCroix right now,

and it tastes exactly like a melted lollipop. Is that a good review or a bad review? It's a bad review. It tastes like, if you get those freezer pops, right, and you melt one and then dilute it in water, that's what this LaCroix tastes like. But the thing is, you keep drinking it. It's doing some right.

My throat dries out. It's not great. There's this thing they have in the world called water, and it actually quenches your thirst more than a sugary beverage. Now, maybe you can help me with this. I've heard about this water. I've also heard that fish fuck in it, and I don't know if I want...

That's the reason you don't drink water? Well, it seems like something disreputable. Let's get back to Jacob Wohl. So, 2016, the year that Jacob Wohl pivoted hardcore into being a very vocal Trump supporter, was also the first year that he ran into trouble with regulators. Surprise, surprise. That he wasn't obeying every law?

No. The 17-year-old hedge fund manager? The one that loves Trump. The one that loves Trump. Wohl was the subject of an investigation by the National Futures Association, a non-government but government authorized regulator to investigate fraud within the industry.

The NFA was interested in Jake because they'd actually read through the promotional material he put together for his new hedge fund, Next Capital Management. They found that next videos were, quote, unbalanced in their presentation of profit potential and risk of loss. They also found that Wohl had worked as a fund manager

before he or his hedge fund were actually registered. Which is, you know, a crime. The NFA report cites the claim of one investor who says he sent Wohl $75,000 and was told Wohl had grown it to $89,500 in a few months. The investor tried to withdraw his money and Wohl only sent him $44,000

claiming the fund had suffered seven losses. The NFA found that basically his trading account had made a small amount of money, but he was claiming massive losses as soon as people tried to withdraw the money. Which is, again, a scam. Yeah, I think you classify that as a scam. You call that a scam.

Fucking scab. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's fine. I hate him. Oh, I said fuck again. Oh, shit, I hate him again. No, it's fine.

It's fine. I think fuck a bunch. Right, okay, so now I can say it again. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You get at least five or six fucks banked. Okay, I think it's okay. Seven now. Okay, cool, cool.

The Daily Beast looked through an old archived version of Nex's website from before the investigation, and they found evidence that Wohl may have slightly misrepresented his credentials to investors, namely by claiming he had any. He wrote on his website that he had, quote, greater than 10 years trading experience

across many asset classes. In order for this to be true, Wohl would have needed to start investing as an eight-year-old. Oh, my God. My dad taught me so much. I've been doing it for 10 years because I've been listening to my dad.

Oh, it's phone call. Here's a quote from the Daily Beast. NFA agents showed up at Nex's supposed offices, which turned out to be a Los Angeles home where no one answered. Wohl did not return their emails or phone calls. When the NFA returned to the home the following day, the exam team noticed someone at the second floor window

who appeared to be taking photos or a video of the exam team, according to the filing. They soon received a stern phone call from a lawyer, a lawyer who allegedly threatened to call the police on the regulators, warning them to stay away or else. Um, yeah, that's a, you're hiding some. Sounds totally legit.

Yeah. 2016 was not a great year for Jacob Wohl's career as a hedge fund manager. That year, the Arizona Corporation Commission also gave his businesses a cease and desist order. The ACC claimed that he had violated the Securities Act by selling unregulated securities. Yeah, see, some of Wohl's former clients

were Arizona residents who say that he told them he managed 178 different accounts with up to $100,000 in assets. The ACC believes Wohl had roughly 13 accounts worth as much as $500,000. So he's basically claiming that he was running like 178 different accounts that had more than like 100 grand or something each.

Incredible, incredible. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Clients who became suspicious of his company and demanded their money back regularly got about half of what they put in out. So he was, you know, stealing, you could call it. Yeah, I'd call that stealing. So the ACC took issue with Wohl's other business

Montgomery Assets, a real estate investment firm. One of the Craigslist ads he posted claimed that the company owners had 35 years experience flipping homes. The Daily Beast notes that Wohl and his partner had a combined age of 45. Wow. One Montgomery Assets client claimed

that Jacob sent her a letter about a volatility event that he said was about to hit the market. Wohl advised her to sell her other investments, all of her other investments, and invest all of her money in his firm. Now, while all this was going on, Jacob began to create a stir on social media, where he was also increasingly active,

in between hosting a conservative podcast and making... Offended America. Offended America, yeah. You might be offended because of the theft. That tends to offend people. I think people are mad because you're stealing from Jacob. Is he taking the money?

Between that and making increasingly bizarre claims about millennial infatuation with Donald Trump, he started doing everything in his power to look exactly like a 2000 teens version of Jordan Pelfrey. On April 15th, 2016, Value Walk, a site that writes about investment firms and the like,

published an article about the corporate culture at Nex, which is, again, his hedge fund thing. It posted a clip from a company promotional video which lists an attractive young Instagram model named Jennifer Cole as his director of fun. Director of fun? Director of fun!

It's a jab to make sure everyone's having a good time. It's a cool company. Yeah, we're Google. We give you one. We have a friend in a house in Laurel Canyon scamming people. It's also a hot girl. Look, she's hot and it's an investment fund. I'm a teenager.

Millennials come. Now, Value Walk's report also noted that his website listed Rachel Fox, an actress who played someone named Kayla on The Desperate Housewives as the inspiration for his company's investment strategy. What? Quote,

in an interview with Value Walk, Fox claimed to know Woll and said she only learned of his trading program through a Value Walk article. Weird delay that an actress is the... Like a public figure. She can deny that claim. And she had done some work investing in hedge funds at some point in her career,

but she was nobody's big name. It's a weird thing to lie about. You just Googled celebrities that also invested. No, a good conman would lie and say that it's someone like Warren Buffett. Right. But they'd say that they'd been tutored in some vague way to be hard to disprove.

And you pick someone who's as busy as Warren Buffett and isn't going to say anything. Yeah, exactly. You don't pick a social media active actress. What are you doing, Jacob Woll? He's a dumby. He's a stupid, stupid man. Boy.

He's a scum. For sure, boy. Scumboy Jacob Woll seems to have had a thing for hiring models to just sort of hang around his businesses. Twitter users put together a number of Craigslist ads on the state firm asking for models and such. An Orange County ad stated, quote,

we need models for promo modeling events including conferences, trade shows, seminars, etc. We also have other modeling opportunities including bikini modeling and fashion modeling if you fit the type for that sort of modeling. That's nice. The Daily Beast did a domain registry search on Mr. Woll's businesses and found something

rather interesting, quote, the website registry database domain tool shows a number of websites registered to Woll's name. Including the domain for his short-lived media outlet, Affended America, and domains that are described in the ACC filing as belonging to his businesses. Others with names like WollGirls.com and

MelanieRiosManagement.com, the name of a porn actress, appeared to solicit more salacious business. In response to this, Woll stated, fake websites and Craigslist ads were posted by trolls of mine in 2016 and I immediately reported them to the FBI. Woll told the Daily Beast. He declined to specify which websites and ads

were the alleged frauds and declined to answer further questions. Yeah. Convenience. The Daily Beast also talked to the mother of one young woman who was featured as a Woll girl. She claims that Jacob lied to her daughter and said that he could make her famous by building a professional

modeling website for her, and that she agreed. But instead of doing that, this lady's mother says, quote, he took some of her photos either from Snapchat or Instagram that she had posted and created a page for her called The Woll Girl of the Month. From there, he put up photos and made the page seem inappropriate and dangerous.

So, the would-be model's mother actually wound up calling Jacob and confronting him on the phone. Quote, I thought he was probably an older man trying to exploit a young woman. When I contacted him on the phone I could tell he was young and idiotic. I told him you take that site down, you take any reference to her out of your world or else. He got very scared

and was like, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry and apologized profusely and took it down. Wow. What a little bitch. I like that lady's mom. You gotta confront a little shit like this. Yeah. I mean, she would have done it anyway even if he was an old guy. But the fact that he was a young guy made her even more

talk to him like a fucking mom. Which is the right way to talk to a child. So, we're gonna get on to how Jacob Woll got banned from the finance industry forever. Good fucking riddance. Then we're gonna talk about how he decided to take on Robert Mueller. Which is maybe biting off

a little bit more than he should have tried to chew. But before we do that, let's talk about Ehhh Ehhhhhhh During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly

infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right! I'm Trevor Aronson. And I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. The FBI sometimes, you gotta grab the little guy to go after the big guy.

Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside this hearse was like a lot of goods. He's a shark, and not in the good-bad-ass way.

And nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23,

I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me, about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev,

is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole.

My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus?

It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. We're talking about Jacob Wohl, the Wohl of Wall Street. The worst grifter I may have ever heard of, which normally I like to talk about more impressive people in this, but he's just so bad.

I couldn't stop myself. I mean, grifter sounds like a badass thing, though. I don't like that it's like a shitty thing to be. He's the living human embodiment of a single spam email. That's what Jacob Wohl is. OK, so in early 2017, Jacob Wohl received a lifetime ban from the NFA. For his part, Wohl portrays the National Futures Association

as basically a group of butthurt activists. Because the NFA isn't a government body, he basically says they're just a bunch of busy bodies, and they're not a government agency. They don't have any real authority to regulate things. And he'll do this in interviews, in the vice interview, and they don't really push things. They kicked him out after all this shit went down.

Because they were the one, they were like the regulator, the team that wanted to investigate. Did they ever actually investigate? Oh, yeah, they did. And they gave him a lifetime ban because he broke a bunch of laws. OK, good. And he would basically say, well, they're not a government

body, it's just a bunch of busy bodies. But the fact of the matter is, the NFA is a self-regulating body for the futures industry. Membership in it is required by law for traders and major buyers. Congress has given this non-government organization the ability to regulate the industry. They are very much authorized to do this shit.

The fucking rich people think they can do whatever the fuck they want. Yeah, and Jacob Wohl did for a long time. Did, well, about a year. He didn't get that long. That's not a good point. And his teens. I will say, he got caught pretty early,

what with his incompetence. Also, in 2017, the Arizona Corporation Commission issued a cease and desist order against Wohl for wildly misleading investors in misrepresenting the size of his businesses. He was ordered to pay $32,919 in restitution and $5,000 in penalties. Wohl's attorney asked for a four-week continuance

because his big shot client, who lived at the same Laurel Canyon house his company used as an office, couldn't make the first payment, which I just like that. Is it his dad? I'm going to guess his dad's probably paying, footing the bill for a lot of this. Yeah. So an Arizona Central article written

about Wohl's legal trouble revealed that, quote, Wohl's troubles in Arizona began in 2015 when two residents of the state contacted Wohl after seeing his media appearances. They note that Wohl called the ACC a racketeering organization full of angry Democrats. And while it is true that the ACC head was accused of accepting bribes in exchange

for votes on a utilities issue, the man accused is a registered Republican and wasn't actually convicted anyway. So Jacob Wohl. I also just think it's funny that his need to be on the news and known as the teen investment guru is what got him caught. Right. Yeah, that's not going to be the last time you hear about that.

That's what he's like a millennial trash, though. You know what I mean? Like he wanted the fucking verified checkmark, you know? Yeah, as the millennial investment expert and stuff. Yeah, he thought that was the path to good money. And if he hadn't been so dumb, it might have been. If he'd been a little bit more careful. But he was not, and he's dumb.

Now, in spite of the fact that Wohl's level of publicity had now definitely destroyed several of his businesses, Jacob was not yet ready to give up the line light or to give up social media. In fact, over the years, his Twitter presence has grown to more than 175,000 followers. Some of those probably hate followers. Up until very recently, he was most

renowned for posting numerous stories of his trips to what he called hipster coffee shops in Los Angeles, where he claimed to repeatedly overhear young Democrats secretly admit their admiration and love of Donald Trump. Oh my god. Get a fucking hobby, dude. Are you serious? Yeah, I'm really serious.

What's a better way to show that you're unemployed in a living husk of nothing? I'm going to go to every coffee shop and then pretend to hear things. And then lie about what people say. Oh my god. Well, it's also somebody pressed him on what he was talking about when he said something

was a hipster coffee shop. And he was talking about a coffee bean in Westlake. There's like 1,000 coffee beans around the world. It's not a hipster coffee shop. I can name a billion hipster coffee shops. It's not the one in fucking Westlake. Yeah, it's not a coffee bean. Where you go to get coffee when you can't stop.

When you have to. Yeah, yeah, when you have to. The coffee bean. Sometimes you just need coffee. So during this time, Jacob started to write for Gateway Pundit, a fake news website run by a former John Deere catalog model with no relevant experience in politics or journalism.

Gateway Pundit is regularly cited in Fox News. For an example of the level of quality in Gateway Pundit's reporting, at one point, they picked up a story about how the Kremlin thought Barack Obama was literally insane. According to Media Matters, the story originated from the European Union Times, an anti-Semitic website with a section devoted to Jews. So, like, it's.

What? This is just the quality of the website he's working with. They pick up stories from anti-Semitic. I think you just keep saying words at night. I'll be like, that sucks. And you'll keep talking. And I'll be like, wait, that's stupid. And then I'll just like, my face is just a permanent,

like, hello, darkness, my old friend. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. That would be good theme music for this show. So there's something unsettling to me about the fact that once finance was closed as a grifting opportunity and real estate, I should add. Jacob Wohl immediately landed on journalism as the next way to try to make his mark.

He founded his own website. Of course he did. The Washington Reporter, which, you know, he called this by the fact that he lives in Los Angeles, he claimed that the Washington Reporter was nonpartisan and his website included a code of ethics prominently displayed on the site. Unfortunately, Splinter News revealed

that the code of ethics on his website was plagiarized entirely from ProPublica. Oh my God. Stole his website's code of ethics. He fucking plagiarized. Yeah, his code of ethics. You can fucking Google that. Like, try harder.

Yeah, now. I didn't write every single paper in college, but I made it look like I did. Yeah, you fake it a little bit better than that, Jacob Wohl. Fucking asshole. So when asked about this point by Gizmodo, Wohl replied, I didn't create that part of the website, but if our policy is similar to that

of another reputable site, I think that's fantastic. Oh my God, it's the exact same. Yeah. Gizmodo went on to note, quote, Wohl said he would not respond to further questions about this non-news. Gossip about whether or not I date Instagram models is none of your concern, he said.

No one had accused him of dating Instagram models. I was just going to say, like, what? It's the last slide of the Gizmodo article. No one had accused him of dating Instagram models. That's a good article right there. That's some good journalism shade. No one had accused me of having a giant dick. Yeah, stop talking about my giant penis.

Oh my God. So during 2018, Wohl's biggest claims to fame were, of course, his constant tweets about hipster coffee shops and the fact that Donald Trump retweeted him, I think, twice, mostly because he would just say nice things about the economy under Trump. But then, on October 17th, a woman named Lorraine started emailing reporters around the US.

She claimed to have worked with special counsel Robert Mueller when he was a lawyer in the 1970s and said that she had been approached by a guy named Jack Berkman. Now, Jack Berkman is another grifter. We don't have enough time to get into in heavy detail here. But prior to this, his main claim to fame was that he investigated the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich.

He claimed to have found a man named Luke, who he said was an intelligence industry veteran, who knew that the DEA and ATF had murdered Seth Rich, presumably, in order to help Hillary Clinton somehow. There's some house and carts, even one type of shit. Yeah, there's some bullshit. He held a big press conference to have Luke tell his story on the phone to the assembled world media,

but Luke never called. So it's just a press conference with no source. So you can see why reporters immediately suspected something fishy now that Berkman's name was involved. So weirdly enough, the Lorraine story didn't hold up at all to scrutiny. No one by that name worked at the firm with Mueller. The journalists checked into this.

But Berkman did post on social media around that time asking for women with stories about being sexually harassed by Robert Mueller to come forward. And then, well, here's a quote from website, The Cut. Ed Crasterstein, the Hill reporter, said that when he was looking into the Lorraine claims, he received a threatening phone call from a man claiming to work for Surefire Intelligence.

When Crasterstein reached out to Berkman, Berkman told him he's familiar with Surefire Intelligence and that they do a lot of good research and that it's run by Jacob Wohl. So this is a little bit messy, but Surefire Intelligence is essentially a fake intelligence company that Jacob Wohl, on its surface, is supposed to be operated by former Israeli Mossad people,

but is really just Jacob Wohl. So they started reaching out to a bunch of people saying that they basically had an accuser of Robert Mueller that was going to come out and give speeches. And obviously, a bunch of people started poking holes in this straightaway. Oddly enough, fucking the Crasterstein brothers were some of the first people to, I guess,

because they got emails about this report that a... They came to his defense? No, no, no, no, no. They were some of the first people to connect this stuff with Berkman to Surefire Intelligence and Jacob Wohl. And then reported it to the FBI. No, they came to Robert Mueller's defense, I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Robert, moral. Moral. My mistake, my mistake. So this is how the other scammers come into this, is they come to his defense, they reveal that Jacob Wohl and Surefire Intelligence are connected to this emerging scheme, and then they report him to the FBI.

They're not the only people who reported Jacob Wohl to the FBI, but yeah, that's the fucking Crasterstein. They just wanted to dig their nose in. They just, yeah, they had to get involved. So, now, as soon as Surefire Intelligence dropped into the news cycle, open source journalists began digging

into its digital footprint. People from, I think, the Daily Beast called several of the phone numbers associated with the business, and it was Jacob Wohl's mom, who didn't seem to know anything about the scheme. Oh my God. His mom picks up the phone.

You see your mom's phone number? Well, it was just, he hadn't even intended to give a phone number, but he had registered the business to try to do things to make it look legitimate, and he gave family cell phones and stuff out. Oh my God. Yeah.

But hold yourself accountable. Put your own fucking cell phone. Yeah, yeah. Eric Toller, an editor for Bellingcat, Must be awful to be his mother. Yeah, it'll be anyone related to him. Eric Toller, an editor at Bellingcat, looked into Surefire's extensive website,

which was posted shortly before the allegations came out, and he found a number of interesting things. So, on its surface, the website looked pretty kind of legitimate, but it all sort of fell apart once you did any sort of digging into it. Their Tel Aviv station chief was a picture of Israeli supermodel, Bar Refeli.

Their investigator, Donald Treehorn, was a stock photo model with grayscale applied to it. Their LA-based investigator, Mark Teller, was really Nick Hopper, a British model, and Simon Frick, their Zurich-based financial crimes investigator, was a picture of Oscar-winning actor, Christophe Walsh. This just deteriorates me,

because you can get away with stuff if you're just a little smart. I'm glad I didn't get away with it, but for example, when I was in high school, my AP English teacher hated me because she was the star child, and then I had him, and he was like,

you're never gonna be as good at your sister. So, I plagiarized every paper that she had ever written, that I found on the computer, and I just submitted it as my own the entire year, and he gave me lower grades than her, even though it was the exact same paper. But you see, I got away with it. And then on my senior speech,

I cried, because I made up a story about going blind. But like, I love that we're getting a little bit of year grifting in here. But, oh yeah, I'm a fraud. Everyone's a fraud, so you're a grifter. Thank you. I'm a grifter. We're all grifters. But the point is, if you wanna fucking be smart,

don't put a well-known celebrity's photo as supposed to be like a representative of who you have backing the fucking company. Are you kidding me? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. And fucking, Jane Mayer of Dark Money found out, I forget what the name he had, but he posted the name of the person

who supposedly ran his firm. And he came with a fake name, but the picture was just Jacob Wall, but the picture reversed and darkened. It was just a dick in his face. Who do you have, what dummy with like paint, MS Paint is like running your fucking thing. It makes me furious.

He clearly knew enough to know that if you alter a photo somewhat, it makes it harder to trace back on Google image search. So they, or reverse image search. So he did a couple of small changes, but he didn't do a well. And like, the picture of Kristoff Waltz was like clearly Kristoff Waltz.

Like if you've seen him in a movie, you wouldn't pick him out as like, that's not Zurich based financial crimes. There are lesser known actors also. Like there are lesser known people than Bar Raphael who used to daily art a caprio. Or like, are you serious? Like that's the people that you,

that just infuriates me. As someone who has gone away with a lot of stuff. Yeah, well, infuriates me. Another thing that other people noted is that like, the investigator that Jacob pretended to be to communicate with a number of journalists was Donald Treehorn, which is of course a reference

to the Big Lebowski's Jackie Treehorn. Cause I think Wool thinks he's so smart that he's the only person who's watching one of the most popular films ever made. Yeah, he's just a dumb kid. He's just a dumb kid. I'm really glad he was dumb enough to get caught though. Very glad, very glad.

I'm just, he kept saying surefire and stuff. I just imagine the site is like on Angel Fire or GeoCities. Like that's like, my knowledge of his site is just like pure. Yeah, yeah. So as all of this broke, another woman, Professor Jennifer Taub came forward and said that Berkman and Wool had also reached out to her to try and solicit stories of sexual harassment

by Robert Mueller. She immediately sent the email, they sent her to the Department of Justice, which again, part of the FBI investigation that's now looking into Jacob Wool, and hopefully lead to some serious consequences for him. I'm not generally a big fan of prisons, but something bad should happen to Jacob Wool.

He should go somewhere. He should go somewhere not good. Yeah. Something bad should happen to him. Kick out the rest of the non-criminal marijuana and fucking people and bring him in. It could just be him and Paul Manafort in prison, lying to each other.

Perfect, and the two fucking crass shit brothers. Yeah, fuck it, throw the crassensteins in there too. Fine, that way it's bipartisan. Yeah, yeah. So Jacob Wool and Jack Berkman were not about to give up just because they'd been caught committing crimes and trying to fraudulently claim that an FBI special prosecutor was a sex criminal.

They continued to double down on their scheme. In the immediate aftermath of everybody busting into the fact that sheer fire intelligence was the fraud, Jacob Wool updated his Twitter bio to brag head of the most well-known opposition research firm in the world. That's not even technically true because being mocked on Twitter for two days

does not count as being well-known. Oh my God. Now, and then, because sometimes, sometimes God is good, Wool and Berkman held a press conference. Okay. Where they claimed that they, yeah, and during this press conference,

which they hyped up to the extent of their very tiny abilities, they claimed that they would present a credible accuser and her allegations against Bob Mueller. During the press conference, Wool and Berkman appeared with no accuser, claiming that she had backed out at the last minute. But Wool insisted this was all totally real and he also insisted and stated openly

that he didn't normally believe women when they came forward with allegations of sexual assault in order to claim that this one was extra credible. Like, he just did everything the grossest way possible. I was waiting for you to be like, and then came up Barra Fielli and Gal Gadot. No, he did present a picture of his credible accuser with her face blurred out of him standing next to her,

that he, in order to prove to people that she was real. And his mom was like, why did you listen to this photo of us, honey? It's worse than that. So internet sleuths did find the original unblurred version of the photo and realized it was a picture of Wool with his former girlfriend. Oh.

Oh my God. Berkman and Wool handed out summaries of their evidence to the assembled press, presumably to help people write stories about what they were just sure was gonna bust Robert Mueller down to size. But in the summaries they handed out, it turns out they misspelled the first name

of the fake woman that they brought forward on multiple occasions. Oh my God. Also Berkman's fly was down the entire press conference. Fuck yeah. That's the best thing you've heard. That's the best thing you've said all day. Cherry right on top.

The best thing you've said all day. After the disastrous press conference, a writer with abovethelaw.com received an email from Surefire Intelligence partner, Donald Treehorn, who claimed that they'd always wanted Professor Taub to leak their email to the FBI. Quote, I wanna clear something up. Ms. Taub was chosen with great care.

We chose her precisely because we thought she might act the way she did by running to the special counsel. We knew she would not miss this opportunity to get her 15 minutes of fame. Please note that we did not send emails to any other people requesting information on Mueller. Only Ms. Taub.

We performed extensive research on her mindset, academic position, and political activism. It was a bit of a long shot and she was the only person we sent this email request to. But it worked. She did our bidding and more so than we could ever have expected her to. Wow.

As of the recording of this episode, Jacob Wohl is still under investigation by the FBI. He's also banned from working in the finance industry. Well, okay, I do have something to contest. You said that the Krasn shit brothers are the second worst? They've been doing this for their whole lifetime. They're the worst.

Well, but they're... He's only a baby. But he's worse at it. He's already gotten caught too. Well, that's why I'm saying he's worse than they are. He's like a worst as far as like... He got an F and they got an A because they got away with it. Well, I wouldn't say they got an A

because they got caught too. They got A for assholes. I would say he got an F minus and they got an F. He's the worst con man in America and they're the second worst con man collectively. Yeah. So awful. Everyone in this is bad con man.

You know it's bad when they come for each other. You know it's bad when they're like, he's a con man. Yeah, when the second worst con man report the worst con man to the FBI. That's special. It's a special time in America. I've learned so much that I just wanna erase from my memory.

Well. I can't. It's gonna be on record forever. It will be. Grifters. Grifters. So. Grifters.

It's okay if you're a fraud, you know? I think Robert was right in the beginning of the episode. Like a lot of people that have creative fields, you feel like a fraud a lot of the time. Yeah. But just don't be a fucking grifter. Or if you're gonna be a grifter be a good grifter. Be like Elrond Carrot.

Or like yeah, be like Robin Hood. Like no, no, no, no. Scientology is not a good form of. I didn't say it was, it's an impressive grift though. It's not like, it's not a dumb. It's a disturbing grift. It's a disturbing, destructive and dangerous grift. But at least it's not dumb.

That is impressive, to say the least. But if you're gonna grift be a Robin Hood character and don't take advantage of the poor and the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor, no. Steal from rich people is what we say. Yeah, if you're gonna steal, steal from the rich. Like we're not worth saying. You didn't knock as many cars over as you want,

as long as they're Teslas. Exactly, as long as they're Teslas or Infinities. I would say Benz. Benz. Benz is the one I would go after. That's like old money. You know, that's old money. Tesla can be like new money, you know?

Yeah. But Benz isn't the old money. Yeah, Benz is old money. And a Rolls-Royce. Some Cadillacs. I don't know. Cadillacs. I feel, my grandma drove a really old,

why don't you drive a Lincoln Town car? I always get those two inside. Oh, Audis maybe? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. I don't care what car you drive.

Just don't hit them unless they're driven by someone that's a dick. Yeah. That's fair. Yeah. Hit people's cars if they're dicks. That is the official message. No! Also, don't cheat.

Don't commit crimes. Don't cheat. Don't commit crimes. Don't commit crimes. Unless they're for an English class that a teacher you hate. All right. Shareen, you wanna plug some Plugaboo's? Yeah, I'm Shareen.

Fantastic. And I'm the co-host of Ethnically Ambiguous. It's a podcast on how stuff works, our stuff, the network that this is also on. You can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts, we're everywhere. We're on Twitter, ethnicallyamb, A-M-B. We're on Instagram, ethnicallyambig, A-M-B-I-G.

I am on Instagram at Shiro Hero, S-H-E-E-R-O, H-E-R-O. And then on Twitter, I'm Shareen Y, S-H-E-R-E-E-N-W-H. Why? Because why not? And this has been Behind the Bastards. You can find us on the internet at behindthebastards.com, where the sources and such will be for this episode. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram at atbastardspot.

You can find me on Twitter at iRightOK. And that's all the things that I have to plug. So get on with your life. Go do so. Oh, nope. That's not all the things. Sophie is making frantic gestures at me. Merch.

You can buy merch at the RT Public Store. Behind the Bastards, T-Public. We got great shirts. You can also get cups, mugs. You can get any design. Any design. As a shirt, a mug, a poster, a tote, a tank top, a sweater, a hoodie, a baseball tee, a phone case,

a laptop case, the fucking options are endless. And even if you want to donate a little bit, or support a little bit, a sticker can do just fine. Yeah, a sticker can do just fine. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I love about 40%. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen.

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