Behind the Scenes of HBO's Hit Series 'Telemarketers'
00:00Hey, macrodosing listeners, you can find us every Tuesday and Thursday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.He got out of prison after seven years and he's got a felony.What's he going to do?Well, he's in the halfway house and his boys like, hey, I'm running this.I'm the manager of this telemarketing office.I'll get you a job.So now he's working on the phones for $10 an hour.
00:25He's a manager and he's able to sell drugs out of the office.Yeah.So, you know, it's not bad.They also had raffles, too, Sam, for like, you know, if you sell,whoever sells the most, you know, in the next couple hours gets a bag of weed.So there was like little motivations to like keep them selling.Welcome.Back to nanodosing.
01:00It is the Tuesday after Labor Day weekend.Thank you guys for tuning in.Hopefully you're not too hungover.If you are, maybe dealing with hangover.I know a great way to get rid of it.Three Chi certainly helps me.I love Three Chi.You love Three Chi.
01:12Everybody loves Three Chi.We've got a great interview coming up with Sam and Adam from Telemarketers.That's right, the show on Max on HBO.Telemarketers, awesome show.If you haven't watched it, go watch it.These dudes are awesome.They made a hell of a show.And we've got special guests.
01:29Uncle Chap's joining for the interview as well becauseArian is out on paternity leave.Congrats on the sex.And Three Chi is presenting this whole thing to you.We love Three Chi.Great for a hangover.Great if you're watching a movie.Great for going out with some friends.
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02:22All you have to do, go to 3C.com, use promo code macro 15, take 15% off your order.must be 21 or older to purchase please use it responsibly and now here are the guys from telemarketersvery very special guests joining the show today we have adam we have sam from telemarketersprobably my favorite new show of the year it was one of the most compelling watches thathave had a long time crazy story behind it um it's on max it's on HBO you guys can watch it now allthree episodes are out um incredible story let's just start from uh from the topWhen did you realize that you had all the golden footage from back in the early days and it's not just like stuff that's interesting you that it would be interesting for a national audience?It's fucking gold.
03:10Like the the footage was fucking gold when Sam brought it to me on a hard drive.And I'm Sam's cousin and I'm like the that I was like the professional documentary filmmaker on the team, whatever that means.and you know he brought me the footage and i was just like this is this this this is fuckingincredible like we got to do something with this uh there's a story there's a story hereyeah so sam maybe you can walk us through like how did you get started working at civiccivic development group yeah how'd you get started working there um back way back in the day um soand thank you guys so i was on mute but i just wanted to thank you guys so much for having usWe're both fans and really appreciate all the kind words.
03:57So thank you so much.So I started, when I was 14, I left high school.I didn't want to go to school anymore.I just, I wanted to drop out.My parents are hippies.God bless them.And they were like, you can leave school, but you have to get a job.They're very like loose, chill, cool parents.
04:18But you got, you can leave, but you have to get a job.So I went to McDonald's and Burger King, and they both told me I was too young.And I grew up in central New Jersey, a little town called Highland Park next to Rutgers University.And you're too young, you know, you're whatever.So I told one of my buddies, I'm like, listen, I got it.My parents said, I have to get a job.And he was 15 at the time.And he's like, yo, I got a spot for you, man.
04:45I know a place they'll hire you at 14.So I remember we rode our bikes into New Brunswick.and he brought me to this call center, walked in, and I remember they had me read the script,like, hey, you know, Sam Lippenstern calling on behalf of the Fraternal Order of Police or whatever.And they hired me right on the spot.And so I started working there when I was 14.And I remember the first day, the first day I walked into the office, there was all these like built dudes doing pushups next to the water fountains.And then you walk in and there's mugshots of all the collars on the wall.
05:20like trophies. And yeah, that's how I started the position. I ended up working there untilit's 22. So off and on from 2001 to 2009. It's a fascinating story because you're callingto raise money for law enforcement, but most people that work there are convicted felons.Like they're just out of jail, just out of prison. It's one of the only places that they canget hired. So they're calling on behalf of law enforcement. The one thing I didn't understand necessarilyabout the business model because I have worked in call centers before is it didn't seem likethere was there weren't commissions off anything you guys brought in so what was the motivationwhy would why would the callers try so hard to close these sales if they weren't getting any
06:07money on the back end of it yeah so that's it's an interesting question I mean for me at 14 in theearly 2000s like 10 bucks an hour was a dream come true right so it's a little bit more thanminimum wage I think McDonald's was paying six bucksan hour at the time something like that but so for me it was it was a little you know as a kid it was10 bucks an hour was good but um for for the most part it was just literally the fact that lookyou get out of prison right you just did like we had our our boy sent uh ex santino the godin episode one and two and he got out of prison after after seven years and he's got a felonywhat's he going to do um well they you know he's in the halfway house and his boys like hey i'm i'm running
06:50this i'm the manager of this telemarketing office i'll get you a job so now he's working on thephones for 10 bucks an hour he's a manager and he's able to sell drugs out of the office yeahso you know it's not bad but they also had raffles too sam for like you know if you sellwhoever sells the most you know in the next couple hours gets a bag of weed so there was likelittle motivations to like keep them selling yeah they also it wasvery competitive. I mean, they would put our names on the on a board of like the top callers.One other thing is if you didn't hit like 200 bucks an hour, you were gone. So they kept itcompetitive. And I think for so for young kids that were like, yeah, high school dropouts or like
07:35college kids, it was, you know, better than working at McDonald's. And then for, you know,ex-cons, it was a job that they could have and they can still be wild as fuck in the office.Yeah. It does sound like a lot of fun actually. Looking at some of that footage,You guys looked like you were having fun at work, which is, I guess it's, it's good to see.Maybe the work that was being done wasn't on the up and up, but you guys were, you guys were enjoying yourselves.Well, tell me about the first time you met Pat, because I love Pat.He seems like a genuinely good, genuine, kind-hearted guy.Maybe, you know, went down a wrong road or two at some point in his life, but a lot of people, you know, go through their own struggles.
08:16But Pat seems like a good human being.And I'm curious to know what the.The vibe was like when you first met him.Yeah.So yeah, everything you said is absolutely correct.I mean, Pat is, he's a great human being.What you see is what you get, you know, what you see on the camera in the show is exactlyhow Pat is when you meet him in real life.
08:37And when I first met Pat, we were, so Pat had worked there in the 90s and then he, I guesshe came back in the early 2000s.But Pat walked up to me one day and he's like, hey, can I bum a schmog?And I was like, what are you talking about?He's on break.He's like, a cigarette, a schmog.And he's like, he's like, Hamilton Stern.You're a great caller.
09:02I heard you.I'm like, no, my name's Littman Stern.He's like, oh, I thought your name was Hamilton Stern.And that's how we first met.He just thought my name was Hamilton Stern and he asked me to bum a schmog and a cigarette.No, maybe not the greatest with names sometimes.You'll see that in the third episode.Yeah, not the great.
09:19his names, not the greatest names, I did. But yeah, I mean, look, Pat was really well known at theoffice. Like, if you ask anybody that worked in that office, like, who do you remember from backin the day? Like, even before the documentary came out, you know, Pat would be one of the toppeople that was super memorable. You know, he was, yeah, he had a heart of gold. He's the guy thatwould, you know, if anybody needed anything, he would help them. Like, if your car breaks downoutside of the job. He's waiting after work to help you until the tow trek comes or fix the tire.Just the fact that, you know, he was in addiction, but he was actually working, you know, a nine to five,I think is really respectable. You know, I think, and there was a reason for that. I mean, he didn't want to,
10:02he never wants to ask anybody for anything like outside, you know, besides doing a job. He was someonewho really wanted to, needed to work to support him and his wife. But yeah, we were doing, we were starting,we were filming office hijinks and Pat just as he was so charismatic he loved being in front of the camera and he just became kind of the star when we would bust the camera out at work you know and then Pat was like we started filming with Pat um all right let's make a documentary about Pat and about this crazy office and then and then Pat was like no man there's there's shady stuff going on let's make a documentary to expose thisyou know, this wild industry to the world.Did you ever get any real big backlash from any of the other folks that were in the office?I mean, with people that have multiple felonies and their own probation and parole,did anybody give you shit about pulling out of camera at that time?It's kind of interesting.
11:01It's, so I basically, it was a big dysfunctional family.You know, everyone was kind of felt like they were at the bottom of society.You know, I was a, you know, 14 year old high school dropout, graffiti writer.just felt like a loser at the time.I didn't think I could ever be a film.I never really thought I had a real future, you know.And all the ex-cons were in kind of similar dark places,just getting out of prison and halfway houses.
11:27But what that did is it created this really, like,kind of, yeah, this dysfunctional family environmentwhere everybody showed each other respect.If you came in there and you showed respect, you got respect.It would, I get, you know, and, uh,so, no,I grew up there.Essentially, they saw me in there from 14 to, you know, my early 20.
11:51So I really grew up in that office.And I think, and I always showed everyone respect.So everyone liked me.And so, yeah, nobody ever gave us any crap except for when it was discovered, I think,by the high ups that I had put YouTube videos up and I got fired.But in the office, no one was ever like, no, they just thought it was like,Like, hey, that's Sam.He's got a camcorder or whatever.
12:18Can you walk us through the origin story behind civic development group when it startedwho the founders of the company were and how they really, how they got their feet,how they get their feet off the ground, like getting, getting things going with the telemarketingfirm or were they doing other types of fundraising?So I don't know the full, full story.I don't want to misquote, but I mean, essentially these guys created a,you know, a telemarketing company for police organizations, I think out of their garage or,you know, a small office, I believe in the late 80s or early 90s. And then it just grew from there.
12:59You know, it went from a tiny little office where they're calling, you know, citizens around New Jerseyoff a phone book. Hey, let's, okay, let's, you know, hey, can you donate to the cops or whatever?And then it just slowly grew. So it went from a tiny, you know, tiny, tiny little office.than to a bigger office in New Brunswick.And then it turned into, you know,I think there were a few offices in New Jersey.And then it became, I believe they had about 50 offices all across the country,even in Canada.
13:29And now this is coming out, I've been getting emails from people all over the countrywho worked at CDG.So it became the number one telemarketing fundraising company in the country.And just from that same model, you know, you call people up.hey can you donate to the officers you know families of officers killed in the line of dutywe're going to give you a sticker for your car and you know that's how it got built and we'retrying to sound like cops on the phone that was like part of the training yeah that's alwaysfascinating to me hearing you guys put on the different voices when you call somebody i remember
14:05i got phone calls from you guys back in the day and i was like oh shit a cop's calling me rightnow asking me for money for other cops like it's a little intimidating when you think you're talkingto a police officer when you get that calland you don't expect it. Did you have to work on voices?Workshop. Yeah, totally. I mean, I got trainedyeah, absolutely. I mean, I got trained by some of the bestBrian Gets who's in the documentary. He trained me when I waslike 14 and he had a great cop voice.
14:32I just love the idea of a 14 year old calling youtrying to sound like a cop just intimidating likeHey, how's it going? Sam Lipp and Stern calling up. Yeah, you're likeput on that what does a cop sound likea cartoon is like that was what we tried to do.Do you purposely, because I've gotten some of the calls recently, that sound like you're introuble and it's like a cop calling about to be like come down to the station, but insteadit's like, hey, give us money.
14:58No, I mean, that was basically what we're, that's the same exact thing.We were, that's, that's the, that's the, so what you're getting, those calls are just anevolution of what we were doing.I mean, it's the same concept, the same voices, you know, and that was, we didn't, we neversaid you're going to be in trouble but we're you know you're trying to sound like you are you knowsome officer from you know new jersey or from wherever and you're just like sitting at your deskand you hey you you know between shifts you're like calling for a donation now how exactly didthe financials work how do they wash the money and make it you know was it entirely like
15:35the way where they they were doing it was it legal in a sense or was they're just using loopholesor was it found to be illegal at the end?Yeah, I mean, it was, so they really, this industry really thrives in legal loopholesor kind of in that gray area between legality and illegality.You know, it's legal.What we were doing originally was we were calling for police, organizations and charities,firefighters, veterans, and cancer organizations.And, you know, oftentimes it would be, you know, 90, 10 split.
16:16So the company, civic development group gets 90% and the police or the other organization gets 10%.So that's totally legal.What's not legal is what they did when they changed to this PMC model where they thought that it was a loophole to essentially make the callers, employees of the fraternal order of police or the organization.So then they tried to they started telling people a hundred percent of your donation goes like I would be like, oh, you're going to make, you know, a hundred percent of your generous donation will go to the fraternal order of police. And that's was decided by the government that it wasn't legal. And that's why CDG got shut down. But, but it's still going to this day, this industry and they work in this kind of gray. They try to work in this gray area. And it's amazing how close those names are that you, you,because you mentioned veterans too.And with the documentary taking place, it was 2008, right?2006, 2008.That's primarily when the surge happened in like Fallujah and Alambar.
17:21And there's all kinds of people that were losing their legs and losing limbs.And one of the biggest organizations that helps out with that is DVA, the disabledveterans of America.And you guys use the disabled American veteran, the DAV, at the same time when thereis huge pushes.So it was really smart, the organizations that they picked to really.target and play on people's emotions based on what was in the news too it was brutal i mean to dothat is crazy that's the model i mean that was the model we were calling for you know the biggest
17:53police organization in the united states the fraternal order of police and their chapters all overthe country and then we were calling on behalf of like other pretty big police unions like internationalunion of police associations but then we're also calling on behalf of these sound alike charitieswhich I didn't know.When I first started, I didn't know it was a scam.Right.It was just, we slowly learned this, but, you know, Cancer Fund of America was a classic example.If you look them up, I mean, this was a family operation that got taken down.
18:26They were on American greed.But they just had all these cancer charities set up, and it was total fucking bullshit.And when you name yourself, or when you switch to the consultant model and you give yourselvesthe title officer. That's another one of those things where it's like, I don't know if that'sillegal. Like you can give yourself whatever title you want at your own company. You can be officerand be like, yeah, this is officer so-and-so calling on behalf of police. And it sounds so legitimatethat you got a lot of people to give up a lot of money for a cause that they didn't know thatthey were actually supporting, which was just telemarketers. You guys raised a lot of money for
19:03telemarketers, it turns out. Did a great job of that. And then at the end,I guess we'll spoil the ending.If you haven't seen it,you can fast forwardfor the next like five minutes or whatever.But the culmination of the documentary,you meet with Senator Blumenthal from Connecticut.And I don't know how edited it was,
19:22but certainly from viewing it,it made it seem like he just blew you guys off.And to me,Pat gave a pretty compelling presentation.He was like, you know,he's excited,he was energetic.That might have like overwhelmed Blumenthal a little bit.
19:37But it seemed like he was just doing it.to show his face and thenkind of forgetting about you guys the secondthat the meeting was over when he cut it offabruptly, have you heard any follow-upfrom his office or from any othergovernment officialafter the show has finally aired?
19:54Well, I can tell you thatthe, so the scene that you sawin the movie was, I mean, in the show, was almostunedited.Basically,Blumenthal said he gave us, his officegave us an hour to do the interview and he actually gave us seven minutes from the time he enteredthe room till the time he left and that was i think the scene in the in the show is like six minutes so
20:24like it's it's almost entirely unedited um and then it's you know and then you see his team comes backin and says like look we've got meetings booked back to back and it's like well you know you gave usan hour like yeah what are you talking about um but yeah we haven't no he hasn't we we've followed upnumerous times we haven't heard back he made a statement to the la times uh the la times followed upand and he responded his team responded by saying it was a very very generic statement he didn'tacknowledge pat pespus at all he basically just his team said we take these telemarketingscams very seriously and we we will look into this and that that's about it yeah it's it seems likehe was a real sack of shit in that interview it was bad the way that he treated you guys and i don't
21:17know what laws can be changed um because you know everybody that that you've spoken with in washingtonhas said it's a change that needs to happen at the legislative level where they need to figure out a wayto codify this so that it is illegal and it's harder to operate out of the gray areas haveyou guys given any thought to what specific laws could be enacted that would that would umi guess put this industry uh you know off the map yeah um yeah i mean you know it's interestingbecause we've been following it for so long and you know this has been going on you can findold like new york times articles from like early 1900s describing the same scam so this has been goingon for a long, long time.
22:04And honestly, I think the first step is for the major police organizations to speak outabout this because they're the ones that are keeping it going, in my opinion.I think, you know, if the fraternal order of police, again, it's the biggest police organizationin the world and the biggest police organization in the United States.And so if they keep using telemarketers to raise their money and, you know, you see that worldon this on the series i think i think it's just they're just going to keep finding loopholes possibly buti would like to see they haven't made a statement yet and i'm i think they need to kind of speak outabout it yeah because it's not something that you would care about unless you actually got got
22:47i think that's a big reason why that you constantly play whackamol too unless you're likepersonally affected and you saw your grandma or grandpa get scammed out of thousands of dollarsin their destitute you simply don't care because there are so many other things going aroundDo you think it's a lot of the whack-a-mole?Because one of the parts that stuck out to me in the documentary was they paid, what, a $300,000 fine?What's a $300,000 fine when you're bringing in $30 million?Like, it's nothing.Yeah.
23:15I mean, yeah, I mean, basically they keep, so, yeah, they keep, for the, for years and years and years,what you see happening is the telemarketing companies will get shut down, like a wackable.but the organizations can find another one sometimes it's literally just a name change fromthe old one and that you know they keep doing it so you know right now we were so surprisedbut i mean this thing is bigger crazier more wild west than it's ever been and while we're doingthis podcast there's calls are being made like you can you can find them online because people postthem yeah what about AI is AI kind of taken over a lot of the telemarketing where they can justprogram a script and it sounds like there's actually a human being on the other end of the line calling
24:03you up about law enforcement? Yeah. I mean it's yeah. So I think AI, so what we found out aboutI think that's the so the one bet the best thing about this this industry is that it givespeople jobs. You know, we never wanted to demonize the telemarketers in any way. Like if you'regetting out of a halfway house, you know, out of prison and you have felony.And they say, hey, we can place you in this office.You know, like I, that's, that's great.I mean, they were given a lot of jobs to a lot of people.And I think that's a, that was a beautiful thing, including people like me, like teenagers and that couldn't get jobs elsewhere.
24:44So jobs are a good thing.What the, you know, siphoning money away from legitimate causes, in my opinion, that's not a good thing.Once, the way that it's going right now, if the AI continues and the robot,calls, I think it's going to end up being where the jobs are just going to be taken away.So the one positive thing that this industry does is going to be lost.Like in episode three, and not to give away spoilers, but it's just a little small spoiler.You know, we talk, we get a call from our old friend who died.He passed away.
25:23And he called us.And his voice, his robotic voice, called us and, you know, he's calling from beyond the grave.So, yeah, AI robocalls are taking away the one positive thing about this industry,which is providing people jobs that might be unemployable that are in the prison pipeline orcollege kids or high school dropouts.Yeah.Big T, got anything?yeah uh you all have touched on a lot of the serious stuff and obviously it is it's a very serious issue
25:59that y'all are dealing with but i just wanted to uh you know you bring out this camcorderyou see all this just crazy shit going on at this office like what's the most insane thingyou ever saw at one of the call centers um i so so not yeah uh well i remember a one guy he gotright out he was right out of prison and uh this one manager who was a tollasshole he actually went on to become a corrections officer i'm not going to name his name but he uh manthis guy he was a manager and he was like you know yelling at this one caller and this dude juststood up and started beating that manager's ass in the middle of the aisle and everyone justdrops their headsets and like backing up like oh shit and like this dude's just beating him beating
26:46him and i think there's photos online on one of my friends facebooks of this dude's face just all messed upthat was that was pretty wild i mean i saw like fbi agents come in there and like drag someoneout just a caller there was a two bank robbers that were active bank robbers working in umthe cdg office that got caught robbing banks um i mean you know the fact that there was likethere was a heroin kingpin working out of that office and he was selling you know we're talkingabout kingpin selling massive amounts of heroin out of that office umSo, oh, I mean, yeah, one time the managers dared Pat to chug a bottle of Everclear.Oh, Jesus.
27:32And he did.I wasn't there that day.But I came in the next day and they're like, yo, Pat almost died.Like, Pat, they took him out in an ambulance because he chugged a bottle of Everclear.There was everyone was doing ecstasy in the office.There was one guy that would set up one of the cubicles was just selling.bootleg shit like you're on canal street in new york city so he would sell like bootleg rapCDs and jerseys bootleg jerseys set up and one time i don't remember what team it was
28:03but this guy sold a bootleg jersey to someone and that guy was pissed when he came in he didn'trealize it was bootleg until the next day and he tried to start a fight with the dude who sold themthe bootleg jersey i mean right so you think you're getting authentic and you get on field and then youget roasted by your friends about it? Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, my God. I can't remember what the story was,but I think the name was spelled wrong and he didn't realize that everyone was making fun of him.Yeah. Can't have that. You bring it home. I got you a jersey that you always wanted.Yeah. It's like Sean Kemp, but there's no, there's no M in it.Right. Sean Kep. So I actually worked at one of these call centers whenever I was in high school.
28:45And I remember walking in and I was 16, 17 at the time and looking around and seeing some ofI'll say riffraff that was going on in this place at 14 was it mind blowing to you like howoverwhelming was that environment with open heroin open people beating each other up how was thatat 14 um I remember yeah I remember when I walked in that first day this one manager pointed outthis guy Mr. Smythe who's in the documentary who's since become a good friend shout out toMr. Smyth but he's an inch he's a character he doesn't look like anyone you've seenbefore. He's got these big, bushy eyebrows, and he's got these boots that looked like they'veseen Vietnam War. And this manager turned to me, this 14-year-old kid and said, you see that
29:30guy over there? One day, I guarantee he's going to come in with an AK-47 and shoot this wholeplace up. And that was, and me and Mr. Smith, he was just misunderstood guy, really niceguy. We ended up being friends. But, yeah, so as 14, I mean, it was definitely wild. The firstthing I thought, I was like, someone needs to write a book about this. These are charactersright out of a novel, like out of a Steinbeck novel or Jack Kerouac or something. And, yeah, I just,I was very entertained by all the chaos there. I thought it was, I just thought it was so interestingthat here we were, you know, calling for police organizations. So I was a graffiti writer.That's all I did as a teenager. I grew up doing graffiti. And one time my house got raided.
30:19And I told the detectives that raided my house.I'm like, I work for you guys.Like, what? I work for you guys.I'm like, what?I'm like, I raise money for you guys over the phone.They're like, dude, what are you talking about?Shut the fuck up.Like, I thought I was doing, I thought I was just raising money for the cops, you know?
30:36Yeah.That's wild you work there, man.What was that experience like?Yeah, so it was completely different.At the time, I was very conservative.Like, I was going to go to school to be a pastor.I had already decided to go to, like, seminary.So being in that environment was very different for me.
30:54But it was a job that I worked in Florida in the summertime where it wasn't crazy-ass hot.So I was like, I'll just call.That should be simple.It was way more of the 200 bucks.Like, you make it sound like it was easy.The turnover rate at those places were so high because that is not easy, man.Like the things, Pat being as good as he was at it is really,insane because going through those sheets that you had and I was glad you really focused in on
31:22some of the sheets there was an answer for everything and I was kind of blown away at how quickpeople would be like oh this is the problem boom I know exactly where to go it really does teach youa lot about preparation too like these folks are oh yeah they're prepared for the scamming oh absolutelyI mean I learned a lot I mean don't get me wrong I learned a lot from working at CDG just in termsof sales and then persistence and confidence and then just being able to be around differenttypes of people like Farouk who is in episode one shout out to Farooke but he he describedCDG as like the United Nations because you had so many different types of people yeah alldifferent backgrounds like races religions like socioeconomic classes and we're all just in this place
32:12you know doing this in this crazy work environment and it was but you learn a lot aboutinteracting with people from that type of world.Yeah, I'd say so we want to respect your time.I know that you got another interview back to back here.So just one last final thing.In the scene where Pat goes to the airport,gets in the waiting area to get on the plane and then decides,I can't fly.
32:36I can't do this.We're going to have to drive to Florida.I was screaming at my television.I was like, just push him on the plane.Just like knock him out, sedate him, do whatever you have to do.Give him some Everclear.Give him some appri-clear.However you get him on this plane,
32:50this is a man that needs to be on an airplane right nowinstead of making the entire crew drive all the way down to Florida.Did you try to, like, physically move him onto the airplane?I'll let Adam take that one,because I don't think Adam's ever seen anything like that in his entire life.I mean, I thought that kind of shit only happened in movies.Like, literally we're like at the line to get in, you know,we're the last people about to board,
33:16and he's like, no, I'm not.not getting on and you know we had to edit a lot of that out because like we were we were flippingout at him but at the end of the day you know at the end of the day we were I was I was happy thatwe let it go because imagine if we got on that plane and then he had a fucking anxiety attack andstarted freaking out in the air or something and we had to like make an emergency landing um but it wasit was wild would have been great promotion though yeah it would have been greatpromotion it was it was uh yeah it was not fun you don't you don't want to ever have that that happenyou know our faces were just like yeah i remember seeing adam's face i was like oh my god but it's pat
34:02i mean it's pat it's pat we love that that's just one of a million crazy things he did during thatshoot and we just happened to film it one really quick last question what was the averagecontribution that a caller would give so we would do so they've gone up right back in the day we usedto do like 55 dollars for the gold level and 35 for the silver so 55 but every year the goal was towe're not even every year they would just they would call you for a new campaign like sometimesit was every week and your goal you would see what they donated last time is to give a little morethe get a little more than that so if they gave 55 last time you want to bring it 65 if theyokay now a week later we're calling for firefighters all right now we're asking for 75 you know so
34:55they keep and now i've been getting these new calls and i think they're around you know they're likepeople are asking for like a hundred bucks now you know um but i mean it can it was a lot of moneyif you think about all that money from so many years it's we're talking about it's a lot of offucking money that just like poof gone a billion dollars a billion dollars it's crazy and it's sucha simple scam and uh the people that run those organizations are real pieces of shit and i hope thatthis sheds new light on it i hope maybe the fraternal or uh fraternal order police andsenators whoever the case may be people should watch this and then there should be a changebecause it's bullshit that all these people are getting scammed out of their hard-earned money so
35:39um it was a great watch though fascinating characters throughout check it out onon HBO or on Max.Thank you guys for joining us.It's my favorite show of the summer.It's the best.Oh, man.I hope there's a season two.Thank you.
35:51I hope there's a season two where more people go to jail and, uh, and we get tofollow up on it and see what happens in the after effects of the show coming out.So great job, guys.I absolutely love.We'll see.We'll see.We'll see.Yeah.
36:03We want it.We'd love to do a season two.So just, you know, keep watching it.Keep spreading the word.It's awesome.And we really appreciate you guys.And we're here anytime you want us on or need anything.And we'll not sing just to say is like, you know, we Americans are very generous, you know,
36:22Americans are very generous people.And if this money could go to good causes, good veterans charities, good, you know, police charities,cancer charities, whatever, firefighters, that would be great.A lot of good money, you know, a lot of good work could be done with this money.But our goal is to get that money to the right place instead of just going.to, you know, benefit, you know, people at the top and where it doesn't go to help any of those causes.I can have a win all solution.What if like the return, like the real police just take over this fake call center and just take all the money and actually put in a charity and just keep like guys keep their jobs.
37:02They keep the sort of kind of predatory but effective, you know, fund raising strategy and but just it goes to the right place.I think that would kind of make everybody happy.So they should go back to fundraiser.My question always was like, why do cops need to raise money?Don't our taxes pay for cops?You don't see coal miners getting on the phone on trying to raise money.They should be.They should, yeah.
37:28Like, why are cops, like, we pay so much money in taxes for them.They don't need to raise money.Hey, man, show the receipts.Or the veterans.It's a great point.It's, yeah.I mean teachers need to be outraising money coal miners like not fucking cops come on yeah or maybe if you look at the police benevolence association they're like one of the people we did interviews with or one of the organizations they're talking about this all over the internet which is interesting because they stop at least in New Jersey stopped using telemarketers and yeah I mean it you know yeah they love the show I mean they've been extremely supportive the PBA yeah they've been really supportive I mean it'sIt's a little bit complicated, man.
38:11I think greed is a fucking bitch.And that's what we found from this.You know, and on all sides, it's a bitch.Yeah.All right.Well, thank you guys so much.Love the show.Good luck.
38:22Thank you.Looking forward to season two.I hope there's a season two.All right.Awesome.And we'll keep you guys posted.And Pat, Pat, Pat would love to do the show eventually, you know, when his wife gets better.So, you know, if this thing keeps steam rolling, we can get, you know, we'd love to get Pat to come on and talk to that.
38:39Absolutely.Yeah.I'd love to talk to him too.All right.Thanks, guys.Thank you guys so much.Good luck.
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