Macrodosing: Arian Foster and PFT Commenter - Behind the Scenes of HBO's Hit Series 'Telemarketers'

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

On today episode, PFT, Big T, Billy and Chaps are joined by the director's of the HBO hit "Telemarketers", Adam Bhala Lough and Sam Lipman-Stern. Adam and Sam describe aht it was like to create this film, plus Sam talks about his experience working at the Civic Development Group.You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/macrodosing

Hey, 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.

He'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.

It 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.

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Uncle Chap's joining for the interview as well because Arian 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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All 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 telemarketers very very special guests joining the show today we have adam we have sam from telemarketers probably my favorite new show of the year it was one of the most compelling watches that have had a long time crazy story behind it um it's on max it's on HBO you guys can watch it now all three episodes are out um incredible story let's just start from uh from the top When 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.

Like 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 fucking incredible like we got to do something with this uh there's a story there's a story here yeah so sam maybe you can walk us through like how did you get started working at civic civic development group yeah how'd you get started working there um back way back in the day um so and thank you guys so i was on mute but i just wanted to thank you guys so much for having us We're both fans and really appreciate all the kind words.

So 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.

But 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.

I 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.

like trophies. And yeah, that's how I started the position. I ended up working there until it's 22. So off and on from 2001 to 2009. It's a fascinating story because you're calling to 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 can get hired. So they're calling on behalf of law enforcement. The one thing I didn't understand necessarily about the business model because I have worked in call centers before is it didn't seem like there was there weren't commissions off anything you guys brought in so what was the motivation why would why would the callers try so hard to close these sales if they weren't getting any

money on the back end of it yeah so that's it's an interesting question I mean for me at 14 in the early 2000s like 10 bucks an hour was a dream come true right so it's a little bit more than minimum wage I think McDonald's was paying six bucks an hour at the time something like that but so for me it was it was a little you know as a kid it was 10 bucks an hour was good but um for for the most part it was just literally the fact that look you get out of prison right you just did like we had our our boy sent uh ex santino the god in episode one and two and he got out of prison after after seven years and he's got a felony what'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

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 bucks an hour he's a manager and he's able to sell drugs out of the office yeah so you know it's not bad but 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 yeah they also it was very 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 it competitive. And I think for so for young kids that were like, yeah, high school dropouts or like

college 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.

But 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 exactly how Pat is when you meet him in real life.

And when I first met Pat, we were, so Pat had worked there in the 90s and then he, I guess he 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.

I 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.

his names, not the greatest names, I did. But yeah, I mean, look, Pat was really well known at the office. Like, if you ask anybody that worked in that office, like, who do you remember from back in the day? Like, even before the documentary came out, you know, Pat would be one of the top people that was super memorable. You know, he was, yeah, he had a heart of gold. He's the guy that would, you know, if anybody needed anything, he would help them. Like, if your car breaks down outside 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,

he never wants to ask anybody for anything like outside, you know, besides doing a job. He was someone who 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 this you 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.

It'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.

But what that did is it created this really, like, kind of, yeah, this dysfunctional family environment where 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.

So 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.

Can you walk us through the origin story behind civic development group when it started who 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 telemarketing firm 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.

You know, it went from a tiny little office where they're calling, you know, citizens around New Jersey off 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.

And now this is coming out, I've been getting emails from people all over the country who 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 duty we're going to give you a sticker for your car and you know that's how it got built and we're trying to sound like cops on the phone that was like part of the training yeah that's always fascinating to me hearing you guys put on the different voices when you call somebody i remember

i got phone calls from you guys back in the day and i was like oh shit a cop's calling me right now asking me for money for other cops like it's a little intimidating when you think you're talking to a police officer when you get that call and you don't expect it. Did you have to work on voices? Workshop. Yeah, totally. I mean, I got trained yeah, absolutely. I mean, I got trained by some of the best Brian Gets who's in the documentary. He trained me when I was like 14 and he had a great cop voice.

I just love the idea of a 14 year old calling you trying to sound like a cop just intimidating like Hey, how's it going? Sam Lipp and Stern calling up. Yeah, you're like put on that what does a cop sound like a 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 in trouble and it's like a cop calling about to be like come down to the station, but instead it's like, hey, give us money.

No, 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 an evolution of what we were doing. I mean, it's the same concept, the same voices, you know, and that was, we didn't, we never said you're going to be in trouble but we're you know you're trying to sound like you are you know some officer from you know new jersey or from wherever and you're just like sitting at your desk and you hey you you know between shifts you're like calling for a donation now how exactly did the financials work how do they wash the money and make it you know was it entirely like

the way where they they were doing it was it legal in a sense or was they're just using loopholes or was it found to be illegal at the end? Yeah, I mean, it was, so they really, this industry really thrives in legal loopholes or 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.

So 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.

And 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 disabled veterans of America. And you guys use the disabled American veteran, the DAV, at the same time when there is 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 do that is crazy that's the model i mean that was the model we were calling for you know the biggest

police organization in the united states the fraternal order of police and their chapters all over the country and then we were calling on behalf of like other pretty big police unions like international union of police associations but then we're also calling on behalf of these sound alike charities which 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.

They 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 yourselves the title officer. That's another one of those things where it's like, I don't know if that's illegal. Like you can give yourself whatever title you want at your own company. You can be officer and be like, yeah, this is officer so-and-so calling on behalf of police. And it sounds so legitimate that you got a lot of people to give up a lot of money for a cause that they didn't know that they were actually supporting, which was just telemarketers. You guys raised a lot of money for

telemarketers, 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 forward for 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,

but 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.

But it seemed like he was just doing it. to show his face and then kind of forgetting about you guys the second that the meeting was over when he cut it off abruptly, have you heard any follow-up from his office or from any other government official after the show has finally aired?

Well, I can tell you that the, so the scene that you saw in the movie was, I mean, in the show, was almost unedited. Basically, Blumenthal said he gave us, his office gave us an hour to do the interview and he actually gave us seven minutes from the time he entered the room till the time he left and that was i think the scene in the in the show is like six minutes so

like it's it's almost entirely unedited um and then it's you know and then you see his team comes back in and says like look we've got meetings booked back to back and it's like well you know you gave us an hour like yeah what are you talking about um but yeah we haven't no he hasn't we we've followed up numerous times we haven't heard back he made a statement to the la times uh the la times followed up and and he responded his team responded by saying it was a very very generic statement he didn't acknowledge pat pespus at all he basically just his team said we take these telemarketing scams very seriously and we we will look into this and that that's about it yeah it's it seems like he was a real sack of shit in that interview it was bad the way that he treated you guys and i don't

know what laws can be changed um because you know everybody that that you've spoken with in washington has said it's a change that needs to happen at the legislative level where they need to figure out a way to codify this so that it is illegal and it's harder to operate out of the gray areas have you guys given any thought to what specific laws could be enacted that would that would um i guess put this industry uh you know off the map yeah um yeah i mean you know it's interesting because we've been following it for so long and you know this has been going on you can find old like new york times articles from like early 1900s describing the same scam so this has been going on for a long, long time.

And honestly, I think the first step is for the major police organizations to speak out about 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 organization in 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 world on this on the series i think i think it's just they're just going to keep finding loopholes possibly but i would like to see they haven't made a statement yet and i'm i think they need to kind of speak out about it yeah because it's not something that you would care about unless you actually got got

i think that's a big reason why that you constantly play whackamol too unless you're like personally affected and you saw your grandma or grandpa get scammed out of thousands of dollars in their destitute you simply don't care because there are so many other things going around Do 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.

I 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 from the old one and that you know they keep doing it so you know right now we were so surprised but i mean this thing is bigger crazier more wild west than it's ever been and while we're doing this podcast there's calls are being made like you can you can find them online because people post them yeah what about AI is AI kind of taken over a lot of the telemarketing where they can just program a script and it sounds like there's actually a human being on the other end of the line calling

you up about law enforcement? Yeah. I mean it's yeah. So I think AI, so what we found out about I think that's the so the one bet the best thing about this this industry is that it gives people jobs. You know, we never wanted to demonize the telemarketers in any way. Like if you're getting 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.

So 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.

And 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 or college 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

that y'all are dealing with but i just wanted to uh you know you bring out this camcorder you see all this just crazy shit going on at this office like what's the most insane thing you ever saw at one of the call centers um i so so not yeah uh well i remember a one guy he got right out he was right out of prison and uh this one manager who was a toll asshole he actually went on to become a corrections officer i'm not going to name his name but he uh man this guy he was a manager and he was like you know yelling at this one caller and this dude just stood up and started beating that manager's ass in the middle of the aisle and everyone just drops their headsets and like backing up like oh shit and like this dude's just beating him beating

him and i think there's photos online on one of my friends facebooks of this dude's face just all messed up that was that was pretty wild i mean i saw like fbi agents come in there and like drag someone out just a caller there was a two bank robbers that were active bank robbers working in um the cdg office that got caught robbing banks um i mean you know the fact that there was like there was a heroin kingpin working out of that office and he was selling you know we're talking about kingpin selling massive amounts of heroin out of that office um So, oh, I mean, yeah, one time the managers dared Pat to chug a bottle of Everclear. Oh, Jesus.

And 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 rap CDs and jerseys bootleg jerseys set up and one time i don't remember what team it was

but this guy sold a bootleg jersey to someone and that guy was pissed when he came in he didn't realize it was bootleg until the next day and he tried to start a fight with the dude who sold them the bootleg jersey i mean right so you think you're getting authentic and you get on field and then you get 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.

And I remember walking in and I was 16, 17 at the time and looking around and seeing some of I'll say riffraff that was going on in this place at 14 was it mind blowing to you like how overwhelming was that environment with open heroin open people beating each other up how was that at 14 um I remember yeah I remember when I walked in that first day this one manager pointed out this guy Mr. Smythe who's in the documentary who's since become a good friend shout out to Mr. Smyth but he's an inch he's a character he doesn't look like anyone you've seen before. He's got these big, bushy eyebrows, and he's got these boots that looked like they've seen Vietnam War. And this manager turned to me, this 14-year-old kid and said, you see that

guy over there? One day, I guarantee he's going to come in with an AK-47 and shoot this whole place up. And that was, and me and Mr. Smith, he was just misunderstood guy, really nice guy. We ended up being friends. But, yeah, so as 14, I mean, it was definitely wild. The first thing I thought, I was like, someone needs to write a book about this. These are characters right 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 interesting that 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.

And 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?

Yeah. 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.

But 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

some of the sheets there was an answer for everything and I was kind of blown away at how quick people would be like oh this is the problem boom I know exactly where to go it really does teach you a lot about preparation too like these folks are oh yeah they're prepared for the scamming oh absolutely I mean I learned a lot I mean don't get me wrong I learned a lot from working at CDG just in terms of sales and then persistence and confidence and then just being able to be around different types of people like Farouk who is in episode one shout out to Farooke but he he described CDG as like the United Nations because you had so many different types of people yeah all different backgrounds like races religions like socioeconomic classes and we're all just in this place

you know doing this in this crazy work environment and it was but you learn a lot about interacting 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.

I 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,

this is a man that needs to be on an airplane right now instead 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,

and 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 flipping out at him but at the end of the day you know at the end of the day we were I was I was happy that we let it go because imagine if we got on that plane and then he had a fucking anxiety attack and started freaking out in the air or something and we had to like make an emergency landing um but it was it was wild would have been great promotion though yeah it would have been great promotion it was it was uh yeah it was not fun you don't you don't want to ever have that that happen you know our faces were just like yeah i remember seeing adam's face i was like oh my god but it's pat

i mean it's pat it's pat we love that that's just one of a million crazy things he did during that shoot and we just happened to film it one really quick last question what was the average contribution that a caller would give so we would do so they've gone up right back in the day we used to do like 55 dollars for the gold level and 35 for the silver so 55 but every year the goal was to we're not even every year they would just they would call you for a new campaign like sometimes it was every week and your goal you would see what they donated last time is to give a little more the get a little more than that so if they gave 55 last time you want to bring it 65 if they okay now a week later we're calling for firefighters all right now we're asking for 75 you know so

they keep and now i've been getting these new calls and i think they're around you know they're like people are asking for like a hundred bucks now you know um but i mean it can it was a lot of money if you think about all that money from so many years it's we're talking about it's a lot of of fucking money that just like poof gone a billion dollars a billion dollars it's crazy and it's such a simple scam and uh the people that run those organizations are real pieces of shit and i hope that this sheds new light on it i hope maybe the fraternal or uh fraternal order police and senators whoever the case may be people should watch this and then there should be a change because it's bullshit that all these people are getting scammed out of their hard-earned money so

um it was a great watch though fascinating characters throughout check it out on on 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.

I hope there's a season two where more people go to jail and, uh, and we get to follow 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.

We 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,

Americans 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.

They 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.

Like, 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's It's a little bit complicated, man.

I 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.

Thank 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.

Absolutely. Yeah. I'd love to talk to him too. All right. Thanks, guys. Thank you guys so much. Good luck.