Grubstakers - Episode 116: Gary Magness and the Missing BCCI Money

Episode Date: November 19, 2019

This week we're discussing a relatively obscure billionaire heir to a cable fortune named Gary Magness. He won an oscar for producing the movie Precious and is currently in court fighting to not have to return $80 million he stole as part of a Ponzi scheme but what we're most interested in is his connection to the episodes we did on the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). His father Bob Magness was on the board and a major shareholder in a BCCI subsidiary named Capcom Financial which was linked to Saudi Arabian intelligence and to at least $1.3 billion in assets stolen out of the main vehicle of BCCI. His father never was prosecuted never had to return the money he made and now some of that money belongs to Gary. Now Gary spends his Saudi intelligence money buying his daughter a pop music career. We live under the most efficient economic system possible. Here's a copy of the 1992 Kerry Committee report on Capcom Financial the first and last investigation the US government conducted into this: https://fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/21capcom.htm

I want to be held accountable for what I'm doing. This may sound like an exaggeration, but it was like the 9-11 of my career and certainly of making kombucha. Jesus is smart this idea of income inequality that always strikes me as a very it's a deceptive term income inequality well let's flip it around it comes from outcome inequality in five four three two hello welcome back to Grubstakers, the podcast about billionaires. My name is Sean P. McCarthy, and I'm joined here by... Steve Jeffers. Yogi Poliwal.

And so this week, we're talking about, I guess, not one of the more prominent billionaires. We're talking about a guy you probably haven't heard of. Maybe if you're in the Denver, Colorado area, you might have heard about him as a man about town but we're talking about a billionaire named gary magnus you might know his uh famous uh pop singer daughter cameron with a y c-a-m-r-y-n you know that's how you spell cameron yeah so maybe the people would want to hear some of that uh he so this is a colorado billionaire worth 1.4 billion dollars according to forbes is of november 2019 and he does have a pop singer daughter that's right uh and she sings about being lonely i understand well her her single if you can call it a single is lovesick here here's a

little taste for you man all you have to do is have a billionaire father and you can produce a music video that shows how you're not that popular, but you're so lonely because you're not that popular. So this is like 100,000 views, right? Yeah, I mean, she's got like... All from a click farm in Malaysia. I mean, like, it's, you know...

If you play it backwards, it's like all satanic verses in illuminati language well actually and so as actually steve brings it up you know illuminati like why i got interested in this guy gary magnus this kind of obscure colorado billionaire is we did this three-part episode on the bank of credit and commerce international which nearly killed us yeah Just to recap briefly, this bank that's linked to the CIA, Saudi intelligence, the Mossad, everybody, as well as international terrorism and drug trafficking, it collapses in 1991. About $15 billion or so go missing. And then it's just kind of a strange story where the claims to get people trying to get

their money back are ongoing. But the scandal itself, even though so many different politicians and other people, like we said, the CIA, are involved in it, the scandal itself really disappears after 1992. And one of the lingering questions from BCCI is, well, where did all that money go? And there's a weird story in the 1980s about a company called capcom financial and if you thought it's hard doing research on bcci just try googling capcom and trying to find out about a bank scandal instead of the new street fighter game like yeah no the capcom financial statements just said hideoken again and again it's just like these are just move combos. Right. But it is like, I mean, there is a part of me that almost thinks like, well, maybe the fucking CIA pushed the Capcom video game franchises in order to get this out of the press.

I mean, a lot of video game companies go under pretty often. So the fact that Capcom has made as long as they did, it is kind of shocking. Right. But so Capcom Financial is set up by bcci in 1984 um it goes under with the rest of bcci but what it's doing is it's kind of a commodities trading arm of bcci uh commodities affiliate it's being used for money laundering it's a giant fraud factory but what's interesting is that from 1984 to 1988 garyus, this is the current billionaire we're talking about, his father, a guy named Bob Magnus, was one of the principal shareholders and sat on the board

of directors of Capcom Financial from 1984 to 1988. And he made millions of dollars doing this that we know of. I'm sure he even made more. But he's never really investigated, never prosecuted, and nothing happens to him. So, again, this is one of the greatest financial banking scandals of all time. And this guy just gets to walk away with the money. And they were part of canceling the most anticipated project,

Mega Man Legends 3, shutting down Clover Studios in 2015. So, you know, my research was a little off, guys. I didn't realize we're doing Capcom Financial. My apologies. Yeah. I got a whole bunch of Devil May Cry research

that I don't know what to do with anymore. Yeah, I was going to say, the CIA fucked up the Devil May Cry games to take people off the trail of the real Capcom scandal. The true devil. Yeah. But so, you know, and the Bob Magnus fortune,

the Bob and Gary Magnus fortune. Bob Magnus is dead now. The son, Gary Magnus, he became worth $1.4 billion because he inherited this cable television and internet fortune. Right.

Bob Magnus was originally just cable television, but he founded this company called Telecommunications Incorporated. Telecommunications Incorporated in 1999 was bought by AT&T, and since then, their cable lines have all been sold off to Comcast. So it is something interesting where we'll kind of talk a little bit about the history of Bob Magnus, but cable is a natural monopoly. It's just you spend the money, you put the lines down, and then nobody else can really compete with you if you own the fucking lines. It has very high barriers to entry,

so it takes a lot of money to lay down the cable and all the infrastructure. And once you do, I mean, there's only really a need for one. Right, you put down one line, and then it can take care of as many people. Yeah, that's there's only really a need for for one right you put down one line and then it can take care of as many people yeah that's what's meant by natural monopoly and he stuck to bob magnus he kind of began his career staying rural and like just monopolizing in this way through rural communities and using quite a bit of credit to do it so he'd like grow very quickly right right to a large company doing that. Yeah, and it's interesting where another thing with the BCCI scandal is around the time the BCCI scandal breaks, 1991, there's no MSNBC, there's no Fox News yet.

There's CNN. Right. Just so happens TCI around this time owns a little more than 20 percent of turner broadcasting which owns cnn so i mean you can see why they weren't reporting on something that hurt their own bottom line right and it is interesting so another thing is uh the premium side we're going to talk about john c malone because that kind of continues this and we'll go a little more into detail on the cable industry on the john c malone episode he's a cable billionaire this guy from diehard yeah he just happens to be the largest landowner in the united states but john c malone was the guy that bob magnus appointed as ceo of tci in

1972 he went on to become a billionaire and he runs a liberty media now um yeah without john c malone i don't think tci becomes becomes the evaluated billion-dollar company that it becomes. No. John C. Malone certainly is the Paul Allen in terms of working hard and diligently figuring out the vision for TCI to get out of the rural upbringings that Bob Magnus originally laid the foundation for well when we were when we were researching tci and bob magnus like prior to malone joining um there's a lot less information about tci right and it seems that they were just mostly focused with their with um just monopolizing the cable markets in these really rural and some suburban areas and they hadn't really diversified at all at that point yeah and so i guess just to say we'll we'll start with the biography of bob magnus the father but uh we

should just mention again gary magnus born in um 1954 in texas uh he attends western state college of colorado but drops out and apparently his brother split their dad, Bob Magnus' fortune, but he died of an apparent overdose. I wonder who supplied those drugs. Kim Magnus? Yeah. I wonder what college dropout supplied these drugs that killed his brother incidentally.

He died. I looked up the autopsy report for Kim Magnus. He died in, I think it was 2003. He had been kind of battling a cocaine addiction off and on. And the autopsy showed that he had like a really damaged, if not ruptured, spleen. Right. And it is just... And like that's...

Like he had been dealing with, I think, cancer. He had a lot of health problems. But also he had like bruised ribs and also this like damaged spleen. Really? So there is like a controversy on how he may have died? They didn't really reach a conclusive result. Huh. Because there are so many different confounding factors.

And he did have a history of overdosing on drugs. What year was this? 2003. Oh, interesting. A year later Capcom releases Monster Hunter. Let's be honest here. It's no coincidence. Oh yeah, he did vehemently oppose the release of Monster Hunter.

At the bottom of the autopsy there's a little text and it's all underlined and it says, this has nothing to do with living under cable lines his entire life. None of the health problems are related to TCI's cable lines. But we should mention, according to this Forbes profile of Gary Magnus, his wife, Sarah Magnus, runs the couple's film company Smokewood Entertainment which has produced I guess four or five movies none of which you've heard of except for Precious

except for the movie Precious he won an Oscar Gary Magnus did as the producer of the movie Precious right they also produced Moody Judy that classic and other terrible movies no one's ever gonna fucking see and also sarah is uh the type of individual to hawk something called gold collagen this is a

commercial for it uh featuring sarah siegel magnus the wife of gary one of the most immediate benefits that i saw after i started drinking the gold collagen was how hydrated my skin was my fine lines started to soften i looked younger and i thought you know this product would take maybe two three months to start working but really after two weeks i was glowing all my friends and family were asking me what i did there and i said well actually i discovered a beauty drink gold collagen that changed my life it's anti-aging in a sip. During those statements at the bottom, it says not approved by the FDA. Just like she's drinking collagen.

It's just so pathetic when somebody has more money than they'd ever be able to spend in one lifetime. And then they're bored and like, what should I do? I should sell some things. Yeah, right. If I can sell some things and make more money. Like, you have enough money to just give this garbage away. Just say, go to my website. I will send you gold collagen for free.

And it's like, you know, gold and rich people and them believing it causes an anti-aging effect is not new. Like when we did the episode on Adam Neumann, we discussed how the Paltrow company, Goop, has like a fucking gold eyeliner thing. Like you just rub gold on your face. And it's like, yo, how much are we going to fetishize fucking wealth with fucking looking good? Because it's like, you know, hey hey if you want to if you want to live longer eat diamonds like it doesn't make any fucking sense and so it should also be mentioned well first of all uh gary magnus son of a billionaire college dropout kim magnus son of a billionaire heroin addict and like i'll do like that is what i would do if i was the son of a billionaire heroin addict yeah

and college dropout like because you read that and you think oh it's pathetic you dropped out of college but then you think why are all these other billionaire kids even bothering to go to college either either you get in with the epstein crowd or you stay on the periphery and like race monster trucks and get a heroin addict addiction like uh kim kim and gary to a lesser extent it is interesting they do all seem to like there's um john cleese's daughter uh it's a stand-up now and i was watching an interview with her and she used to be an equestrian right and she literally in the interview was like yeah it's an odd group of billionaires that seem to be a part of the equestrian horse club and it's like this is why they they don't finish school sometimes because

they're too busy riding horses and shit and it's like motherfucker you got a car you don't need to be doing this shit well we should do a cultural mapping of billionaires at some point because there's like there's a like there's horse ones and there's distinctively not horse ones yeah so that we've covered non-horse billionaires before. I don't know which billionaire it was, but it was a billionaire that the kids were fighting over the estate. And one of the things was that the billionaire that we were talking about, I can't remember who it was, but the big part of it was a horse stable that had these rare horses. But none of the kids got into horse riding, so they just kind of sold off all the horses i had a loss um packer i think it was packer yeah i think you could be right about that and like that's so

funny to me that this fucking billionaire is so obsessed with horses and his kids like not dad we good we don't need horses in our lives and fucking just get rid of them that was carrie packer wasn't it was carrie packer yeah but so one other thing other thing Gary Magnus got from his father is involvement in financial fraud schemes. You might have heard of this guy, Robert Allen Stanford. He kind of got overshadowed by Bernie Madoff, but he was also running a giant Ponzi scheme that collapsed into the 2008 financial crisis. It was about a $7 billion Ponzi scheme. And actually, stewart at the daily show uh they did this great segment where they made fun of cnbc this is before the ponzi

scheme collapsed actually where c a cnbc guy interviewed him and said uh so what's it like being a billionaire just like that kind of hard-hitting question of course which looks even worse when you realize after the fact that he's running a fucking Ponzi scheme. Why are you so great? But so, according to this Bloomberg Law article from August 2019, Gary Magnus, quote-unquote, borrowed $79 million from Stanford

from this Ponzi scheme. He borrowed $79 million. Why did he say borrow like a canadian yeah i don't yeah borrowed borrowed donkey in spanish what's going on here but uh so but he knew he conceded gary magnus did that it was a fraudulent transfer like he knew this was a ponzi scheme but um but it's it's very weird where like apparently the way the law works is that he's able or Gary Magnus has been fighting to not have to give back this $80 million for 10 years now. And this guy's worth $1.4 billion. He got $80 million on a fake loan from a Ponzi scheme, and he's been fighting for 10 years.

As of August 2019, they're appealing it to the Texas State Supreme Court. There's 18,000 victims of this Ponzi scheme, and the receiver, the person trying to get the victims their money back, has sued Gary Magnus. Again, this litigation's been ongoing for 10 years um they're headed uh he says the receiver does that only about two percent of the claims about 135 million dollars have been returned so for 10 fucking years gary magnus is like not just going hey okay here's that 80 million back right you know because he needs it to sell his wife's drinkable collagen but so according to this bloomberg law article um the the the way texas law works there's a texas uniform fraudulent transfer act um and they're appealing to the supreme court to ask if this act allows gary magnus to keep the money the 80 million if he can show, as he has argued, it would have been futile for him to investigate whether Stanford was operating a Ponzi scheme. Because for some

reason, Gary Magnus has said that he took this $80 million loan, he suspected it, and he admits now that it was a fraudulent transfer, but he says it would have been pointless for him to investigate whether or not it was a Ponzi scheme, because it would have done nothing. What? And for some reason, there was an appeals court that said, yeah, that argument holds up. You can keep the $80 million. So now they're appealing to the Texas State Supreme Court. But it's like, regardless of the law, which seems very strange to me, that if you can say, yeah, I suspected it was a Ponzi,

but I thought it would be pointless to investigate that this guy was just giving me 80 million if you can say that uh whether or not the law is clear about that you're worth 1.4 billion and there's like 18 000 you know middle class or small mom and pop depositors who just got fucking hosed and you're not just giving back this 80 million because your fucking daughter needs to produce a new music video how much much did it cost to make Precious? I don't know. Let's look this shit up real quick. Yeah. That's his daughter's song.

It's about how it's so lonely when you're trying to avoid the creditors. The 18,000 people who lost their money. It cost $10 million to make Precious. He could have made fucking eight Preciouses with this goddamn money. Man, motherfuckers. Precious 2. Electric Boogaloo but again it's a family tradition because robert allen stanford the ponzi guy he's doing a life sentence for the ponzi scheme but gary magnus you know scott free um and has fought the receivership

precious two in it to win it but um but i guess we should kind of back up here a little bit um i want to talk a fair bit about capcom financial and its links to bcci the bank of credit and commerce international but um and then on the patreon episode we're going to talk about john c malone and a bit more about the cable industry in general in the United States. But I think we should just kind of start with the story of Bob Magnus, the father, the man who gave Gary Magnus the money to soup up his daughter's music videos and how he did that. There's actually a video from the Colorado Business Hall of Fame, which we'll play maybe two minutes of to just kind of give you the nuts and bolts

introduction. The story of Bob Magnus began modestly enough in 1924 in the small town of Clinton, Oklahoma. He grew to love cattle and horses and ranching with his wife, Betsy. But it wasn't enough. And he went into a store to buy a sport coat. And he couldn't afford the sport coat. I mean, his wife said, Betsy said, you know, go ahead and get the sport coat. And he said it was like a month's worth of groceries is how much the sport coat cost.

So he made up his mind that he was going to be successful enough in business that he could buy any sport coat that he wanted. Bob Magnus' widow, Sharon, knows these stories well, although she herself wouldn't hear them until years later. She laughs about him picking up two hitchhikers who would show him the future. these stories well although she herself wouldn't hear them until years later she laughs about him picking up two hitchhikers who would show him the future they were talking about this new fangled way to put cable up and people in rural areas could get TV Magnus was intrigued he and his first wife Betsy

sold their cattle borrowed $5,000 from his father and called the hitchhikers they put their first cable system up in Memphis, Texas, 1956 and sold it for $300,000 like a year later. Sportcoats came easy then, but Bob Magnus wasn't done yet. All right, so that's his poverty story is that he wanted to buy sportscoats. I'm not going to stop growing this cable company

until I can buy every damn sport in this town it's like the the tony montana origin story where you you just need sports coats so much that suddenly you're in bed with saudi intelligence and doing a fucking cia front to defraud uh investors of billions yo how come billionaire stories involve hitchhikers so much? Is that the reason why there's not that many hitchhikers anymore? They shut it down because they didn't, the power of hitchhikers made people billionaires too often? I was just thinking, it's so sad they didn't pick up the Manson family.

Like, why'd they have to get the lame hitchhikers? Right. So, like, I read in some reports that it wasn't hitchhikers, but it was just two people he met somewhere that were talking about it. So even the fucking fable is not clear. So in today's dollars, he got about $48,000 from his dad. Jesus Christ. Well, that's what I was saying.

So he had a herd of cattle to begin with, which is like you're already doing fine. And then he got a 48 000 loan from his dad and but the poverty story is like he just wanted really bitching sports coats yeah he started wanting sports coats and then and then um 40 35 years later he's in the middle of iran contra yeah people don't realize sports coats are the entryway into being Iran-Contra solvent. So the widow was like trying to tell the story about

the sports coat to make him relatable but what she didn't tell you is the sports coats that he liked were made out of baby skin. They cost a million dollars each to get a baby skin sports coat. Baby leather. Why has it got to be babies?

Yeah. Well, listen, you don't understand. Human skin just doesn't feel right against wool. But it is like, I mean, again, he has this supposed poverty story, but the actual story, even the way he tells it, is he meets two hitchhikers who they have the idea and he has the money. He is the money guy who you know i mean this is the way capitalism well i mean it is said that greatness is often i heard these people

have a good idea but they're too broke or disorganized to get it done so we can do it ourselves pop we could like organize 33 of the episodes by just yeah this guy met some poor person who had a good idea and he wasn't poor, so now he's a billionaire. Not only is this guy rich and makes money off their poor idea, but then later on, another rich dude is the reason why the company gets to where it is anyway. So he doesn't even improve on the idea that he steals from these two hitchhikers. And then I think later in the video it says that in, he goes into business with these hitchhikers. And I believe within two years, they put up these cable lines and they actually sell them within two years for something like $300,000 in the 1950s. So just really quickly within setting this up, he's already rich.

And Gary Magnus, his kid, is born in 1954. By the time he's four years old, he already rich. And, you know, Gary Magnus, his kid, is born in 1954. By the time he's four years old, he's rich. So he's selling, like, rural community antenna systems. Like, really big ones. Right. I mean, the reason... To, like, power many, many miles. In the regions, I believe, is Montana, the Denver, Oklahoma, and Texas regions.

Yeah, yeah. That he was setting up cable lines for them and you have to understand cable at this time is you know like fucking what internet is today it's fucking you know in 50s i can watch tv and be in the woods like yeah it's a fucking you know gold mine of an operation and like we were mentioning earlier once you put down the cable lines you just get the money hand over fist so once he had fully built out the infrastructure in Bozeman, he was bringing cable to about 12,000 homes. Right.

Which is a shitload for the time. Yeah, and I did stand up in Montana at one point, and if you drive through it, there's parts of that drive where you don't even get the radio station. So the fact that there were places in the 50s getting television must have fucking blew their mind. Let alone cable television. Right. Yeah.

But so here's something from the Cable Hall of Fame in 1998, another Bob Magnus biography. They built their first cable system in Memphis, Texas with 750 subscribers. Bob strung the wires while Betsy ran sales and marketing from the kitchen table. Within two years, they had more than quadrupled the business. Yeah, and so within two years, they quadrupled the business. They sell it. The number I heard was about $300,000 in like 1957 or 58, which again, a lot of money in the 1950s. How much was this, dude?

Oh, look at this. Don't get the dopes. Because it could be a million dollars probably, right? But so then he uses that money of selling his first business to start TCI, Telecommunications Incorporated. It wasn't originally called that. He starts the precursor to it in 1958 in Montana,

and then he moves it to Denver, Colorado after merging it with another company in 1968, changes the name to... When did he sell the company? 1958. He sells the first company. The first one, yeah. Yeah, 1958.

About $300,000. About $300,000, yeah. And then he starts the next one in Denver, Colorado. Or sorry, in Montana. About $2.5 million. Pretty good. In today's dollars. So he starts the next one in Montana in 1958.

Merges it. Moves it to Denver in 1968. Where he renames it Telecommunications Inc. or TCI. TCI goes public in 1970. And then in 1972 it has about 100,000 subscribers. It's a public company now, but he thinks he needs a more experienced hand. So he hires future billionaire John C. Malone, who will be the subject of the next episode to be CEO. John C. Malone grows it to the point where in 1981, TCI is the largest cable company in the United States. And, you know, it's like all cable because it is a natural monopoly. You can find, if you look from the 90s and 80s, lots of people complaining about how much TCI sucks.

Really? Even then? Yeah, because, I mean, like the cable industry has only gotten more consolidated. But, you know, say you're in montana and tci is the one bringing you cable like i mean i'm sure you're grateful but it's also like they can just say no we're not gonna fix this you have no option here right we'll get to this next week we don't have to give a fuck right it's like dealing with spectrum today like did i had to return my modem to spectrum they made me wait an hour oh wow just to give them the fucking moto pieces of shit you know what happened to me yeah so when i moved to new york i had a time warner now spectrum

and uh my kid my internet didn't work that well so i decided to use my own modem and so the technician took it themselves right so this was five years ago that this shit happened three months ago last august they sent a letter to my parents place saying that i owed them 80 dollars for the modem I didn't return. And I was like, motherfucker, I gave it to the technician. He's like, you went to Spectrum. And I told him about it. And so they sent it to Collections because they were like, you haven't paid us in five years.

I'm like, how the fuck can I not pay you for something that I don't owe you? Right. No, it is something where I feel like cable companies in the United States just get off on the power they have over you. They want to gouge you. Fuck everyone. Everyone right down to the call center employees. Just like, yeah, fuck you. I have everything.

You have nothing. I will say like I went into the spectrum location personally because I was tired of calling them. And like I rolled in and I was like fucking heated. And the lady was like, have you signed it? I was like, no. And you have to fucking sign it on a tablet and then sit and wait and try to wait for an hour i'd wait for like 20 minutes but i have to say that entire process has saved plenty of murders because i would if i rolled it and they would have been like we can't do shit for you i'd be like well who do i punch to get

shit done around here i just moved so like now i have different internet options but you got uh i got rcn now um they're like actually well i look i have it i've only had them less than a month i don't know if they suck yet but when i had spectrum i was in a building literally only spectrum right so i'd come home from work and the internet wouldn't work and i would just be there like okay so i could wait on hold with spectrum for two hours um and if i don't like it well there's literally no other option right so i could i could call spectrum and say i'm gonna live without internet unless you fix this you know what you actually can do if you call them and your internet's out and they say it's out for whatever

reason you and you literally have to go through like eight different i i got very good at fighting time warner and it got to a point where i'd call them because sometimes they do maintenance at like two in the morning and every now and then we would upload episodes at that time so i'd call and be like motherfucker i gotta work and they would be like sorry we're doing maintenance which is their go-to bullshit and i'd be like well i'm paying you for this to work and it's not working so i would like some of my money back and they'd be like all right we're gonna take off 40 bucks off your bill this month or whatever so So you can call them and say, you suck, I need money. And they'll go, legally speaking, you're not wrong.

You do have actually a lot of leeway in fighting out your bill, your cable bill over the phone. But it's more to have a hassle than most people are willing to pay. Exactly. It's just like consume your time until you get fucking, until you're like. Yo, i got so good i remember it was like all right that's the phone number two four six two and i'm like i love tech three and they'd be like uh are you sure i'm like motherfucker i restarted i did everything i

needed you send me tech three right now and the person would be like hi i'm in cambodia you're not gonna fight me but i'll send this guy to texas that's gonna help you out i got so good at fighting time warn Warner, man. I can't tell you how hyped that shit got me. The subscribers are like, why is the Grubstakers episode late again? Yogi's been on hold with Spectrum for two days now, but he has to win this. This is important. Once they kept hanging up on me, and I was like, I'm going in too angry.

So I put on a southern old lady voice and pretended like i didn't know what i was doing oh these fucking these cambodian fucking tech workers that deal with the uh customer service at four in the morning they were like this poor old white lady doesn't know what she's doing let's help her out but i was like i i just don't know what's going on my man they were they ate that shit up so if you ever have issues with a tech company pretend to be old and maybe female and not know what you're doing and certain doors open for you but um so tci by 1981 largest cable company in the united states if you're bidding on ebay and you want to under under buy for the, send them an email saying that this is a gift for your significant other and that they would really love it.

But don't say you're the dude. No, say you're the woman because if it's a guy selling it, they'll be more sympathetic. And there is no statistic on this, but I believe that eBay sellers are mostly dudes. I've done this successfully and saved countless amount of dollars on things I didn't need. Yeah, my wife just really wants devil may cry for collector's edition it it listen i'm not i don't feel good about this shit but the fact that i'm not sharing with the world lets me know this would be like this would be a more like a bob magnus's story about like wanting sports jackets yeah like today it would be like i just want to be able to pay a lower bill on my on my cable right and so if you stay on the line long enough you just like

you've entered the great game now that's what it is start up the ante if you're on if you're on hold with them for 15 to 40 minutes literally 15 to 40 minutes they're gonna bend and go fuck it we gotta give this guy money he's not gonna quit um but yeah and so we'll talk about john c malone and uh tci in the u.s cable industry more uh in depth on the on the next episode but what you kind of need to know is john c malone is appointed ceo of tci in 1972 by 1981 it's the biggest cable company in the united states but what happens is bob magnus is kind of sidelined you know he hires this guy to run the thing because he doesn't know how to um you know bob magnus doesn't really know how to run a big company so he hires a guy to run the thing and he's now he's just got his money and he doesn't have much to do anymore i was reading a there's

a financial times interview with malone speaking about bob and just kind of how he got like like Bob was kind of his mentor I guess in business even though he needed help on the technical aspects of actually running a cable business and expanding it but Malone was like he he learned a lot from Bob Magnus about what he says he calls bulkhead financing which is apparently like a business strategy where you make sure all of your acquisitions can independently internally finance themselves so all the entities that are owned by like tci right uh they're all sort of siloed off as like independently they they're generating cash right right they're all their own separate entities. Yeah, so they don't require big transfers of cash. So you can, quote, keep the banks out of your business, basically, if you need to.

Right, sure. And he said of Bob, Malone was, the article goes on, it says, Malone was known for his talent for deal-making making or media Darwinism, as he calls it. And he came and it came from learning on the job under Bob Magnus, who hired Malone in 1972 and made him a chief executive a year later. He said, quote, Most of the skills in financial engineering came from the school of hard knocks. Bob Magnus taught me that he could read a balance sheet faster than anyone i've ever known and really developed the principle of bulkhead financing which like i said is where you silo off right the proper profitability of each of the the underlying entities yeah so you

don't have to like go to banks for fine for like credit finance and stuff like that right so john figured out how to look at a sheet and make it so that it could work on its own essentially yeah so like i don't know bob it sounded like bob kind of like had a head for just business generally but he needed malone to actually run this specific business about cable and like expanding in media right like once you reach that kind of scale because you know john c malone had uh previous experience as the president of a um of gerald electronics which was a cable equipment maker so you know i guess he just had the experience running a larger company and also with the actual nuts and bolts of large-scale cable equipment um and you know once you're just expanding beyond rural montana and trying to go

in uh what new york, California, everywhere else. TCI is bought by AT&T in 1999. It's a $48 billion deal, at the time the largest in U.S. business history. Then AT&T sells TCI's existing cable networks, which are still fucking around, to Comcast. If you have Comcast, you probably have the fucking thing Bob Malone installed in 1957 or uh bob magnus um but yes so um but i guess what i wanted to mention why it's important that uh bob magnus but we're not covering just a shitty cable billionaire for no real reason

this is the shit that we want to talk about right so. So why it's important that in the 1980s, Bob Magnus is kind of bored, listless, he doesn't really have anything to do, is that he gets involved in Capcom Financial. And there's this article in New York Magazine from 1991 called Cable TV's BCCI Connection. And it goes through how 1984 to 1988, Bob Magnus served as the founding shareholder and director of Capcom Financial, which is a, ringleader in a scheme to use Capcom to loot at least $1.3 billion of BCCI money.

Damn. Yeah. And so it's just interesting where, oh, and I do just like that. According to this New York magazine, they found BCCI was also funneling, using their New York office to funnel money to the Gambino crime family. What? Yeah, they usually did it through loans on mobbed up construction projects. It was these private investigators for United Consulting found this. Like, that's what, you know, again, if you haven't listened to the BCCIci episode you don't have to invest all four hours that we spent on this but um what we you keep running into is

there's u.s investigators seem to just kind of stop at a different point with this criminal conspiracy that is very clearly linked to sa intelligence and probably the CIA as well, where Saudi intelligence, the chief, Kamal Adham, is a board member of BCCI. He's a board member of Capcom Financial. He's front and center in all of these major schemes, and he's just never really pursued, and all these leads aren't really close. So it is these private investigators who find that BCCI was making these loans to mobbed-up construction companies. In one case, they say $16 million disappeared along with the company. It was a Pakistani-owned construction company based in North Carolina.

It gets a $16 million loan and then disappears and ceases all operations. So just that kind of shit going on again and again and there's just no real follow-up and no investigative conclusion i like how you you you said that like bob was basically just kind of going around listless in the mid-80s he's like all right fuck it let's do international money laundering well you know his son got into a ponzi scheme too it's like in the dna right right you've got too much money yeah what's what's new in the air right now right right bcc how's everyone else spending their time and money oh this this bank that seems pretty cool all right well the peanut farmer likes it

that is true though if you were a billionaire and you like want to do the fucking uh daredevil kind of thing what you could do is get involved in fraud and see if your legal team is good enough to pull you out of it that's right someone stopped me right i mean all of this you know all these billionaires have a certain amount of risk to reward ratio that they go ah fuck it let's do the risk we'll get they like to gamble and it's in their blood to think to themselves i can't lose so i might as well gamble. Right, it's like the Evel Knievel thing, except instead of jumping a fucking cliff,

you're looting $15 billion from small depositors, Bangladeshi migrant workers. Actually, I guess it's somewhat small stakes compared to Evel Knievel. And so, you know, and again, we could spend a lot of time going through all of the different uh scams capcom financial was involved in but as as far as we can tell it was set up as a commodities arm for bcci and another way to kind of hide the losses of bcci and the thing is bob magnus would never really answer any questions about this. He refused comment for all these articles. Apparently, they answered Senate questions with written answers and pleaded the fifth on all other stuff. 1982, or sorry, in 1981 and early 1982, Clark Clifford, who we talk about on the BCCI episode, a former aide to Harry Truman and a major Democratic player who was convicted in the BCCI

scandal as the guy who kind of brought BCCI into America, he was on the board of a company called Knight Ritter Incorporated, K-N-I-G-H-T-R-I-D-D-E-R. Yeah, fans of Knight Rider, but not fans of spelling things correctly. This was a Miami-based company, and in this time, in 81-82, the boards of Knight Ritter and TCZI discussed merging certain cable operations. So the New York Mag speculates that through this merger discussion, Bob Magnus meets Clark Clifford. And Clark Clifford, of course, knows Kamal Adham and the other leaders of BCCI. So the speculation is that from there, talks about this audit that was done by Price Waterhouse in 1991, notes there's the overlap of major shareholders between BCCI and Capcom Financial. It says Capcom's initial shareholders were dominated by major shareholders of BCCI,

including A.R. Khalil, who is the Minister of Communications for Saudi Arabia and the Deputy Chief of Intelligence, and Kamal Adham, who was the, again, head of Saudi intelligence 1965 to 1979. And there's, of course, other Saudis involved as well. But the head and the deputy head of Saudi intelligence, who also just happened to be multimillionaire businessmen, because there's a major overlap in the Saudi government between these intelligence agencies and the quote-unquote business community, where if you're an American or whoever and you want to do business in Saudi, they have to be able to wet their beak. This is how they become multimillionaire businessmen. So these two companies that are, again, giant frauds, just happen to be run by the number one and number two people of Saudi intelligence who are also the CIA, the primary go-between between Saudi and the United States.

It's fucking nuts. The hotel in the middle of the desert with a ski slope inside of it. And you kind of go, this is absolutely fucking stupid. Absolutely fucking stupid. Absolutely fucking stupid. Thanks, David Harvey. And so Larry Rumrell, he served as the vice president, a senior vice president of TCI. Actually, today he works for John C. Malone's company, Liberty Media. So maybe we'll talk about him a bit more in the next episode.

But Larry Rumrell, as the senior VP, becomes Bob Magnus' kind of gopher guy, his go-between. Sure. And so according to the Kerry committee report, it is noteworthy that during the same years that the Saudi chief of intelligence, Kamal Adham, is entering the American banking industry through the purchase of First American,

his successor in Saudi intelligence, Mr. Khalil, is quietly purchasing three houses in the United States with the assistance of Americans Carrie Fox and Larry Rumrell, key players in Capcom. So in the early 80s, there's an AP article that goes through this. In the early 80s, Larry Rumrell, again, senior vice president of TCI and Bob Magnus uh go-between he starts uh helping these uh ar khalil is deputy chief of saudi intelligence briefly the chief of saudi intelligence um he he starts helping him buy

some houses right and they also start getting loans it's a weird story from this ap story Right. 86 uh he's trying to get money from capcom financial for these investments they ranged from california office property to the houston medical center to a denver laundromat called duds and suds it was unclear from the documents of akbar or is the ceo akbar or his associates invested in any of these um and uh they also bcci lent2.1 million for a Steamboat Springs, Colorado condominium project in which Larry Romrell and Bob Magnus were investors. Not to be confused with key players Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine of Resident Evil from 1996, also capcom players yeah so larry romrell and bob magnus get this 2.1 million dollar loan for a condo from bcci in uh 1984 and then they never have to pay it back they also get a company there and gets another 180 000 loan uh from bcci in the 80s yeah for collagen drinks right right that's how they get people become zombies gold collagen straight into their lungs and then according to the ap ar khalil again deputy saudi

head of intelligence he leases a condo duplex in colorado that was built by larry rumrell and uh carrie fox in partnership so it like, what the fuck is going on here? And it is interesting where, you know, the Kerry Committee report, I read through it, and I think it's pretty fascinating where they kind of admit, like, they don't really know what happened here. And this is like the only major government investigation

that ever really took place of it. And if I can just quote from it, they say they say well the subcommittee has been able to piece together the history of capcom financial and can point to many unusual and even criminal acts committed by the firm it still has not been able to determine satisfactorily the reason capcom was created and the purpose it served for the various parties connected to the bcci scandal and it appears from the available evidence that the ceo of capcom bcci scandal and it appears from the available evidence that the ceo of capcom bcci and the saudis may have all pursued different goals through capcom including misappropriation of bcci assets for personal enrichment laundering of

billions of dollars from the middle east to the u.s and other parts of the world siphoning off assets from bcci to create a safe haven for them outside of the official bcci empire because that's the other great thing is once you get it out of bcci into capcom and then you know maybe even somewhere else from there when bcci goes under you can hide it from because like something we talked about on the bcci episode is the bcci uh liquidator said they got back 75 of the assets well i mean i don't know how they calculate that but it's very possible that it's like, oh, it just doesn't include all the shit we've shifted to Capcom.

Should we play the praising Kamal Adham Kerry committee response? Yeah, yeah. So this is like a drop about the head of Saudi intelligence from a Frontline documentary. Raymond Close, former CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia, told Frontline of his great respect and admiration for Adham. documentary. to the Kerry Committee. Well, Kamal Adham's role in this affair and his background are of great concern and importance. Here you have someone who was the right-hand man to King Faisal of Saudi Arabia,

the founder of modern Saudi Arabian intelligence, by public accounts the CIA's principal liaison for the Central Intelligence Agency in the Arab world. A close friend of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who according to press accounts actually had Sadat on his payroll on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency when Sadat was Vice President of Egypt. Adam's connections to Anwar Sadat would become invaluable to the Americans. All right, that's it.

They talk about how Anwar Sadat, the Camp David Accords, the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. Right. BCCI and Kamal Adham probably played a significant role there. So it is interesting where some of the speculation is like maybe they let him wet his beak as thank you for all this. Right, of course. Or maybe there was something even more sinister going on. But I just wanted to go through a little bit more of the Kerry committee report.

They talk about the CIA link and they say, turmoil in the Persian Gulf after the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979 left a vacuum in the CIA's capability to gather information. The huge CIA operation in Iran was lost, including its most important listening stations to monitor the Soviet Union and China. With the revolutionary changes in technology that spawned the modern communication industry in the 1980s came the need for proper U.S. agencies to employ it and conversely for our allies to gain access to it it was in this climate that the majority shareholders in bcci approached u.s executives in the communications industry to serve on the board of capcom the americans larry romrell bob magnus both of tci and carrie fox of american telecommunications company had no knowledge or background in commodities trading and evidently were never involved in the management of the firm.

So it is interesting where, in this kind of, let's say, space where the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency needs to set up cable technology and other such stuff in Middle Eastern countries that are our allies, such as, you know, Saudi, UAE, Oman, and Kuwait, that these major telecom executives get approached for a no-work job on the board of a commodities company that is a, you know, obviously a major front for a multi-billion dollar scam, and they get these no- salaries out of it and you know even like we said the carry committee itself does not have a satisfactory answer for this first they think you're crazy then they fight you and then all of a sudden you change the world that's exactly right um but it's fucking bullshit yeah it's highway robbery i mean motherfuckers are straight stealing

shit and they're going ah we don't know what really happened but uh we definitely did something that's wrong but we own the fucking cable networks that would report on the crime so nobody knows what we're going to do and we're still going to remain in power for the next 20 years i mean it doesn't make any fucking sense yeah and so i'll briefly go through the history of capcom here uh so bcci's the head of his bcci's treasury department was a pakistani guy named uh zayadeen ali akbar um and it's kind of funny the the carry committee says in um 1985 bcci was already on the verge of collapse because this guy who had no experience came in and took over bcci's treasury apartment treasury department and he had accumulated within a year losses

approaching one billion dollars it's kind of like it's kind of funny they kind of they go through this and he says that um he's like speculating in silver and he's paying a premium for trades that you would usually get at a discount because he has no idea what he's doing it's just one of those cute little stories you run into in the financial industry yeah a motherfucker doesn't know what he's doing so he loses a boatload of money but no one cares yeah um yeah and it is again like you said it is weird where he loses bcci a million a billion dollars right but he's promoted no industry works like this there's no industry where you lose a fucking i've heard

motherfuckers being fired for dropping dollars down drains like it doesn't make any sense that these people lose a billion dollars and are like nah this guy deserves to get more money now and it's like when you've like got a bunch of like messy clothes and you just start shoving them in closets to like right keep them out. But then eventually the closets start overflowing. So you're like, I guess I got to get a storage unit. Because what happens is the original plan to hide this $1 billion of losses, and it keeps increasing, is they set up what are called, quote, number two accounts, which are they just hide the losses in the accounts of other people who are major depositors there,

including Kamal Adham, A.R. Khalil. But then, according to the Kerry Committee report, they recognized, the CEO and the head of treasury of BCCI, recognized that off-balance sheet accounting in the, quote, number two accounts could no longer adequately hide the massive losses. Accordingly, out-of-book or unrecorded deposits were moved, quote, number two accounts could no longer adequately hide the massive losses. Accordingly, out-of-book or unrecorded deposits were moved, quote, out-of-bank to a new financial entity, Capcom Financial Services, LTD. But so, you know, they set up this off-book entity to hide their losses, Capcom Financial.

1984, it's based out of London, but because it's a commodity trading firm, supposedly, they have a seat on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. And it's interesting where it commences trading in London in September 1984. And within a year, it becomes one of the largest brokers in the entire world because all these BCCI orders are flowing through it. And something the Cary Committee talks about that i find pretty fascinating is what's called the volume scam um where the uh commodities market can sustain an almost limitless volume uh just quoting from the report a necessary prerequisite for crime on the scale of that contemplated by bcci since fraudulent transactions may be hidden in a multitude of legitimate ones in a letter to the directors the chairman of of Capcom, Larry Romrell, again, vice president

of TCCI, reported that $165 million in trading during the first four months of operations and profits of $883,000. That trend continued until 1988, leading the CEO of Capcom, Akbar, to boast, quote, we have contracted 165,000 contracts totaling $53 billion with Drexel Burnham Lampart. Drexel Burnham Lampart is the Michael Milken scam firm. So it is interesting where you have two different Ponzi schemes inflating at once and helping each other, just kind of like, you know, scratching each other's back with a volume. But, you know, they talk about this, how they use this massive volume of what are called

mere trades. Game recognized game. You know, they talk about this massive volume being used for what are called mere trades, where they will hide money laundering like they go through the case where they launder about 20 million dollars for Panama Panama's former dictator Manuel Noriega by bouncing it around a whole bunch and then setting up two different companies both of which Akbar controls the CEO of Capcom he controls both companies and then he just bounces the 20 million back and forth a few times

and makes it look like there was an actual payment where it was just, you know, money. They mask those illicit trades and make it look like just normal sort of trading or transfer activity. And so, you know, they set up, it's originally in London, they set up a U.S. office. The American Board of Directors mirrored that of London with Larry Romrell, again, TCI Vice President, Bob Magnus' go-to, serving as the chairman of both boards. And so, and also, like, Larry Romrell is writing the annual reports for these things. These guys have, you know, no commodities experience,

but it is just kind of weird where Larry Rumrell is, like, up to this in his, you know, eyeballs, and he's clearly working on behalf of Bob Magnus, but he's never pursued. And actually, the Kerry committee has this quote that they are the first investigative body to even interview him. Really? And also the last of the u.s government to interview larry romrell um and just again quoting from the carry committee uh report from 1992 the sub

committee has concluded that with uh the ceo akbar at the helm capcom engaged in blackmail bogus loans was gonna be quick quote bucket shop trading the use of nominee front men, artificial mirror image trades, co-mingling of funds, money laundering, theft, skimming of accounts, and kickbacks to insiders. And so, you know, like, they go through the various business proposals we mentioned from 1982 to 85, 86. Rumrell and Bob Magnus proposed Ventures and Communicationsures and communications to BCCI, uh, prior to the formation of Capcom. The proposals included the installation of state-of-the-art electronics and communications

in the Saudi military command center. In 1982, Larry Rumrell expressed interest to Ackbar in working with a BCCI and managing any interest they may have in our area. Um, and so, you know, Rumrell claims he didn't actually make any money on these ventures, or he never took any money, but, you know, clearly they got a lot of never-payback loans. Sure, sure. It's like, what the fuck? But according to the committee report,

there is insufficient evidence to determine whether or not any of these proposals were consummated between the parties. The heavy traffic of proposals in 1983 to 1985 raises many serious questions about larry rumrell and bob magnus's involvement with bcci moreover documents suggested during this period bcci credit was an important vehicle for mr rumrell and mr magnus in their personal affairs documents provided to the subcommittee also indicate that bcci may have been a shareholder in tci the largest cable company in the United States. And they go through this because TCI, they had a company split off. Yeah, they spun off a company called WTCI, and all TCI shareholders got shares of WTC wtci so they have letters from larry romrell uh messaging you know

the head of capcom financial and some bcci people being like hey here's your uh wtci shares from the spinoff but so and you know and again just to kind of keep going with the carry committee here the uh larry romrell says that uh the or sorry the carry committee says they found a document larry romrell wrote seeking a 200 million dollar line of credit from bcci for tci um he says uh quote the tci finance group uh he asked them they are interested in obtaining a loan facility i asked bob magnus he asked me to determine whether there would be any interest on the part of BCCI. I believe the credit facility that TCI is looking for is around $200 million. As a separate matter, the subsidiary WTCI will soon be looking for approximately $15 million

to construct a new microwave route. There may be an opportunity to put this deal together with BCCI if you are interested. So he's already writing larry rumrell is asking for 250 million dollar credit um for uh tci and so it's interesting where both bob rumrell or larry rumrell and bob magnus are able to buy stock in capcom but the money they each put in about fifteen thousand dollars but then they get a seventy five thousand dollar line of credit from bcci london that they never have to pay back in order to buy this stock and then like within a year a year or two this stock is suddenly worth several million dollars because i mean the way they do million yeah million yeah like um the way they do this is pretty fascinating where uh uh on uh from the carry committee on may uh 1985 the capcom board of directors which includes bob magnus and larry rumrell they use a company called patan holdings

p-a-t-e-n to increase increase the capital base in Capcom by more than double. By increasing the capital base of the firm, Romrell and Magnus' overall holdings were also increased. Romrell, who had placed only $15,000 of his own money into the firm, found himself with holdings valued in excess of $2 million. And then they also show this Patan Holdings, P--t-e-n holdings is a panamanian company operated out of geneva uh but again secretly owned by the ceo of capcom akbar right so this company that the fucking ceo of it owns is doubling its capital investment which them on

the board of directors are voting on and approving, which of course makes their $15,000 stakes worth $2 million. And a 1987 audit by Arthur Anderson says, in respect of the agency agreements between Capcom Financial and Patan Holdings, we confirm that the agreements were entered into at arm's length and that no director or shareholder has an interest in either agent company. The company and subsidiaries have at no time during the period entered into any agreements that were beneficial to the directors, shadow directors, et cetera.

So it's like this Arthur Anderson audit, which they would later go out of business because they were the Enron auditors. This 1987 audit says that, yeah, in regards to this Patan Holdings investment, this is totally arm's length. Nobody here benefited from it. And, you know, they made millions of dollars on this fucking thing. And those millions went to produce Judy Moody, a movie no one cares about and crazy kind of love. The Senate committee says ultimately Rumrell tried to sever his connection to patan holdings according to uh cecil ringenberg an emergency meeting was called in london uh by the ceo or

by ar khalil at that meeting control of patan passed from rumrell to akbar because i guess actually rumrell was for a time running patan wow rumrell has indicated to the subcommittee that he has never met cecile uh ringenberg although a Xerox of her calling card was provided to him by the subcommittee. Um, yeah. And so, and so also the subcommittee has, uh, messages from Larry Rumrell. Uh, you can look at this report online where they talk about how he knows he was a nominee. Larry Rumrell says, quote, it was my understanding that the majority shareholders were not willing to sign up these guarantees as far as i personally am concerned except for my

paid up stock and notes i have acted as a nominee for one or more of the original shareholders that's important because you know it is um i guess as far as i know illegal to be on the board of a company acting in the capacity of somebody who's like not actually on the board of that company. You know, like acting. Like a fly on the wall situation. Right. Well, you're clearly, you know, that you're there as a nominee for someone who does not want their face there, which is in this case, Saudi intelligence. People are like, let's get these American executives to sit on the board of this company and be the fronts for it.

Yeah. You can't be a proxy operator on the board for someone else. Right. Speaking of faces, look at this face jewelry Sarah, Gary's wife, wore at this event. It's like fucking goggles, but it's jewelry. And it's like chain mail, essentially. And she looks like a straight psychopath. And I'm not even saying that like, oh, look at this rich lady's jewelry.

It's stupid. I'm talking about straight up. Like, this person looks like she kills people for a living but so in 1988 uh bcci is indicted or sorry bcci and capcom are indicted for the first time in florida for money laundering for the medellin cartel conspiracy to drug travel uh to engage in drug trafficking right and according to the carry committee bcci and capcom both launched a full-scale public relations assault following the October 88 indictment. And they say in his January office diary, Larry Rumrell noted, quote,

Talk to Bob Magnus about CNN report and Capcom, waiting to know the source of the misinformation. TCI, which Magnus is the chairman of, owns 20% of CNN. During the same period, Rumrell also scribbled in his diary, Ramsey Clark, the Lyndon Johnson attorney general, is talking to people in Washington, D.C. Drug charges may be lifted against Capcom. So clearly, after these indictments, Bob Magnus and Larry Rumrell

are working to squash this investigation, leaning on CNN, getting Ramsey Clark to lobby the government in D.C. to shut down this investigation. And, you know, also, according to the Kerry Committee, Larry Rumrell had working knowledge of some of the, quote-unquote, sensitive accounts at Capcom. They set a 1986 agreement where he says, Larry Rumrel says, quote, it was decided to close the account slowly over a matter of days if necessary so as to preclude any market comment concerning unnatural activity at Capcom. So it is, this is the general securities account. massive quote-unquote commodities trading operation that is doing you know billions of dollars worth of volume in order to disguise various money laundering for manuel noriega among others you know just straight up skimming i think the estimate that came from new york magazine was skimming about 1.3 billion dollars just out of bcci into personal accounts for the

ceo and others um and so larry rumrell acting on behalf of bob magnus was at least partially aware that something really fucking shady was going on here but that didn't stop him and bob magnus from getting these you know never pay it back loans from getting their 15 000 turned into several million dollars um so it is just something where they never really had to answer questions about this uh they always just say uh you know if they do say they say oh we got suckered we got taken advantage of but it's like how the fuck can you not know something was up here right and if you were suckered and taken advantage of like why don't you ever give comment to anybody why are you pleading the fifth why are

you just refusing to answer questions they're wrong and they're crooks it's obvious man right and then the last thing i want to just read you from the Kerry report is the Kerry report, again, 1992. They say the lawyer for Larry Rumrell, the chairman of Capcom, told the subcommittee in the spring of 1992 that his client had not been interviewed nor had his records been subpoenaed by any law enforcement agency. The subcommittee was the first government entity to show interest in Mr. Rumrell's role in the entire Capcom

affair. Clearly in the United States, a much greater investigative effort needs to be devoted to Capcom. Well, you would happen to love to know that the Cary committee was the first, but also the last government agency to ask Bob Magnus or Larry Rumrell

about shit about anything that they did here. So it is something where Gary Magnus inherits this $1.4 billion fortune. That is mostly the cable money, but it's also however many million he walked away from on this straight-up criminal scam with Saudi intelligence that U.S. law enforcement said, we're not going to look at, and the reasons why are a mystery to us even to this day, but it might have something to do with the Saudi intelligence CIA connections. Right. This all started out, they just wanted sports jackets.

Sports jackets lead to crazy things, dog. We got a couple more drops to play and then we can close out here. All right, this is the ad for TCI Chairman. That's not a good setup. What is this? This is from the Frontline documentary. It has one of the TCI jingles, but it also talks about their role in the scandal. Both Capcom and SZA Akbar and the company itself were indicted for drug money laundering.

Capcom's central shareholder was Kamal Adam. Saudi intelligence chief. Its chairman was an American, Larry Romrell. Romrell's associate, Robert Magnus,

was also a director. This year at TCI, we're spending over $600 million on shares. The two Americans are also top executives of the world's largest operator of cable television systems, the four billion dollar a year

Telecommunications Incorporated. Although Capcom was indicted in the Tampa case, the company was never prosecuted. Magnus and Romrell say they were duped into investing in Capcom. Neither man was ever questioned by the Justice Department. So you heard that ad there. It takes place in a hospital, and it's a guy in a hospital bed trying to flip through channels. And yeah, Capcom's helping him out. What a shitty commercial. They didn't know how to make commercials yet.

Idiots. they didn't know how to they didn't know how to make commercials yet idiots um and i guess there's one last drop of uh uh robert muller who was again assistant attorney general at the time being asked why not go in yeah just here's uh here's uh bob muller who was assistant attorney general at the time being asked about why he never looked into the Capcom thing. Why not go after the chairman of the board of Capcom, who's a Colorado businessman named Larry Romrell? Well, I'm not going to get into the details of the investigations, but I did go through how we want to make cases,

in cases like this where you need individuals and documents. Not sound bites, not hearsay, not tidbits of information, but we're prosecutors and investigators. In order to proceed, we need evidence that we can take into court. Capcom remains, to this day, one of the big unanswered mysteries of the BCCI saga. I've yet to receive a convincing explanation first they think you're crazy then they fight you and then all of a sudden you change the world but it is something where it's like again this is a you know 1992 carry committee report is the last word we ever hear on this larry rumrell today works for liberty media which is john c malone's company

the billionaire largest landowner in the United States. That's his company. He's an executive director of it, executive officer of it. He's never questioned about this except by the Kerry Committee. He was never subpoenaed, never prosecuted. Bob Magnus dies in, I think, 97, sometime in the late 90s, mid-90s. And, you know, his son, Gary Magnus, inherits the money. Again, his father's never questioned about this, never indicted. Nothing ever really happens.

And it's just like, it's frustrating because in your mind, you want to make these big connections to this big conspiracy with like Saudi intelligence. And I think that's the most convincing explanation. Is the fact that we have this- Lombardi made them connections. I mean, like it's pretty obvious that corrupt things occurred most convincing explanation seriously is the fact that we already made them connections i mean like it it's pretty obvious that corrupt things occurred and these billionaires profited from it

and some of them lost some money that we don't know about or that haven't been disclosed but the reality is is that motherfuckers made money from straight murder and it's it's really obvious that there should have been something that was followed up on through all of the proprietary trading activity that they used to like it was some of it was just like if it went through the the anti-money laundering system nowadays it would have easily been questioned probably right well it's weird because like capcom has kicked off the chicago exchange and it's kicked out of the london exchange but because these are independent bodies like the chicago exchange investigates and it's like okay yeah clearly there's money laundering, all these other crimes going on here.

So they kick them off the exchange, but their authority is limited to we can kick them off the exchange. And then once they're not on the exchange, we can't investigate them. So there's no investigation. The Justice Department never looks at this. The Kerry Committee closes down, I think, in 1994 and says we don't have the resources to keep going with this. And that's the end of the story. So, you know, I mean, I guess we did get the movie Precious out of it. I mean, yeah, Gabourey Sidibe certainly seemed to have a career out of this whole thing.

So if BCCI produced anything, it is the career of Gabourey Sidibe. The movie Precious, almost as depressing as the story of how it was financed but yeah no i mean so gary magnus if you live in the colorado area you might have heard of him but 1.4 billion who inherited that money from his fucking scamster father and who's also a ponzi scamster himself who stole 80 80 million never gave it back and his wife sells fucking drinkable collagen for some reason his daughter's a pop star is a star is a little much pop comet yeah but so we're gonna follow up on the uh the premium side we'll talk a bit more about john c malone uh anything we missed on this story, feel free to hit us up.

We'll try to cover it there, talk a bit more about the cable industry in the U.S., TCI. But we did want to say we will be doing some sort of question and answer episode in December. We really appreciate the feedback from our fans and the whole community. So if you've got any questions for us, just hit us up either grubstakerspodcast at gmail.com hit us up Twitter DM grubstakerspod or hit us up. Find us on the internet and send us some questions. We'll answer anything.

Discord. We really appreciate all of you tuning in, listening to us and spreading the good word. It's been a very, very fun rollercoaster and we're just getting started. Yeah. Alright, hey, thanks for listening and we'll see you next time. Bye.