Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - What its Really Like Inside a Ponzi Scheme

Episode Date: May 22, 2023

What its Really Like Inside a Ponzi Scheme

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Oh, I'm really into lion tamers. You know, with the chair and everything. Ask your doctor for Wagovi by name. Visit wagovi.combe.com for savings. Exclusions may apply. It was all cash money and it was friends and family and going to these nice houses and stuff. So you kind of felt like it was like if you were invited, it was like you were invited into this almost secret society or that this special group and that, you know, you were special to be able to be part of this. So people would want to become part of it because

they'd think, oh, my God, I got invited to this thing. Like, for me, listen, for you to convince somebody that this scam is legitimate or that you're going to make a bunch of money, you really only have to have confidence and a little bit more knowledge. If you have a little bit more knowledge on a subject, you seem like an expert because you know more than I do. So if you see, say you're an expert and you know more than i do and you sound confident and believable you know that's confidence is just believe you know it's sincerity like i truly believe what you're saying at the very least you believe it so if you have those things you can talk people into pretty much anything hey this is matt cox and i appreciate you guys checking out the channel

I'm going to be interviewing James Hergot, and I just finished watching his movie. I actually watched part of it about two years ago, but I just finished watching this movie. It's about a pyramid scheme, and it's based on a scheme that he was, well, we'll get into it. So anyway, it's a super cool story. It's a super cool movie, and so check out the interview. Yeah, I can't believe this. So that was you in the in the lead role. I, um, yeah, I didn't, I didn't.

Yeah, well, you know, like I, well, I was losing my hair like over time. I think you did that, but you got like a surgery or whatever. Yeah, yeah, a couple of them. Yeah. So bad. I was losing it over time. And then like two years ago, I just decided to shave it, made a big difference. But I kind of like it.

I'm kind of glad I didn't get the plugs because I, I know. Joe Rogan talked about it he had that done and then it left certain scars so when he did decide to shave his head he couldn't go back after that right you have to have the right look for it to be able to pull it off though but I guess I mean I you do I guess I I would like one more surgery it's just not as thick my hair is not as thick as I wanted even though everybody's like no it's what are you talking about it looks fine it really doesn't like if you hit the light hits the wrong way, then it just looks a little thin. But then again, I'm 53 years old. So at 53, like, you know, how thick's your hair supposed to be? Well, I'm 46. But then the next problem is,

then it starts turning white. Oh, no, I'm way past that. Like, it's, there's, there's all kinds of gray. I mean, it's 50% gray. Yeah, yeah. I got chill in it right now. So, I just decided to give in. Yeah. So when did you, so tell me about the origins of the, well, first of all, first let's, let's start, like, where were you born? You were born in Canada? Yeah, I was born in Cornwall, Ontario, kind of near Montreal. And then I grew up just in a suburb of Toronto, a small town called Coburg, 13,000 people. And spent most of my life there, but I lived in Hollywood for a number of years as well, kind of doing my film career stuff. Okay. So, I mean, you don't sound Canadian. Well, like I said, I lived 12 years in California in like Newport Beach. Also, my dad was an airline pilot. So he lived in Florida, actually Clearwater area down by you. And so I spent a lot of my summers there. So I kind of like an American Canadian, I guess. hybrid well are your parents canadian no they yeah they were both born in canada but like i said

my dad ended up moving to florida um as a pilot he could kind of fly out of wherever and um so i spent a lot of time living in the clear water area okay all right well that makes sense um it's just it's funny because i talked to somebody the other day that was like actually was it yesterday the day before and he's Canadian um and I mean it was the it was full blown Canadian you know so uh which just makes me smile for some reason just hearing him you know with all the hey eh you know and the um but anyway it's funny he's actually got a good story too I'm going to interview him he was he was um shoot he was robin banks with uh of ATMs I mean it was he's in Canada it was actually a good story so I mean you know that that could be an

interesting story and he was the the final chase when they caught him was like a helicopter he's got the footage and everything yeah that that's wild I mean you know the accent depends what part of Canada but like even when I lived in in California for long enough I would call back to my mom and to me it was almost like it was so thick it was like a Scottish accent or something right it just depends so you moved it so that's kind of so what's the genesis of the movie was that you were in because when you just said you had moved to um to california like that's the same thing in the movie you had moved to you know you had when we talked you had said that the movie was kind of based loosely or based on a pyramid scheme but i mean so far it's

following pretty closely to your life. And you said you were there when this whole thing kind of unraveled. Well, actually, the pyramid scheme, so it really happened in Canada. So I was invited out to a meeting and I was in university taking film and philosophy. And I got invited to this like thing. And it was basically this meeting. And like, keep in mind, so this is around 1999. So I'm like 1920, 22, something like that.

And like I'd never heard of a pyramid scheme. Like this is really pre-internet. Like you had the internet, but it's not the type of thing where you couldn't have. That was just starting. Yeah. It was just starting out at that point. And also like being like my age like 1920, like why would I ever hear of a pyramid scheme or Ponzi scheme? Like unless you studied it in, you know, some kind of history class or something, how would you

ever really know about that. It wasn't really something that at least I was aware of. So I had no context of this. All I knew is I got invited out to this meeting. And it was this thing called the muffin club. So I'm already like curious, what is this? And it was, there was different names for it. There was like women helping women and there was different. It started out as a woman's group. I mean, who knows? It probably started way back further than that. So basically at the time you would take $5,000 and you would pay so it had to wait till all eight people had agreed to put up their money and then what would happen is that was all cash and that the person that was at the top would get 5,000 from each person and then and then walk away with this money

and that would be like a celebration so usually they would do things with the money like when they met with the person, they'd put it in like a wine bottle and like curl it up or they would put it in a McDonald's Happy Meal or whatever and give it as a presentation to and there was different names that wasn't necessarily a top person or president. It was, you know, madam or whatever it was. And like sometimes it was called like an airplane, so you'd be the captain or there's all these different configurations of it. But basically the top person would walk away with this 35.

thousand dollars so well that's it would actually be 40,000 but they'd usually take a spot at the bottom and go back around it would be called rolling and then you would invite out your friends and more and more people would join and then the next two people would split off and there would be two groups and there would be their turn to collect the money so I kind of went home and they they just like in the movie they explained it with a deck of cards it got a little bit more advanced over time but that was how it got started and then some people took it as an offshoot And they started one that was like a more of a VIP one where people had already rolled. So you would take 10,000 and then the payout was 80,000.

So I saw a number of people that would do this. And the day that they actually joined, it would build up and they would roll out that day. So they would come to the meeting, pay their 5,000, and then walk away with 35,000, then enter the next one. And sometimes people would roll two or three times. So you had people sometimes in a week or two making $250,000 cash. So as somebody that was like 19 years old, I was like, this is wild. Like I never heard of anything like this.

And then it expanded out. So there were so many people in southern Ontario, which is the province that I lived in, that were part of this. And obviously, we need more and more people. Yeah, go for it. So were there in the original group, just like because what you're explaining is very much kind of what happens in the movie, were there people that were saying hey this doesn't sound right or is this a pyramid scheme like the person explaining it was he able to kind of quash all of those um you know all of those

questions or you know like did he have rebuttals because in in the in the movie like as these guys are saying are bringing up you know is saying hey is this an issue you have like you have the judge come in. You have the car guy come in. You have like, it's almost like it was a choreographed scam in the movie because suddenly, oh, no, this guy's a judge. He says it's okay. And he's like, yes, I'm currently a judge. I'm this. But then he wouldn't give him anybody, they wouldn't give him his name. So it was, you know, I was, I was like, what God? And I was like, man, having a guy who says he's a judge there. And then when the kid wants to know, well, what's your name? And there are people there to kind of like shut him up like oh enough already like so it was it was great because

i was like wow it's funny because they're i wonder if those guys are plants like were there those types of things going on when you first heard about it did people bring up issues and the person pitching it had a rebuttals to those issues or what well i extrapolated what i presented that actually took place over multiple meetings but i kind of like front loaded things maybe a little bit more that happened in real life. I wouldn't say there was that much skepticism, to be honest. I would say almost everybody that showed up came, became part of it. Because first of all, they were invited usually by a friend or family. And then they saw the people making money fast. So it was sort of like not even really questioned. It was like this is sort of like, and a lot of these

typical things I think take place in pyramid schemes, Ponzi schemes. I mean, you hear it now with you know, the stuff of the cryptocurrency and everything. So a lot of the presentation was the government wants to hold you down. That's why we're doing this cash. This is a way for you to get ahead. And there's other people in secret societies that they do things like this to get ahead. But this is a way that we can work together and get ahead. There was discussion about how the Amish kind of did that. Like they would get together and build one person's house and then build another person's house. There was maybe a little bit of skepticism, but there was answers to all this stuff like people would say, well, is this a pyramid? But the thing was that it actually separated

into separate groups each time the person rolled. So it was technically a pyramid in terms of the philosophical concept of you have more and more people enter. But it was, you know, all these groups kept splitting off and going to different locations. You would still have the problem of running out of enough people. But in the group, they would say, no, no, because you would get to the top, then you start off at the bottom again and everybody kind of has their turn. And then sort of another thing that would kind of come up is people would say, look, you do like a multi-level marketing like Amway or one of these things. And you end up with a bunch of soap in your garage, whereas like this is like clean. This is just cash money.

You put this money in. You get this money out. You don't have to. Nobody knows about it tax wise. Technically, I think in Canada, under a certain amount or up to a certain amount, you could consider a gift. So that was another answer. Okay. up to five thousand is considered a gift so this is cash money it's a gift and you get a gift from all of

these individuals and that's how how it is legal and so it was presented as legal so there wasn't plants although there would be people that did join that were uh were judges lawyers cops all this sort of thing so it definitely gave it um it was authentic and then what would happen is the meanings would get held and i tried to portray this in the movie at nicer nicer houses I noticed that. Yeah, so that was the last one is on the boat. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

And there was actually like people would do things like they would buy a brand new car with the money and they'd have it delivered to the meeting. So they'd be like, oh, sorry, I have to interrupt the meeting right now. And this guy would show up with like a fancy car like we presented in the movie. Yeah. At the meeting. The viper. The viper. Yeah. And that thing about like the priest pouring like the holy water, that was actually a real thing that happened too. There's even a priest in it. And he like blessed the car when it showed up. So it wasn't really like it wasn't portrayed in an ominous way. It was all like this is the thing we're all doing and we're making money in a fast way. And keep a mind again, I don't think people really knew what a Ponzi scheme or pyramid scheme is. And I think it was presented in a different way than that. And like I said, we still see this with crypto. And that's kind of the interesting.

thing about this. I mean, in filmmaking, there's an expression that like everything old is new again. It's just sort of repackaged in a different way. And I think that's what you're seeing now. And I think at that point in time, that was the configuration of it that was unique and that it was all cash money and it was friends and family and going to these nice houses and stuff. So you kind of felt like it was like if you were invited, it was like you were invited into this almost secret society or that this special group and that you were special to be able to be part of this so people would want to become part of it because they think oh my god i got invited to this thing and all their friends and family are making money and they're

telling them bro i just made this much money but you still run out at some point and that's you know like you said they they slowly kind of start to turn on each other and then when what about when the when the two guys uh when you know the character i mean it's you but the lead character is brought to gold's gym and brought in the back like hey let let let's talk to you out here like you know those two those two you know knuckleheads like they didn't understand the concept like you have to do something for the money no no I want my 80 thousand okay but you have to go find these people have a you know bring them in and no I want my 80 grand it's like you're not getting your 80 grand like what are you talking about how did you not understand this

like he's been known to cure insecurity just with his last His organ donation card lists his charisma. His smile is so contagious. Vaccines have been created for it. He is the most interesting man in the world. I don't typically commit crime, but when I do, it's bank fraud. Stay greedy, my friends. Support the channel.

Join Matthew Cox's Patreon. Yeah, so I had to take budget. for this movie it was like 30 or 40,000 to shoot the entire movie and i had to like cut corners because actually what what really happened was more interesting than that so a friend of mine he had a nice car and was in this and so his car was set on fire so and but it what actually happened was that it was kind of like this it was two knuckleheads that wanted to get in and the one guy was on a um he had like the ankle monitor and stuff like that he was on what he was on home arrest yeah a biker dude and he wanted to get in and so he offered

my friend he said okay if i get in not only will i get into this but i'll offer you protection so if anything happens you'll be protected so and he said but i'm not going to put up the money you put up the money for me but I'll protect you if anything goes wrong or whatever and then it turned out that it was that guy that actually set the car his buddies that actually set the car on fire so that he would go back in fear and and pay the protection money and put that guy for free into into this into this monthly club so it would have been great to have like you know the pyrotechnics and everything actually have a car set on fire but we just kind of changed it to a guy gets beat up scene. But I mean, truth is stranger than fiction with a lot of these things, because, you know,

with reviews, people, people would come out and, and like, admittedly, like, it's a low budget movie. It shot poorly and all this stuff. But in terms of, like, the story, the story is basically real. But people would say, oh, there's no way this is real. And, you know, people wouldn't fall for this and all these things. I mean, there's news articles about this stuff. And, but that was kind of the interesting part of it. And of course, this is pre-made off. This is before the 2008 crash and all this stuff. And he would say, oh, people aren't this greedy. Nobody would fall for this.

And so this happened in Canada. So when I moved to Newport Beach, I set it there because obviously that was a wealthy community. But there were similar things in Newport Beach. And there's all kinds of scams that were taking place in that area. And as we've seen since then, many people that were extremely wealthy have got caught up

in these type of schemes. And, you know, you know, some of these stories. You've written about some of these stories. Right. So it seems to be kind of a universal truth. And again, it wasn't presented like this is some sort of nefarious thing that people are taking part in. It was just like, bro, come out to this thing. You know, there's a meeting on Wednesday.

You got to come to this thing. And then you would come out. And then you saw all your friends and family making all this money. It was wild. Right. It, yeah, I, like I like to, you know, I, I, I like, you know, I, I, I like, what I thought was okay so two things one you know listen I look so I watch the first like 10 minutes of it right but then I was doing other stuff while I was listening to it listening to it

is better than watching it because you can heat you know it's more like a it's a becomes a podcast and so it's totally believable like because there were times when I went back and I would watch it for 20 for 10 minutes or something and I would think and and there were times when you know where suddenly like the girls in the car you know making out with you and you guys and and yet there's a camera there it's like okay well you know and I understand you shot it like you were being followed for a thesis project but the truth is like they wouldn't your your guy there were there was a lot of places that the camera was that it just wouldn't be you know that so so you know other than those one or two spots or

where I was like, all right, come on, it's, you know, like, that's not possible. Like, these guys aren't going to be in the middle of the night in a parking lot, hanging out with the camera. Like, that's not going to happen. But other than one or two spots like that, you know, I thought it was great because it came off more like a podcast, you know, and I like I told you on the phone, I said, you know, what I thought would be amazing because you did do this back in the early 2000. Like, there weren't camera phones everywhere.

like now if you did it where it was a combination of not that you're going to remake it but if that movie had been done using camera phones a combination of cameras interviews like it's a documentary and then of course footage of let's say they start you know people start pitching you know get the venues get bigger and bigger where people are like videoing you know the actual the actual pitches or the parties because that does happen you know that could be god boy the editing would be a bitch but that would have been like it would have been really real because then it would have been really kind of a blare witch project kind of thing the second thing not that i'm saying it was bad i mean in general like when i first saw it i thought

oh man this is bad but this time i you know i watched the whole thing and what i i was really honestly taken in by um was the fact that was the progression it's a it's such a great progression and the rebuttals from when people did raise uh you know raise issues about its legitimacy see. The rebuttals were great. So over the course of the whole movie, you can totally feel like people would be taken in by this. Like this is legitimate. Like I can legitimately see how someone would be pitched in the living room all the way up to the big, big parties. And that was great too, because the first pitch, there's what, 10 people there, 12? And by the end, it looks like there's hundreds of people being pitched well at least 100 yeah they're on that boat i think there was about

400 people um all the boat yeah yeah so kind of how i did it like so yeah i if it wasn't if it was now i would totally do the camera phone i mean at the time shot it digitally so even like one of those sony cameras back then it cost 150 000 if you wanted to buy the camera you know it was like 50 the lens it was like you know we're talking again this is like you know early 2000 like 2002 2003 that I shot this and so it was it was you know very costly just to even shoot something in high definition at the time and so tried to kind of like what I what I tried to do and it's interesting because the the critique at the time I think it has held up in a way because the critique at the time is like the cameras are moving around too much.

It's too, you know, panning too fast. And you see this all the time in reality. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, this is 20 years ago that people didn't really shoot with like kind of that reality style. Like they do know with the TV. So I wanted to be very naturalistic.

But what I wanted to have, and this is what I'm proudest of with it, is it's very dense. So in other words, like every single person that was. part of this had a storyline. So as we're kind of filming it and it's unfolding, you're hearing things like how they're talking about this and there's one person where they saw about something online and there's another person where they got in because of this and it's sort of building. So I wanted it to be something where subconsciously it's getting more and more elaborate

as it goes on and more dense with all these stories. but you don't even notice it because it's happening so slowly. So I think that it portrayed that well. And what I did with all of the actors that were in it is I had each of them have their own separate storyline. So they were all portraying that and their own story arcs over this group of meetings. And they did a great job with that. And then, of course, it ends where it ends. But yeah, by the time it got to the boat, there was 400 people.

So it just kept expanding. And this was a real problem in real life because these things keep growing and growing. And then you draw more attention because it grows. And then another thing that I wanted to portray is you get more knucklehead. So when you start with a group of five or six or whatever, you know, it's kind of like you know who they are. But by the time you start getting to 100 or 200 people, it's like you don't even know who half the people are. You don't know who they brought in. Just because of the laws of numbers, you're going to have idiots that come in.

you know you don't really know what's going on so i i kind of wanted to portray almost like a social experiment where you would witness this and rather than you're kind of going along the journey it's sort of like the journeys unfolding as you as you're as you're watching it so um i think i executed that and it's interesting how it went down and um you know there are people that actually saw it because when I when I showed it for the first time in cons at the film festival in France there was people that came up to me and they thought it was real so they would say like or you still with that girl they would ask me all these questions and stuff so it was interesting how it was so

I tried to kind of blur the lines between reality and fantasy but the funny thing is people thought it was so unrealistic but then I guess you could say the trick on them was how real this actually was in real life I was basically just putting in scenes that actually happened and maybe like in the case of the guy getting or me getting beat up versus my car getting set on fire um it was actually less dramatic in the movie so yeah right yeah i it was it was it was it was good it was it was interesting it definitely shows it's oh i wish it had been like i i get that it's it's you know you're saying basically it's super based on the real of what really happened like these are real this really kind of unful it's just it

like to me i you know i i i would have preferred you know you really use the people like this is this is where it happened this is the person these are the people that it you know what i'm saying like a documentary like it really not that it doesn't still because you're right it does come off like like this is what really happened like these cameras were here and this and that and that was the only that was the only thing was like you know how the cameras everywhere um but you know but that's also me looking at it and honestly when I look at things I look at like how would I shoot this how would I I think the average person just watches you know that whole they they suspend any any any any disbelief and just

watching and as a result you know regardless like you said like the bulk of this whole thing you know legitimately happened you just rearranged a couple of pieces um but it like I said it's great the progression is great I thought it was great like I guess like I said the first 10 minutes I had watched it I was like I'm not interested but then when I came back I was like okay I'm going to interview him let me watch the whole whole thing. So I watched, I bought it, by the way, on YouTube. So I bought it and watched the whole thing. And it's funny, I told, I told my girlfriend, I was like, I was like, this is really actually interested. Like, I'm actually seriously, it, like I seriously interested in what's happening

right now. And I was kind of explaining, like, this is what's happening. Like, you can see how these people are getting sucked in. And, and I said, every time somebody comes up with a, with a, you know any type of doubt it's it's very quickly quashed but then i i love when that when the newspaper article came out you know you know and it like now there's just you can't say you don't know that this is this is you know fraud but you know you kept your the character keeps going though well and this is very typical in real life what happens then is that the people that are in the know then they say well you see this is why it's not working now so it's not my fault right it's not my fault that

there's not more people or that you the numbers don't work obviously but it's not my fault it's the government see and they they put out this bad press so this is why things are drying up now this is why we can't get new members so they often use this as kind of an out um and even within the movie and this is something happened in real life it got more elaborate where now people started to trade artwork because artwork could have any value so they would trade artwork for the money and do things to kind of try and spin it i mean um maybe those things weren't as clear as they should have been in the movie but um but there was a lot to kind of portray and i and i framed it that each section was a new meeting because that's kind of how i i perceived it how it was sort of the

story unfolded and um yeah and and it's weird because you know you know yeah have people that they would say things like one of the critiques was that I wasn't a slick enough salesperson but in real life no these were just average people so the people that would pitch this weren't some like there wasn't some main person that was you know a preacher like person that could kind of get everybody under their spell it was people just basically pitching this to their friends and family and not everybody's that eloquent but it was it was more what was happening that brought people in it was seeing these fancy houses and seeing the nice cars and seeing their friends making money and like i said i would say 90% of the people that came out to

the meetings joined so you know i i can take the criticism about the the shaky camera work and stuff but the critique about like this isn't realistic that um it said that i that it was too jaded that it was uh about human nature that it was um that it wasn't realistic that people with money would fall for like all those things um well that's none of that like none of that got none of that was was was my issue uh at all like it was it was very realistic you know once i read it like but then again i have more experience and the other misconception is that you have to be stupid to fall for a ponzi scheme or you have to be stupid to fall for crypto or you have to be stupid to fall for a pyramid scheme. But the truth is, most of the people that fall for these types of scams, you know, aren't

stupid, especially if you can explain it to them so that it makes sense, you know, then they go, because they're, you know, they're like, okay, well, that makes sense. Like, I can see how that would make money. And so they, they, you know, it's the guy who works at Tire Kingdom who's super, super, um, suspicious because he doesn't quite understand the scheme and as a result of that I don't mean scheme in a bad way everything's a scheme you know buying something cheap fixing it up and selling it that's a scheme it's just you know it's a scheme or rehab a house but you know the guy at tired kingdom who's not quite savvy enough to understand the scheme he's the guy that doesn't want to

participate and he's more weary of spending his money but if you're a CPA and you're making $150,000 a year, and this actually makes sense to you. And you've never heard that a Ponzi scheme or a pyramid scheme is illegal, then I could definitely see how you could go, oh, I could see this. This makes sense. What the problem is, people don't just don't, they don't do the, they don't do the math. It just can't continue to grow forever, which means somebody is going to get stuck holding the bag.

And the other element that really gets people involved is like, so let's say you go out to a meeting and this is what would happen. So let's say you're like, okay, I'm not going to, I'm not going to get in this. And as it grows, especially at the beginning when it starts catching a lot of like heat and more and more people are joining quickly. So it got to the point in these things where like at first, you know, it's a small group, but then people would be like, okay, I'm in. so they would kind of be competing. And so let's say you went out to a meeting and you weren't that person. You're like, I'm going to wait and see. And then the next week, that person already moved through and rolled.

So in a week, they made $80,000. Well, you look stupid. That's a powerful psychological thing. Like that fear of missing out. Like, imagine, you know, you come out to a meeting. If you had gone, you would have made $80,000. And people fear losing. losing almost more than they do gaining because now they feel like they were an idiot.

So now they jump in. And that was another thing that happened over and over again. And that was a sales tactic that people that were, and I just think they believed it. So they would say it. But if you were running the meeting and you're like, look, you don't have to join. But this guy said, I'm not going to join. And he would have made $80,000. So do you want to be that guy?

Right. And even if the numbers don't make sense, we're talking $80,000 cash. and you could be in and out like the smartest guy the funniest thing when i look back is there was this guy that they brought in and they gave him a free spot because he was the top car salesman in the area so they they give this guy a spot and i kind of tried to portray it the actor that did this he was like a little over the top which is funny because he's actually a shakespearean actor but there's this guy that was a car salesman in real life so they gave him a free spot he collected his money he didn't bring in a certain a single person even though that was the

expectation and he was right yeah he was like oh i get 30 40 people right yeah and i often thought to myself and in the movie i kind of have it where he kind of gets kicked out on purpose but in real life i think about that person that actually was this car salesman and they got a free spot they collected all the money and they were gone i'm like that was the smartest guy in the room because he collected his money you never heard from him again and he didn't bring any of his friends or family or anybody into it so if you were just going to make this money and be gone in a week or two what do you even care like you're not the one that's going to get in trouble you're not the one that people even remember because of the way this grows so fast

so you know i i find it interesting that you have all these um critics and and people that They were like, oh, this isn't believable, whatever. But part of that's because it's framed as a pyramid, too. I mean, it wasn't framed as a pyramid in real life. So, hold on. I'm going to show you something. I don't know if you've, if you've ever seen this. Oh, my God.

Do I have it? Is it? Here it is. Oh, I have it locked, too. I'm going to show you something. You're going to love this. So I have a guy who I wrote about. His name is Blaine Davis.

He ran a Ponzi scheme. He actually ran three Ponzi schemes that we know of. The first Ponzi scheme, he was working as a bartender at Red Lobster. He managed to raise a million dollars, never invested it. but eventually after spinning these guys telling people he was investing in 4x trade he was 4x trader so you're pitching your co-workers and people that you meet while you're mixing them a drink and convincing them to give you money to invest in 4x trading like that is stupid how did he do this I mean if he's just working at red lobster how did he do it he's actually pitching customers

and people he works with and friends of friends they all know he works at red lobster and yet they're giving him money a million dollars so one guy gave him like 150 or 200,000 what happens is at some point he's spinning and spinning and spinning these people at eventually right um to the point where they show up at his house and I actually have the video He was $80,000, that's better or not enough. He's still having him sign of paper saying he'll pay him $80,000 in the next week. I think I've heard of this.

Did you cover this on your channel before? Um, not on my channel. Why don't you read it? I did talk about it on concrete. Look. I mean, this is, I don't feel comfortable being bombarded like this. No, we don't know.

We don't know. We'll go ahead and call your attorney then. You said you were going to take your phone and then you didn't. No one has put a hand on it. No one will. And we're going to be on it. The deadline I have two weeks. going to get some money today i don't have any money to get today i'm telling you that right now

i'm not going to get some of monday or tuesday yes you just said yes i said yes how are you going to do that i'm not going to work on it all the thing is he worked on it all week trying to 20 000 out oh yeah it goes they give him such a hard time but i mean it reminded me of the two guys that that that pull your guy into the back of the gold's gym and rough him up. These guys showed up at his house like their video. We want 80 grand. So he eventually ends up going to trial on this years later, you know, and found guilty. He blamed the whole thing, said he had given all the money to this guy who was,

who took off to Europe with the money. I mean, literally he went to try. This is what a con man the guy is. He actually went to trial and tried to convince a jury that he gave all the money to this mysterious, you know, this mystery man, this internet, they called him the international man of mystery. He, and they're like, so you gave him the money. He was supposed to invest it and he took off to Europe. Yeah, that's what happened. And he went to trial.

This is a couple, two, three day trial. No transactions, no phone call. They're like, you got no phone calls to this guy. You've got no, like we, I mean, he just blatantly went in. They just tore him apart. I mean, he lost across the board. But I mean, that's what a con man is. He went into trial knowing it's all bullshit.

You didn't lose the money you spent it. They even have hit, like they have all this bank statements where they can show like you deposited this guy's $30,000. And then you, you went and you spent it on on your car payments and your house payment. And then this guy gave you this much and you traded your car and got another car. Like, you know what I'm saying? like you see where the money was spent like what are you talking about that there's some guy you were investing with where where how do you have phone calls emails anything he had nothing

just a just a bullshit story but i mean like so it's like everything you're saying is you know like it's totally believable i didn't have a problem believing it at all at all so so what do you think is like the mechanism really that gets people like if you can have somebody at red lobster raise a million dollars what is the mechanism is it that fear missing out is it um i guess every scam let's face it i mean i kind of as you went through this one thing i noticed is every scam is the same it's like give me a little bit of money and then a lot's going to come and then the lot never comes right let's like every single one if you want to break it down but what do you think the psychological thing is that somebody like that can talk people into a million dollars

it's funny because it's it's i think it's confidence and a little bit more knowledge than you've got like i for me listen for you to convince somebody that this scam is legitimate or that you're going to make a bunch of money you really only have to have confidence and a little bit more knowledge if you have a little bit more knowledge on a subject you seem to like an expert because you know more than I do. So if you say you're an expert and you know more than I do and you sound confident and believable, you know, that's confidence is just believe, you know, it's sincerity. Like I truly believe what you're saying. At the very least, you believe it. So if you have those things, you can talk people into pretty much anything.

You know, and I think that also not needing the money, not coming off desperate. And there was a, I was locked up with a guy named Ron Wilson. And, you know, his big thing was like, like, I don't, I don't need the money. Well, well, how do I know this? And how do I? He's like, well, don't, don't invest. Mm-hmm. Yeah, they'd be like, well, well, he'd go, I mean, you can leave.

Like, have, have some, you know, there are, or there's hors d'oeuvres here. And there's, you know, there's some buffalo wings and there's some drinks and, you know, eat and hang out with everybody and go home. You don't have to invest. Well, yeah. And even in the story. you sent me with Vitaly when he was trying to raise money. And of course, this is trying to raise money in a legitimate fashion.

But he would say something like, you know, I've got 20 other people or wasn't somebody else in that story where he's like, I've got 20 people, you know, you're right. He was high pressure though. Yeah.

Like he was high pressure. He would pressure you. He'd be like, you know, if the guy was like, well, I need to talk to my wife. Like, like that's not my approach.

I'm not going to try and belittle you. He would, he would belittle the guy. he would he would say oh what do you have to does your wife dress you like bro you got to ask your wife like who's running your house bro you got to ask your wife like you know he would try and like embarrassed like no man it's not like what are we doing here like are you making decisions or not she didn't trust you are you not running your household like i mean it's like fuck like I would never say those things um but he did but his was also volume

you know um and and he would um yeah he would he was he was he also made it like everybody else is made same thing you said everybody else is making money but you're not the train is leaving you know it's interesting because that was actually a line that was at the real thing you know that the train is leaving the station you know yeah no i remember that from the thing you're like the train is headed to baltimore or something you're either on it or you're on yeah was it baltimore i think it was uh boston boston boston still close i can't remember thing. Um, yeah, that, um, I very much, so many things are this. I mean, how many of these FTX and look, the FDX thing I find is interesting because you have like, um, uh, well, it's the,

uh, the teachers pension fund in Ontario. They've got like 95 million that's in it. That's the pension fund for the province up here. So you have like these legitimate and you would think that people running these funds are smart, right? So they're putting a, yeah, 95 million. So you know, they're legitimately, they're questioning whether or not that, that kid that said he's worth, you know, 22, you know, he was a billionaire. And they're questioning like, if that was even true at this point. Well, how do you know? Like, the thing is, I think that, remember I said, like, everything old is new again. Like, how do you know with crypto that it's not just repackaged? I Until you ask to pull your money out, the fact is that, you know, you could be told that your money's earning any kind of return or anything's happening.

As you said, you could always pay some people back to a certain level. I mean, Madoff, it was the same thing. So if somebody cries and they're like, oh, this emergency, I have to pull my money out, you could do that for a couple of people. Now, if there's a bank run and everybody does that, you're screwed. But I mean, even how many things are really a pyramid scheme and you just don't know because the economy is, you know, good enough. You have good times, money keeps flowing, you know, the worth of houses and everything else keeps building. It's really only when the tide kind of comes down that you can, you know, what happened in the 2008 crash, that you kind of see what's going on. and that would be kind of the pitch for these things too it's like well how is this different

than what the government's doing where they're you know printing money and and you know it's it's going to be pretty hard to like here in Canada you know we have the medical system we have the retirement we have all these things and you have baby boomers are getting older and older like how is unless you have a huge population growth how is that how are you not going to run out of people. Yeah, how are you going to sustain that, that retirement? Yeah. From a tax base. Yeah. So, I mean, even the numbers don't work in terms of that. So there's lots of ways to justify it when you can say the government, how are they going to make this work? They don't have the numbers. Well, I think the truth is, is that Americans are taxed much higher than they think. You know, like, like you guys have

kind of almost kind of like a flat tax, like you get tax at a certain rate, you know, and, and it's, For us, it's like it's large, but we get taxed in so many different ways. If you start adding it up, it's actually massive, you know. And then we spend money, the government spends money on a ridiculous amount of things here, too. Like, you know, the amount of money they spend on the military is, you know, is outrageous. I'm not saying they shouldn't. I'm just saying that, you know, people are like, oh, we get taxed that, you know, we have a low tax rate. Well, do we?

You get taxed for your house. you get taxed for, you know, sales, you get tax for, like, everything is just tax, tax, tax, start to add that up. It's a lot. It gets outrageous, you know? It's like if you added all that up and it was 35 or, let's say, 40%, people would go, that's insane. And then, but in Canada, if they, you know, yeah, but you're just getting taxed, you're

getting taxed, what, 45, you know, 50? You know what I'm saying? If you add it up, it's like it's not that much more. Yeah. it's you know but um i mean i'm not saying but you know you guys do have a lot more benefit but then we're spinning so much more of our you know of our uh the government is spending so much more on on things that you guys aren't spending your money on yeah we we benefit from the military because you have a strong military we don't need that military because you guys have it like who's

going to attack Canada right right yeah yeah that would be a United States would flip out. What was it? I thought somebody said, well, you don't see Canada complaining about illegal immigrants coming in. And somebody was like, yeah, well, that's because they have the greatest wall in history, the United States. You know, like who's coming in, you know, who's, you know what I'm saying? Like who's going through the United States to get to you guys? Or so.

But the interesting thing is, we're bringing. bringing in an unprecedented amount of immigrants now now we have a different system so you know we have a I don't know exactly how it works but we have like a point system so a certain level you have to have a certain amount of money or um education level or whatever but we're bringing in something like uh you know 400 000 a year and um yeah because the thing is same problem so the families aren't reproducing themselves you know you need the growth Yeah, you need the tax base. So, I mean, that's where I kind of mentioned how ironic it is about the pyramid, you know,

and running out of people because we're actually bringing in people from other countries because there's not enough babies being born. And you have more and more baby boomers and other people that are going to be hitting, you know, retirement, going to have more and more medical needs. And like right now, we have a thing going on in Canada where like in the, the state in the province I'm at like when I was a kid it was never any problem like you get any medical stuff but now if you go to emergency here sometimes you have to wait 12 hours like the lines are getting longer and longer because you don't have enough personnel

they don't have enough care to treat everybody so you're bringing people in and you know you're trying to use the tax base from that to cover all these expenses and same problem you kind of run out of people and you're but you're qualifying the people that are coming in correct Yes, yeah, that's, I mean, I don't have any problem with the, the quality of the immigrants. I mean, it's a completely different demographics. We're pulling people from India, China, all these different places. But we're bringing a lot of smart people over. But it's just interesting because you could see that they've done the math.

They know we need to bring this many people in. It's not as like, we're doing this to be charitable or something. Right. We're bringing people in because they need the tax base. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's because it's also funny because, I mean, that's people complain about, oh, there's too many people in the world and we're not going to be able to support all these people. The truth is, is that, you know, we're having fewer children, fewer people are being born in the world than ever before. And it's, you know, and 20 years from now, it'll peter out.

Like, it's going to, it's slowing down dramatically. And there's some countries like Russia and Australia, there's some. countries that they're actually every year they're decreasing their population you know Russians are having fewer and fewer kids you know Australia desperately trying to grow their population it's stagnant lots of countries are stagnant or losing um so the the vitality story the um it's a atonement so what so you you you're read that one you liked that one you thought so you thought the michelle brawn was going to be a big part of the the whole story and it was just a a small kind of a yeah well it kind of comes

at the halfway mark i mean think about it like when you're you obviously know the whole story and you maybe heard it in bits and pieces but when you're reading something in a narrative um you kind of your mind's predicting where it's going to go so right um i i really love the part because you get to the point where it was like a movie where all of a sudden he realized that he thought that this whole company who was raising money like he's a stock guy that's raising money he thought that he was legitimately raising this money for a company and then even gets to the point like the the people that were taking the money weren't even connected with the company like he was out at a presentation and the guy that was presenting it did

didn't know these people. So he thought that they came with that guy. So as a result of that, you kind of have this situation where this guy had started raising money and they just cleared him out. And he was kind of on the hook in terms of like they were smart enough to put things in his name and stuff like that. And so there's a scene where you're in prison, I guess this is the aftermath and you're talking about this.

And you said to him something that I was thinking in my head is like, why didn't, because they were all that they kept asking about the people that were investing money they wanted the stock certificates so you know he was it was like a hundred or two hundred thousand or something like that that they took but it was like a five million dollar raise and then he was going to issue the stock so if he had just issued if they had issued fake stock certificates and you know printed it up as like you know photoshopped it or whatever and sent it out he probably would have kept raising and probably would have raised it you know a few million dollars so you asked the question you're like why did they stop there like why did they just cash out at this point in time

and not raise more money and that was what my thought was so I thought as the story was going to progress we would find out why they secretly actually hadn't gone and raised more money with what the trick was but then it was just kind of no they were just dumb or whatever you know they just I mean, they're smart enough to run a scam, but not to run it big enough. Yeah, Michelle Braun, I don't know what her, I don't know what she was thinking. She just, she got over eager, saw the money and, you know, and just started grabbing the money. And Vitaly, obviously, you know, he just wasn't in on it. So he, he thought he was going to do the right thing and just tell as many, you know, and stop the whole thing and go to the, didn't realize he was, he was the mark.

you know what I thought was great was that they showed up and he thought he was having a meeting with people at the company and they were saying no those people were with you and he's like no they were with you no no you know so I thought that was and it's funny yeah because that scam in and of itself is a great scam and I remember I told him when we were writing it I said bro I'd have fucking taking all your money. I'd have raised, let you raise the whole five million and taking it. But just like I said, I'd have come up with the certificates, giving them the certificates. Had you raised all the money, taking the money and then taken off. She takes a couple hundred thousand dollars. You're just stupid. Yeah. And you could have taken off with that money

and gone somewhere where, you know, no extra addition or whatever. And you could have had more money to kind of get out of there. So it was interesting. But, you know, again, it's kind of life a stranger than fiction and then the story goes on in a different direction. So I kind of like those twists and turns because again, it's real life. So overall, that was a good story. It's unfortunate how like everything kind of played out for that guy. But you know, as the title indicates, you kind of have a redemptive ending to it. So I like that story. You know, it's interesting about that. What you were saying is, you know, that's the thing about these, about writing true crime is like you can't you have to work with what happened like you can't craft the story like like you were

saying like that like I thought that was the story I thought it was going to go on and then suddenly it goes in a different direction but but that's what happened so you can't craft it like how do you craft it and to me it was still a natural progression because I had to tell that story and in its entirety because that's what caused him to lose his license and go on this other so um well it's kind of a it's kind of like the movie cycle where the girl gets killed so it's kind of neat when stories do that because it it throws you because you think it's going a certain direction and it goes another direction right like you know the whole beginning of cycle you thought was going somewhere and then you know you thought you're following this lead character

and then she gets killed off and it goes another direction so i think you know that was pretty cool it's a great story and you know it's funny because you have in this thing about the Lamborghinis and all this and like one of one of the projects I'm working on now is a sports car documentary and it's called straight six like but this six is kind of like the way Drake has it and um or sorry flat six and the way that Drake has it the reason is like the flat six is the engine in the Porsche um with the six being like a term that people call Toronto so it's kind of we have all these exotic cars up here and it's a whole it's interesting because our weather sucks but apparently other than like LA it's one of the biggest markets

for exotic cars and you know when you think back like obviously the viper in the movie like a lot of people and how many of these scams do you cover were like guys are driving the fancy cars or whatever and people see those and get in like it seems to be a thing like Vitaly in this story when he took one of his jobs kind of like sort of a boiler room type job they gave him a a yellow Lamborghini you know just a sort of a starting thing so you see these things time and time again where people just kind of go wild over over these cars and then that sort of like inspires them and it's the same thing with the the

car where his he and his girlfriend go to lunch with her girlfriend and the guy is driving a Lamborghini and he was like how do I get one of those you know and the guy was like that come by the office we'll talk about it you know so same thing yeah the Lamborghinis and the Ferraris are a big part of that story too because he did he's had I forget how many Ferraris and Lamborghinis he's had you know but that's the first thing these guys do these high high pressure salesman first thing they do when they start making money is go out and buy a ridiculous sports car yeah and then you get asked well how did you how did you get that oh my for x thing whatever you know you can you know it's used almost like a sales tool and i have that

in a movie like there's a scene i don't know if you saw where they're confronting me and they're like oh you're showing up and kind of like um showing off with this car or whatever i'm like this is it's a part of the sales presentation right and it's true in a way because you know people always want to they always have a fantasy of what they would like their life to be and if you can paint that picture that you can give them that fantasy it seems to be a way to draw a lot of people out i mean you're in florida and when you you know that like in miami in these places there's so many of these cars and i've always thought to myself i wonder how many these cars are like legitimate and how many of these cars are bought with like illicit proceeds right because it's such a and usually like if you

and it's interesting because your story you know i think you bought was it an outy or something like you bought like a nice car but you didn't go crazy with it yeah i mean you had the money to but um was that because if you gave me to i was that you know if you gave me 20 million dollars right now like i'm not buying a Lamborghini i'm not a lambourgian even though it's funny people see me like that. A lot of, a lot of these guys have this perception of me that watch the channel, like they think I'm a certain way. But the truth is, I would probably just go get a four, you know, go get a Bronco. You know what I'm saying? Like I might get a little bit nicer of a vehicle, but I'm not buying a Lamborghini. I just, it's not going to do that. Like I, I, I can see getting an Audi or, but even then I'm not spending over $100,000 on a sports car. You know, that's not me. right what did you fear like being too flashy or that was just your personality well i think part of it's my personality but i also i think a big part of it at the time was because at the time it it was more of my personality like at the time it that was something like but it was at the time

a portion of it not all of it but a portion of it was that i didn't want to draw too much attention to me you're drawing or you're driving around a bright red or bright yellow Lamborghini it's it's look at me, look at me, and that's great. But it's also, you know, the problem is, is what happens if people do start looking at you? Now it's an issue. So yeah, I'm not, yeah. But you know what's wild about this is that because of the shortage of supplies and everything that's going on, because like I made a lot of friends in the different, like the exotic car communities and the Porsche communities. So the past two years, these cars have all appreciated in value. So like a lot of stocks have gone down. Housing is kind of stagnant or a little bit going down now, but these cars

are going up in value because the limited supply with the chips and all these other issues. So it's kind of the only time in history where it's like kind of outrageous. Like up here in Canada, they're selling way over. Like so if you go in and you want to buy a Porsche right now, and you want to put a deposit down you're going to have to wait two to three years to get delivery of the car so the actual like used cars are going more like a hundred thousand more than if you put a down payment and and wait the time because people want it now so all the values have gone up so it's kind of a it's a wild thing where like cars are appreciating yeah that's what the the used car market too is shot up through the roof

like people can't get yeah yeah uh i i didn't know about regular like well i guess the exotic cars what about cars straight out of the factory from ford like those have to be available still it's probably not going to affect them i don't know as much about those i mean they're pretty available but the the exotic cars it's harder because like uh Porsche specifically they were hurt by the chip shortage and then there was like a boat that sank with all these like fancy cars on it. So yeah, baguadis and everything.

So what's happened now is it's like the time frame is like two to three years. And some people don't even know if you can get an allocation. And then also there's a certain, there's certain cars where there's a limited run. So like for Porsche's it's like a GT3 or GT3 R.S. And it's funny because you have all these people who are like super wealthy and they do very well in their own industry. And they have to like beg to get these cars because they're all competing against each other.

And there's only so many allotments. So it drives the prices up. But it's also an interesting phenomenon where you have these like I have a friend of mine. And he's like, how many cars do I have to buy to get an allotment for a GT3? And they had like three different cars that he had to buy. Like he has to buy now in order to get a chance to get allotment for a certain car. but then at the same time if you buy that car and get it delivered as soon as it arrives it's already appreciated a hundred thousand dollars in value so a lot of them flip it so it's

just kind of it's a crazy thing that's going on right now well yeah so the the movie back to your your movie so where where is it now what platforms are is it on So it's on Amazon Prime. I know it's in the U.S. It's in Canada. On YouTube. YouTube. It's on the Apple platform, I think, is it?

Not iTunes. I think it's Apple TV now. The Google platform and the Google Play. And then it's going to be on like Roku. There's a bunch of different platforms. It's going to be available through. So the distribution company is My Spotlight. independent and it's going to be like growing in terms of where it's available.

It's going to be available worldwide. But for sure, like if you have Amazon Prime, you can watch it for free, right? So it's all over there. And it's like, it's wild because that was my first movie. It came out 2004. And like I haven't, or sorry, 2005, it was in theater. And, oh, by the way, like, I should say this. I got this movie into theaters.

And like, that's a whole. wild thing on its own because like this was a low budget movie and um I got it into regular multiplexes like I got it distributed in regal entertainment which was like you know your multiplex theaters I think I got in like 11 different states I got it in Florida Texas California and I really had to work hard to kind of pull that off at the time that was sort of an unknown thing because I wasn't with a major studio or anything like that so I'm proud of of how i was able to get it distributed and um you know that was kind of my first uh my first moving into hollywood you know i've done a bunch of different movies and tv shows and stuff

since then i i feel that um i'm glad that i'm able to come in here and talk about it because i feel that it's something that's kind of gone unnoticed because you know there's a lot of people that saw it at the time when it came out to theaters but then it kind of disappeared and it's been like 20 years. And I thought, you know, your audience, it would be, you know, they're obviously interested in scams and all these different things. And I thought it was something that your audience might have an interest in seeing. My audience might try and pull it off. I mean, seeing how, you know, how the pitch is, you know, how it's not, it's not, what's great about it is like, it's not super technical. Law enforcement often questions him. Not because

he's suspected of a crime, but because they find him fascinating. He is the most interesting man in the world. I don't typically commit crime, but when I do, it's bank fraud. Stay greedy, my friends. Support the channel. Join Matthew Cox's Patreon. Oh, and like, I should say this, because this is kind of a funny little thing. So Quinn Tarantino's dad is in the movie.

Oh, yeah, that's right. Who was he? So he's only on for a second because I basically cut him out. So his name is Tony Tarantino. And so wild story. I mean, you know how like life kind of imitates art? So Tony Tarantino, somebody introduces him to me and says, okay, this is Quentin Tarantino's dad, which he's 100% Quentin Tarantino's dad. And, you know, pay him a little bit of money and he'll be in your movie.

So I thought this is great. So at the scene with the pool, he's in the background where. They were all kind of like, I'm standing up there and there's a couple other guys. I think the judge is up there doing the presentation. And so he originally he was in the movie, I like a lot more. And so the guy's like slick. So Tony comes in and he do this. He's like, hey, I just got off the phone with my son, Quentin.

He's excited I'm doing this movie. And like, I was in my 20s, like a first time filmmaker. Like, I'm crapping my pants. Like, oh, my God. Maybe Quentin Tarantino will want to help this movie. He'll maybe want to help distribute it or whatever. I'm definitely putting it out in it. Maybe this is a future contact.

Yeah. So I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll put them in. This is awesome. And it's funny, they aren't imitating life because, again, I'm getting sucked in. So then what happened is I see this red carpet where Quentin Tarantino is, and somebody asked him about his father and he spits on the reporter so then i like frantically google this and it turns out that he left it so he left quentin tarentino's mom when he was like 16 and basically abandoned him never saw quentin and of course i'm paraphrasing but and then later in

life when quentin was successful all of a sudden his father tried to come back in his life and quentin's like f you right right so quentin hates him so i'm like oh great but he's playing off it and now his dad's trying to play off his son's name by getting bit parts and movies yeah so then i'm like i'm frantically trying to pull them out of the movie because i'm like okay great now nobody's going to want to have anything to do with this project because like tony tarentino's all over it so even in the credits it's listed i i don't have them the actual credits and on IMDB it's listed as like uncredited and stuff like that and and you know what in retrospect I shouldn't have done that I should have left him in because that's kind of part of the

story and in the story he kind of does part of the presentation and breaks it down just like he's one of the people on this thing and I think I've made the wrong move on that I should just left him in because it's kind of an interesting tidbit of like again art and you know imitating life and like so I got I got conned on that one so but who knows man it's there's a lot of there's a lot of these guys these producers that will do stuff like I was contacted by this producer in L.A right when I first got out I was in the the Atlantic yeah the Atlantic magazine and Forbes magazine did you know did they did articles on me. So I got reached out to by a bunch of producers. Well, one of the producers

was a guy in Los Angeles. And, you know, he's, he was like, look, you know, I, I work with a lot of big actors. Like, he's pitching himself, right? So then I look into him. And luckily, I had ended up meeting with another producer. I had gone to Puerto Rico for a talk, right? So I, I, gone there to speak in front of some entrepreneurs and, you know, they pay you a couple thousand dollars to fly you in for like the day. You kind of tell your story and you fly back. But while I was there, I actually just so happened to meet with another producer. And so I was talking to her and while I was also talking to this other producer in L.A., and she explained to me that what was happening with this guy. And when I looked after she talked to me about it and I looked into him,

I was like, wow, that's exactly what's happening. And she was like, look, here's what's happening. It's like this guy, there's a lot of guys like this. You know, they'll raise half a million dollars. They'll pay themselves $200,000 or $300,000 a year. They'll get a big-named actor and pay him $50,000 to be on set for a day or two. Now, he's not really a big-name actor. He would, so people know who he is, but he doesn't really act anymore.

or he's like for instance let me put it this way like this guy had stephen seagull who was in maybe 10 minutes of the whole of a whole movie he had mike tyson when mike tyson was at his lowest right you know so he had all these guys that and and of course then they're on the movie poster they're on the back then on the DVD you know whatever you want to call it you know they're on the poster they're in two scenes at the beginning of the movie and maybe at the end they play the you know, the DA or something. He's a big part. You hear about them the whole time, but you never really see him except for one or two times. And they give him $50,000 or $100,000. And everybody else shares another, the remaining $200,000 of the film or $100,000,

whatever, to make this film. And then that's it. And she goes, so this guy, he does this. She's, and then his investors, they all make their money back and then maybe even some. He might get rid of that movie for $6,000,000, And so everybody makes money, but not a lot. It's not a blockbuster.

She says, and he makes one or two of these movies a year. And he does really well. She goes, but those movies aren't really going to go anywhere. You know? And that's exactly what was going on with this producer. Like, you could look at every one of his movies. And that's what it was. Like, every one of them was just horrible.

And they all had some guy. But that could have been your Quentin Tarantino. You could have been, you could have put, Quentin Tarantino on the thing. Yeah. Well, you know, the thing is like it's, it's kind of good that I got to see this whole pyramid thing when I was in my early 20s because I came from a very small town in Canada. And it really helped prepare me for Hollywood because, you know, I lived in Beverly Hills for like, well, Newport Beach for like 15 years. and there's so many things I ran across within that industry.

I mean, it's just obviously plagued with, like, sociopaths and stuff, right? So, you know, I think I told you there was, I was dating this one girl. And she says, oh, you've got to meet my dad. He's going to want to invest in one of your films. And he just got back from China, major businessman. Great. So, this guy pulls up and, you know, he's in a limo. He's getting driven.

And he takes me out to an expensive restaurant for steak, all this stuff. And then he's like, he's living out of his hotel room. So that was kind of interesting. But he takes me out to dinner a couple of times. And he's like, he's rare and a go. Like he's going to invest in this movie, whatever the movie was at the time. And so he picks me up the next time. And he says, okay, I'm going to take you somewhere secretive.

So he drives me to this warehouse. Now, keep in mind, this isn't like a movie story. This is real life, right? Right. And he's got like all of this stuff in storage there, like these fancy computers, all of this stuff. And he's like, okay, I have all of this stuff here. These are my stock computers that I use to access my money. I went away to China for a while and I didn't keep up with the payments on this just because I wasn't around.

So if you can pay $15,000, then I can get this stuff out. I can log in with my computers and transfer you hundreds of thousand dollars and invest in your movie. Now, I'm good. Yeah, I mean, I knew from my previous experience what was up. And by the way, my girlfriend says to me, well, why would you do it for $15,000? I'm like, oh, that wouldn't have been the end of it. Then it would have been like, oh, well, this happened. But now I need to get these trucks to take, you know what I mean?

It would have been one thing else in the other, right? So I'm like, okay. So I just kind of like, when certain people like that, the way I dealt with it is like I just like pulled back and I was just like, I'm removing that person for my life. Because it's like, to me, I don't know how scary that person is. So I end up, I'm out to dinner with this woman I knew, and I'm telling her the story. Well, it turns out it was her ex-husband. And he wasn't in China. He was in jail for fraud.

And not only was he in jail for fraud, but the reason he picked me up in this limo was that he lost his license because he was, you know, caught for drunk driving or whatever in his Lamborghini, of all things, of course. And so this whole thing was a ruse. But, you know, I ran into that so many times in Hollywood that and you got to just pick up on things. And if there's anybody that ever wants to like, again, kind of dissect how to like avoid things like this, they're always again the same way. It's always like, just give me a little bit of something and then I can give you a lot in the future. And, you know, you see this over and over again. And so, and even like I, I heard your vice story, you know, like that wasn't so much of like a deep hardcore con, although they, you know, didn't pay you the money. But there's that kind of shady side of Hollywood.

And another one that I saw a lot of is, I don't know if you've ever heard of this, but getting people to pay for their headshots and stuff. So I, yeah, you've heard of that, right? So I met this guy. I had the unfortunate thing of meeting this guy one time. So I'm casting for my movie. He goes, I'll help you cast this. So gay guy. And so I didn't realize it was a scam at first.

But he'd have all, he'd do these radio ads and everybody would come down. And I'm sitting there with him. And it was so funny because he was really good. Like wore immaculate suit or whatever. And he actually would judge the person on how they dressed, and he would have a different rate. He's like, you know, we have this filmmaker here. I can put you in all these movies, but we have to do your headshots. And the headshots ranged anywhere from $500 to $1,500, depending on how much he thought he could extract.

So like there was, and there's things I didn't notice. He was like, he's like, this is a tranny. I didn't even realize it. It's Asian. He's like, this is a trance. And he's like, this person's probably insecure. Plus they have a Louis Vuitton bag. And he's like $1,500.

And sure enough, they, okay. So one by one, he's going through and just sizing them up and having different rates for each one. And then he had his gay boyfriend take the pictures. And like this guy was like 19 years old, knew nothing about photography, just like simple shitty photos. And then he would never do anything with it. He would just get these head shots done up.

and that was the end of the scam. But it was funny because the amount of people he was, and he would just paint this picture or how he could get them in Disney films. He could do this. He could do that and just would keep talking. And the way he was able to size people up by what belt they wore, what shoes they had on, everything was just like insane. And I didn't have anything to do with him after that day.

But then he ended up calling me back a few years later and wanted to do business. again i'm like you know like you said i'm good right but he's like sorry i was on cocaine at the time blah blah he sort of apologized so you see this stuff time and time again so just with people if you run into if you get called by an audition and they think you're perfect for the part but you have to buy headshots that's probably a red flag i you know it's funny uh yeah i i i knew a guy who had been paid he went to l a he was going to be an actor and this was 10 years 10 15 years ago you the internet's just coming out and he got called to you know and an addition for like a point

to be like a porn and they said look you know we'll pay you the standard addition fee to audition and they gave him like fucking three hundred dollars or something and sign here you have to audition so we need to have you masturbate and they gave him KY jelly and they they videoed him jacking off and um and he he was you know and the thing was they were like and it lasted forever like he's like every time he would get to the point where they would go well wait a minute wait a minute hold on we need you to lay on your on your back we need you they would switch him around he's like so i'm doing so it went on forever and then they took the video and he had signed a release to allow them to

to show other, to show producers so they could use this. They had this whole thing what they said he was signing, but what he was really signing was a release to place it on a, on a website. Later, like a year or so later, somebody went to high school, found it on the website. And, you know,

because he had never heard from the person. And it was just like, it was like they tricked him into signing this piece of paper so they could put his his uh his jack off film on the website so hilarious um you know people and by the way i did get i eventually i did get paid by vice oh you did yeah oh really how much do they give you if you don't mind me asking or is it oh it's it's it's not much i mean i i i i'm not going to say because i signed a confidential okay yeah no no no that's fine but um but yeah it wasn't like it wasn't the 20 grand that I wanted, you know, it wasn't really, you know, but I, you can know on I think I told

they told me they could give me 10 grand. It wasn't quite that either. But so, um, but they did, you know, like after I did the, the concrete there, and I had called the producer and left a couple messages. Their attorney called me. Hmm. And so I just went back and forth with the attorney saying, And look, you know, I said, look, I sued Warner Brothers from inside of prison and cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars. I said, they could have come to me and settled, they could have given me $20,000 or $30,000 while I was in prison. They wouldn't have to spend a couple hundred thousand.

I said, imagine what I can do from outside from outside. And, you know, I just, you know, alluded to what I was going to say, I'll have some guys in prison right up a lawsuit that it'll cost you $50,000 to fight. Right. You know, so I know, you know, I just went back and forth with her and eventually they came back. They said, okay, look, we're going to, we're just going to, we're going to give you this. Is this okay? I was like, yeah, that's fine.

Like, you know, something's better than nothing. But, yeah, it was, they were, they were perfectly ready to just walk away. Take it, take my story and walk away. And, you know, I'm just not, I'm not going to, I'm not okay with that. I'm not going to, I'm not, I'm not the person that's going to sit back and be like, oh, okay, you got me. now so but anyway um so what are we going to do with vitality story well i have some ideas on on this um you know i don't want to over promise or whatever because again i don't want to be one of these people um i have a lot of distribution contacts um with the way that you know

this movie all they need is going and stuff like that and um and i have have a friend that I might introduce. Actually, you might be interested in interviewing this guy. His name's Kirk, I can't pronounce his last name, but he was actually the attorney for, oh, what's how a girl's name? You know, it's a woman that killed the Mormon guy. Oh, Jody Aris. Yes. So the defense attorney. So I have this like show called RBT radical body transformations where people like losing weight and slimming up. So he's been on on that and he's lost a bunch of weight. So he was the attorney for that. And then it caused him a lot of stress because he was defending her. And he was like put in that position where he had to defend her. Right. And then he would get all this hate mail. Like there was so much he went through that he got canned.

He blames the cancer because he said he was really stressed going through this whole process And so he kind of and he wrote a book on it and everything interesting guy smart and He's like kind of like a true crime reporter now. He does a lot of things with like Nancy grace and different I don't know the name of all these different channels and stuff, but right with a lot of those true crime networks and stuff like that So I thought about putting you in touch with him because I thought But he's already working in a realm with a lot of those type of companies. And, you know, there's so many different ways to take a story like that. Like you can, you know, put it into segments like you were saying and have it episodic or different things like that.

So I like the story and I just started brainstorming about it. And I thought about like what I could do with it. But I didn't have like a clear cut answer, just kind of some directions I wanted to go with that. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I thought you might be, I thought you might find it interesting because like so many. many of the people like no vitality and that's the cool thing is like everybody likes vitality like everybody still likes them it's not like there's people out there like i'm not gonna i don't want to

talk to anybody like he contacted people they're like yeah bro i'll be interviewed absolutely like you know so he's saying look i mean out of let's say 15 people we could interview let's face it you only have to interview seven or eight of them to have yourself a good couple of hours worth of a documentary and it's a great story so yeah he's very likable like Like, even in the story, it was usually his partners that were addicted to drugs or unreliable, and he would still kind of keep them around. It wasn't like he even, like, really was backstabbing or cutthroat with him. He kept guys along that were dead weight long after they kind of helped him.

There was not really any point in the story where he was, like, malicious in any way or whatever. So he's good from that point of view. I mean, obviously the whole thing with that, that woman, he didn't even know that that was a scam. He was just trying to raise money. And I mean, but he was doing all the right things to raise the money. You know, he's obviously a fast talker and does what he needs to do and puts together, or at least at that point in time in his life, we'd put together kind of a boiler room and stuff. But, you know, I think sometimes people get caught into, they think, well, sales is like a scammy,

but it's like everything's a sale, right? so yeah so but you seem like uh he was a nice guy that people liked him and stuff like that so i think it's a great story yeah i what you know it's funny too is like you know the you know the guy the one guy who um who died i think uh he's not not royce not the guy who killed his not the guy that killed his girlfriend the uh his other buddy gosh he had so many names um the one who overdosed right or supposedly overdose like the um so the girl v i've actually met with her at a starbox like she contacted so did his girlfriend you know the the girlfriend who had left she contacted me like like people that you would think i wouldn't even be able to contact like i have

their phone numbers i can call them i don't know that that i know v would be is interested in being is interested in being an interview because it v was like she's like that's not what happened but she's like she's like rico definitely killed him she's he killed him she's like but you make me sound like a drug dealer and i'm like well you were selling these guys drugs and she goes well it's not really like i mean yeah i have drugs and i sold them but i you know i was doing other stuff and it was like okay look you know she doesn't dispute the story though just she doesn't like the way i portrayed her she's like it's basically like i'm more than a drug dealer okay great you can come on and say that like but she doesn't dispute what happened and she's you know um anyway it could be great because like

there's footage of riko robbing the bank um anyway you know if you went through the story and saw the story like you can see all the pictures like there's just everybody in the story's good looking everybody's driving a sport a Lamborghini or a Ferrari like it's the whole thing there's just tons of money involved there's strip clubs there's just the whole thing is is super hyped up south florida sleaziness um you know but yeah it's it's uh it's definitely interesting like i i would love to find some you know a producer that could do something with it because i have other projects that are on that are moving forward there's not much i can do now so i'm kind of like okay well let's move forward here on this some of these um so and i've got a few of those projects

Yeah, I would definitely pursue some leads. I think it's worthwhile. And, you know, it is, it's captivating. I mean, I kept my attention the whole time once I got into it. So there's definitely something there. I mean, you're a great storyteller, you know, like, and I'm glad that, you know, you've turned your skills. Like, you took your skills from being a storyteller in a different type of way. And I'm a storyteller with what I do. So I understand that. You took your skills. and you turned it into a positive, which I think is awesome. So you're obviously a creative guy. I look at your artwork, right? So you just turned your creativity to the powers of good rather than bad. Yeah, we're going to, yeah, I just got to make it pay off. You know, the problem is I don't pursue, I'm not pursuing it as much as I should just because I like what I'm doing so much right now.

You know what I'm saying? Like, I like my life. So I'm not pushing as hard as I should. Well, it's hard. I mean, that's why, look, I mean, there's so much BS in Hollywood. That's why, like, I even said to you, like, I don't want to make you any promises or whatever. Like, I'll pursue some avenues because there are so many people that, like, tie up projects. And we kind of talked about this off air, but they'd say, you know, I'm going to do this.

I'm going to do that. And it takes forever and nothing ends up happening. I mean, that's one of the reasons I did my movie. The way I did is I'm just like, you know what? I'm just going to go. Because I had it originally like a script. a project that I'm going to cast people and it's like such a process and I'm like you know what I'm just going to go and shoot this movie and do kind of like a fly on the wall documentary with it

and incorporate that into the story so that I don't need much money to do it and I find sometimes that's the best way and you know it's so cost it's so cost prohibitive to really do a narrative regular movie now with the way unions and everything and it's so hard to make your money back on that, that's kind of why I went in the direction of documentary, because as you know, articulated, you can keep your expenses low. You can, you can shoot interviews and use the B-roll and all that stuff. So there's definitely a way to do it. It's just, you know, it's pursuing some different distribution avenues. And then, you know, it's, it won't take a lot of money to do it but um you you you want to make sure that you get your value out of it because

you know you just spent so much time putting this together yeah well and you have so many people so you know you it's like there there there are definitely there's so many people willing to participate that it deserves to be done well you know and it is it is a great story like you know you can tell a great story badly and it just ruins it you know and you can tell a great story you know in a great way and then you've got a phenomenal film so well you articulated that on the vice one because you were saying that when they did it and they did it without you and they just kind of threw it together that it was worse than what you had written yeah it was they botched the whole thing like all the good stuff like they completely missed like the really

great. But I also think that those that, well, and I actually those things could have been done with some B-roll, him telling the story and the B-roll, but I, you know, you're also limited on, that's the problem with a series is you're limited with time. So, you know, they're like, hey, we need

41 minutes. Like, that's it. That's all we've got. How much can you do? You can only tell so much. Yeah. Well, what else is going on? Anything else Do you want to talk about it? Are we wrapping this up? What are we doing? I guess, like you said, if you want to see all that I need, the Pyramid Ski movie, it's on a number of different platforms, but the easiest one is Amazon Prime.

You can definitely see it there. I'm doing this movie right now called Flat Six. I've got a couple of partners with it, Elvin. It's Chinese names, so I don't know how to say it. And I'm like you, I'm a dyslexic, so sometimes. have a problem with saying these names and stuff but uh elvin king and uh tim king i think it's like but it's felt like k-e-u-in-g and they uh the elvin is actually with um he was with marvel entertainment and he worked on like some of the biggest sort of superhero movies

and i'm like the storyteller of this and then he's like the visual guy that's going to shoot and do the editing and we're we're working on that up here in Canada and there's just all these great stories of these people that have you know crazy money and these supercars and kind of how they interact because there's all these things now I didn't know it at the time but there's like these car meetups and these secret drives that they go on and all these things that are a lot of fun and it's its own world and then they trade the cars with each other like here you take my Lamborghini, I'll take your Ferrari. And so it's kind of a fun visceral type of project that I'm working on. And I have like, I have a project called Radical Body Transformations, which like we've

helped literally thousands of people lose weight and get into shape. And I connect them with top level coaches. And then I even have like an event. The next one's in June in connection with the Toronto Pro Show, which is like kind of a bodybuilding contest, but then we have a transformation show that we do where it's not like hardcore bodybuilders, but people that have lost weight. And some of these people are, the story is part of what we present. So we read out their story before they walk on stage. And you have people that have turned their lives around, lost 100, 150 pounds, all kinds of different things have overcome. different disabilities have MS, we're in abusive relationships, we're addicts, and they've

turned their life around. So people can always reach out to me about that. My website's James Hergot, H-E-R-G-O-T-T, I'm sure you can throw it up.com and should be able to find out how to get to these other things from there. So just working the grind and doing things. and I really appreciate you having me on and giving a platform to tell people about these films because I don't think I've talked about that movie in really 20 years, you know, at the time there was a press run where I'd go and do all these things, but it's great to talk to somebody

that really knows about pyramids and has, you know, been around so many people and interviewed people that have ran those things and you have an interesting insight into it. So I really appreciate your time. Hey, I appreciate you guys watching and do me a favor. If you like the video, hit the bell, hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified of videos like this, you know, share the video. Everybody keeps saying like, I get all these comments. They're like, bro, I don't understand why your channel's not blowing up. was you just share my channel, share my video, you know, leave a comment. I respond to, honestly, I respond to, I read all the comments, pretty much, probably

80 or 90%, some of them slip by, but, and I probably respond to 20 or 30%, like some of them it was just like, good job. Then, you know, I typically just hit like the heart button and thumbs up, you know, but honestly, I respond to a ton of the comments. And if you, anybody wants to email me, my email is in the description. And also, I'm going to put. James's contact information and everything in the description, and I'll put a link to the movie. I bought it on, on, I just bought the movie on, on, on, uh, uh, YouTube, you know, it was, I think it was like 10 bucks, you know, and so I'll also put the link to, you know, put the, I'll put his, uh, social media stuff down there and we'll put the, so I appreciate you guys watching and see you.