Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - How Bob Zeidman Won $5 Million From the MyPillow Guy and What It Means for the Future of America

Episode Date: June 29, 2023

Picture this: you win $5 million dollars in a contest... but never get the money. Now, imagine the person who owes you is Mike Lindell. Yeah, the MyPillow guy. And in addition to your money, American democracy is at stake. This is the fascinating situation facing Bob Zeidman, software forensics expert. Bob sits down with Nicole to share the story, unpack the consequences and give his insights on leading with integrity. Plus, negotiation advice that will help you if you’re in a situation where someone owes you money.

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Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. Imagine you win $5 million in a contest. That is out of this world. Knock your socks off.

What dreams are made of. Incredible. And then imagine you don't get the prize money. That is crushing to say the least. Are you picturing it? Okay, now try this on for size. Imagine the person who owes you the money is Mike Lindell. Yeah, the MyPillow guy. This is the actual situation facing my guest today, Bob Seidman. And believe it or not, the story gets even more unbelievable. But despite the otherworldliness, there are some takeaways from this story that will help you if you're ever in a situation where someone owes you

money. But first, the pillow talk. Bob Seidman, welcome to Money Rehab. Nicole, thanks for having me. So you have such a cuckoo banana story. I want to hear all of it, all the details. It starts, though, in the summer of 2021. Mike Lindell, the very interesting, colorful CEO of MyPillow, announced that he was going to hold this cyber symposium to release data that allegedly proved that U.S. voting machines were hacked by China in the 2020 election, right? He said he was going to come out and pay $5 million to anyone who could disprove his data. So when you heard about this challenge,

what were your first thoughts? I had my doubts. I'd written some articles. So I'm a software forensics guy. I'm the guy that the courts pay to hack into systems legally during a litigation over intellectual property like patents. So I thought to myself, initially, when it came out with this, he didn't have it, but he kept saying that it was verified by cybersecurity experts. So I started to think, okay, maybe he does have the data that shows this hacking because he's got experts. In fact, I had contacted a lot of people in the Republican Party and the Trump administration, either directly or indirectly, with pressure from friends, because they said, Bob, you're the number one guy in the world. Now, they exaggerate a bit,

but I'm really good at this. And they said, you should be looking into this voter fraud. And you're a conservative Republican. We should. I'm a conservative Republican. It's been out there. You voted for Trump twice. Well, let's put a pin in that. So your friend said, you're the number one guy.

Look into this. So I wrote to different GOP, you know, influential people and offered my services. A few of them got back to me like Karl Rove and Karl Rove said, there seems to be nothing here, but thanks for your offer. And then Mike Lindell announces his symposium where he's going to give $5 million. He's got the proof. He's going to give it to the public and he'll offer $5 million to anyone who can disprove him. An analysis of this kind of data is going to take months. And the symposium was three days. You've had three days to analyze the data and disprove him. But friends of mine kept saying, look, it's $5 million. And I said, I'm not going to get $5 million. But the more I thought about it, I thought I'd be at an historical event where either

he's going to release data and the election is going to be overturned because it was fraudulent, or it wouldn't be overturned, but that would be big news too. Or you could make $5 million. Right. But I really didn't think realistically I was going to make $5 million. So I got my plane ticket to South Dakota, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. And essentially, within three hours of getting the data on day one, I knew it was fake. Wow. It wasn't election data. It wasn't related to the election.

It wasn't proof of hacking. It seemed to be nothing. I'll throw in a few technical terms, but I'll explain them. I saw these files that were text representations of hexadecimal. So the way I explain it is if you have the number 1069, if you saw it spelled out in English, the words 1000, like you write on a check. So what I did is I said, hey, what happens if I write the actual number instead of the words for the number, the text for the number?

actual number instead of the words for the number, the text for the number. So I did that. And I, so I converted it from text of a number to actual numbers, put that in a new file. And then I called that up in a text editor, just because that looked like text again, it kind of went from text to number to text. And I brought that up and I was looking at it and because I'm so old and experienced, I noticed that the text that I saw, the words that I saw were commands for a very old word processor called rich text format. It's before Microsoft Word. But I also knew that Microsoft Word could still read these very old files. So I said, oh, what happens if I call it up in Microsoft Word? And then when I called it up in Microsoft Word, it was thousands of pages of gibberish. But when I say gibberish, it was not like random.

You know, it's not like, you know, if you call up a file of ones and zeros, it'll often look like gibberish. But this looked like perfectly formatted gibberish. It had bold. It had italics. perfectly formatted gibberish. It had bold, it had italics, all the commands were there. It was no mistake. It's as if somebody sat there for hours and hours on end, just typing random characters. And so what I realized, that's what somebody did. They probably had a program that generated random characters in a word processor, converted it to binary, converted that to

text representations of hex, and then gave it to everybody and said, oh, look, this is really complicated data about the elections. Wow. Okay. So on the third day you submitted your findings, I guess, like, what do you do? You raise your hand and you're like, I got it. I got the answer. I'm thinking of some, you know, college, you're doing're like, I got it. I got the answer. I'm thinking of some college, you're doing your Scantrons or something. I don't know. I'd love to know what it actually looked like. But on the third day, you submitted your findings and you never heard back. So let's double click on that. How did that happen? Well, first of all, as an expert witness and as a writer,

I just wrote up everything in detail. They gave us more data each day. And so each day I had to rewrite the report for the new data they gave us. And I kept thinking, okay, this is how they're going to win. They're just going to keep throwing data at us. And on the third day, I had another eureka moment where I figured out how I could just describe because they gave us hundreds of gigabytes of data. It's just even to open up and it was 509 files, even to open up and look at each file would take a long time. But I figured out that there was a key. All these files were created shortly before the symposium, which was nine months after the election. So my argument was, you know, if they were created right before the symposium, there can't be data showing hacking of the election. And just to back, like, how did Mike Lindell think or argue that this data proved foul play? Look, Mike Lindell wrote an autobiography that I read when I was writing my book because I wanted to understand him.

And if you know, he was a drug addict, a crack cocaine addict, a gambling addict. And he found religion. He became a religious Christian and gave all that up. But my belief is that he still has an addictive personality, except now he's addicted to politics and Trump. And so he would not hear anything that disagreed with him. And by the way, the person who sold him the data is a known con artist, it turns out, after researching all this, who has conned many people. He's been in many, many lawsuits for fraud. And basically he understood he's like the drug dealer who understands Lindell's addiction. And he said, hey, you know, it's almost you can

picture him on the street corner, you know, opening up his French coat and saying, I've got data that proves that Trump really won. And Lindell needs that so badly. He bought it for $1.5 million, it turns out. And then anybody who disagreed with him, he fired. And he surrounded himself with people who just agreed with him. That's what Lindell's doing. Wow. And you also disagreed. Yes. It turns out. So, you know, I submitted my report. I submitted it first to the copyright office. So that way I'd have proof that I had written a report. I suspected that they would never acknowledge it, which they didn't until I brought my lawsuit. Okay. So yes, spoiler alert, you did hire lawyers, you filed an arbitration lawsuit. What motivated you to do that? Like,

did you think once you were there, you go through this data, you have all these smart people around you, you figure it out in record time. Did you think you were going to get one of those big checks like you see with the sweepstakes, like $5 million to Bob Ziedman. What did you think was going to happen? I really thought what happened was going to happen. I thought they would lose my entry and claim I just never submitted anything, which is basically they just ignored me. They didn't tell me anything. And so the real reason for the lawsuit was to bring this to the country's attention. This was dangerous. He's going around still claiming that China hacked our election system.

And I suspected that if I had a lawsuit going, and if I won the $5 million prize, which I wasn't sure what's going to happen, but I thought at least the lawsuit will be publicity, more people will pay attention. And sure enough, we have, we have a very results oriented society. I found this out in the past for a lot of things. If you prove that UFOs don't exist, nobody really wants to talk to you. But if you even say UFOs do exist, you know, you prove a positive. You don't even prove it. You just state it. Everybody wants to talk to you. So here, you know, basically getting them five million dollars is what piqued the media's interest. And suddenly people wanted to talk to me. And I became world famous, even though nothing was different except a panel of three arbitrators agreed with me. A quick, less sexy side note here. Arbitration lawsuit is commonly referred to as kind of the boring cousin of litigation, right? There's no judge, there's no jury, there's no courtroom. This is not a law and order type episode. Can you tell us more about the lawsuit? How long did it

last? So it lasted a year and a half. Lindell's legal team quit after three to six months. And so we had to start over again. And how did you even get your lawyers to begin with? Did they work on contingency? Yeah, so good question. So I had to do this on contingency. This was a very expensive lawsuit. And that's hard to do.

But I have connections. And one of them pointed me towards Bailey and Glasser. I wasn't familiar with them. They're, I would call, a medium-sized law firm, and they don't deal in much intellectual property, which I deal in. But they would do it on contingency, which was a big factor. And what were Lindell's lawyers arguing? I mean, it seems cut and dried, right?

There was this challenge, you beat the challenge, there was supposed to be a payout, period, the end. What was their argument countering that? So they had a very difficult catch-22. And I've got to tell you, it was one lawyer, the new lawyers hired, Alec Beck was his name. And I'll tell you, he was in a tough situation. And I'm not sure if he realized how tough his situation was. The agreement I signed before I could look at the data at the symposium, I had to sign this agreement. And it said I had to prove to win the five million. I had to prove with 100% certainty that the data was not related to the election. That was the term, related to the election. So we anticipated

what their strategy was going to be. In fact, the first lawyers they had who quit, they actually responded to our letter with their entire strategy, which is really stupid, I've got to say. I mean, you know, the response in a letter, you know, somebody writes you a letter saying we're about to start a lawsuit. The correct response, and I know this, is you're wrong and we'll show it at court. Instead, they said you're wrong and here's why, which was beautiful because now they can't back off of that. That's their official statement. The new lawyer couldn't back off it either. He was representing the client.

This is the client's statement. So the point was they were going to say Mr. Zeidman did not prove to 100 percent certainty. But our strategy was, the case took place in Minnesota where there's a consumer protection law that says any contest that's unwinnable is illegal. So our argument was, if I had to produce proof that was mathematically 100%, that is impossible to do. Therefore, the contest is impossible to win, and it's an illegal contest. Okay. So tell the folks at home, Bob, what the panel ultimately decided. Well, they ultimately decided that I was right, that I had proved that the data was not related to the election, and so I was to be awarded $5 million.

Well, not only that, but you also got a 10 percent annual interest rate in accordance with Minnesota law, right? Well, we filed for that. I think that will be approved probably, but that hasn't been ruled on. Mike Lindell has filed a very interesting challenge. His lawyers wrote it an appeal. They say the arbitrators were biased, which is not a basis for appeal because they had every right to vet them. I couldn't tell you what their politics are and nothing that in their opinion reflected anything about politics. But what's interesting is in his appeal, he says, we'll tell you why we believe this later on down the road. And you can't really file a court case where you say, we think we're right, but we're not going to tell you.

You just can't do that. Because look, every criminal in jail will write a letter to a judge and they do this saying, I'm innocent. And if you just said, oh, that's good enough for a retrial, you know, our system would collapse. The judges have to have a threshold where you've said, oh, that's good enough for a retrial, our system would collapse. The judges have to have a threshold where you've got to say, I have new evidence, I have something that was not considered, I can show bias. Right. So unlike earlier in the process where they laid out the entire case before you went to arbitration, this is where you actually, when you're appealing a ruling, need to lay out the rationale clearly and not use the tactic that probably should have been done in the initial response to you. Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back.

I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash. Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash. But I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the

property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. And now for some more money rehab. So Lindell is now appealing the ruling. He's claiming basically that you're part of a cover up, that the arbitrators are corrupt. Where are you in the process now?

Well, I'm just waiting. My lawyers have hired a lawyer because they that's just a formality. They have to do that. I'm sure that the appeal is going to be turned down, but Lindell will delay it as much as he can and appeal that. He claims he'll appeal to the Supreme Court. This is not a case the Supreme Court will ever hear because it's not a precedent-setting case. It's just a simple contract case. But he'll keep doing that to delay everything until he runs out of money. He's being sued by the voting machine manufacturers manufacturers and they're suing him for over a billion dollars each.

By the way, he tried, his legal team tried to keep our hearing confidential and he filed a motion and we objected to it. And the arbitrators basically came back. I mean, they agreed with our argument. Our argument was Mike Lindell can't keep this confidential when he's the one going around on television, national television, talking about the case, talking about the alleged voter fraud. But the argument of his lawyers was kind of funny. When he first got to make the argument, he said, well, Mr. Lindell is involved in a lot of other cases, and it could influence

those cases if his testimony here gets out. And I thought to myself, the interpretation is, if he wants to say something different that those other cases under oath, he wants that ability to do that. And the arbitrators saw through that. So just to be clear, you haven't seen $5 million? No, I, you know, I used to say, I don't think I will see it. But my lawyers are so good. I haven't told you about Brian Glass or the partner at the firm, if I can tell you a little bit about him. These are the kind of lawyers you need. And like I said, I've been in over 260 cases and yet the final

scene, I hope they make my book into a movie because this will be a great final scene for the movie. I'm into it. It was like a cross between my cousin Vinny and a few good men. Brian is over six feet tall. He's got a deep booming voice with a West Virginia accent. And Lindell's main witness was testifying and on cross-examination, Brian started asking him about this alleged data. We had a chart up of all the data that they claimed was in what they gave me. And one by one, we went through them and I won't go into the details because it'd take a while, but, you know, Brian starts saying, so you're telling me that most of this data doesn't even come from packet data. And he says, yes. And he says, and the remaining data doesn't tell you anything about the election, does it?

And the experts trying to dance around it. Well, it could be it's possible. I don't know. Maybe with further work. And finally, Brian, his whole six feet two is leaning over. He's walked up to this guy who's sitting down and he says, sir, you cannot tell me with moral certainty that this has anything to do with the election. And the expert says something quietly. He says, I can't hear you, sir. He says, no, I can't. Did you say, no, I can't. I just want to make sure I know what you're hearing. It was beautiful. Their own expert had basically come around to agreeing with me. The deposition dance is a fascinating one. I don't recall, I don't know, is just so painful. I don't know how you've been going through this for so long.

So do you think you'll ever see the money? So I didn't think so, just because I think Lindell is going to go broke from the other lawsuits. However, my lawyers are so good and so aggressive that I think we might see it. I mean, if anybody can do it, they can do it. Brian and his firm and Carrie are just experts in these kind of corporate litigations, breaking the corporate veil, piercing the corporate veil and actually getting money. They've been very successful at it. So if anyone can do it, they can do it. So, you know, my fingers are crossed. So if you do get the money besides paying your lawyers probably a million or two million bucks out of that, what will you do with the rest of the money?

So with my share, I've already started talking to some voter integrity groups. I want to make it clear that, so first of all, I think there was fraud in the 2020 election. The reason I think that, in fact, I'm certain of it, because every human endeavor has fraud. Anyone who says there's no fraud, and I really hate when people say, oh, there's no fraud in our elections, or it's insignificant. The problem is we don't know because we don't have the ability to measure it. And by fraud, you mean human error. You don't mean some widespread thing that Mike Lindell was trying to prove, right? You just mean the fact that there was a margin of error. People are touching ballots and things and inevitably something is going to go askew.

Well, I do think there are people with bad intentions, too. How much they were able to get away with, I don't know. And that's not specific to the 2020 election, right? Like that's fraud that happens in elections all the time in all countries. Right. But let me say that I think with the rules that were put in place because of COVID, I think made more opportunities for fraud. But what I believe... For error. Right. And error. Right. Exactly.

I think the voting machine is very unlikely. So I'm trying to find voter integrity groups. And when I get my money, I want to support the best one that's going to actually look into these issues legitimately. that's going to actually look into these issues legitimately. But you're saying you want to look into the 2020 election specifically, not the 2016 election, not the 2012 election. I mean, using fraud, you understand, connotes that there was like Putin coming in or China coming in,

and there was some big orchestrated effort. You're essentially looking for human error, margin of error. Right. And so, you know, whether we apply it to the 2020 election, what I'd like to do, it'd be great if I could do something to just put in, look, I've talked to, for example, a professor at Stanford who has proposed systems for, by the way, this has been going on since the 2000 election. And it used to be Democrats who are pushing for this. Now it's Republicans pushing for more ways of validating election votes. You know, I can tell you when I voted. Yeah, we have, we all have nightmares, Bob, of the hanging chads. I mean, I covered that. I still have nightmares. Well, I voted, you know, 2020, I voted in Nevada. And I just thought this was ironic. I went into

the polling place, went through the entire ballot, you know, on the electronic machine. And at the end, it gave me an error message. And I called someone over and they said, oh, it didn't record it. You have to do it again. So how many times is that happening, for example? And did it record to my vote twice or just once? I have no way of knowing. So just to point out again, you're a conservative Republican. You participated in this competition. Perhaps you were torn politically about doing this in the first place. I mean, I think Lindell probably saw this competition as the first step in overturning the election. You voted for Trump twice, I should say. So that's also what you wanted. Were you conflicted in participating? No, no. For two reasons. Well, first of say, Sue, that's also what you wanted. Were you conflicted in participating? No, no. For two reasons. Well, first of all, one, you know, so I belong to a group called No Labels.

And we are Democrats, Republicans have come together, hoping that the election is not between Biden and Trump. My feeling is that neither candidate is good for this country. But I voted for Trump as, you know, what I consider the lesser of two evils. And people can disagree with me, but I really don't want him in office. I'll be upfront about that. You don't want Trump in office? I don't want Trump. I don't want Biden in office. Who do you want in office?

I don't know. I mean, I'm not really sure at this point. But let me say that one thing that I've committed myself to is being ethical and finding the truth. And so, for example, I was called up years ago to be an expert on a case that was going to bring down one of my Republican heroes, a man I actually knew personally and had a lot of respect for. And they called me up and I said, you know, I know him and I contributed to his campaign. And why are you asking me? And they said, well, you're the best in the country and we want the best. And I talked to friends and I thought about it. I think I talked to my rabbi about it. I mean, what do I do? I'm conflicted. But I have a policy that I will take every single case that comes to me, and I will report the truth. And the truth is sometimes not good for my client. And I just tell them, here's what I found,

and it doesn't support what you want it to support. And in that case, I thought I can't break my rules just because this is someone who I respect. And I said, also, if they find a different expert, a lot of experts, I hate to say this, a lot of experts will stretch the truth and some will break the truth. And I really hate that. So I decided- That's a tukkun olam.

Did your rabbi tell you? You know, I think, yeah, you know, well, do what you think. This idea in Judaism that, you know, refers to different actions intended to, that you should do to repair and improve the world overall. Right. So, you know, I made that decision and I decided that I will be truthful and honest, and whatever I find, I will report. If you had to do this all over again, would you?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, you should ask me if I lose. I was involved in a case like this that I lost. If you asked me about that one, I'd say I'd do it all over again, but I would have made some changes. But this one I won. I don't know if I'll see the money, but I won. I got a lot of publicity. I brought this to national attention. So yeah, I'm really happy with the outcome. We end all of our episodes with a tip that listeners can take straight to the bank. If a listener is debating taking someone to court over money, maybe it's an arbitration suit,

maybe it's a small claims suit, what piece of advice would you give them on how to decide whether or not it's worth the money and the time? Yeah, that's a tough one. So if you're doing it out of matter of principle, which I'm okay with, just make sure you've got the money to cover all the expenses, which can be really high. If you're doing it because you want to get the money, one thing I can tell you is if you get a lawyer to write a letter to the other side,

get a lawyer to write a letter to the other side, that gets most people to the negotiating table. If they don't get to the negotiating table, if you file the legal papers, that brings almost everybody to the negotiating table. If you file the legal papers and they still don't want to negotiate, then you've got to be prepared for a long, expensive case. And that's a decision about how much do you care about principle and how much do you care about the money? More importantly, the time, right? Time is more valuable than money. We can always get more money. We can't get more time. I have friends who have gone through years-long lawsuits and whether or not they ultimately get money or not, they're most regretful that they wasted or spent so much time on this that they'll never get back. Do you ever think about that? I do a lot. And that's why, look, most times

I go to court or threaten to go to court, just the threat, especially backed up by a lawyer, brings people to the negotiating table. It frustrates me. I like to say I've done more negotiations than any person on the planet. I've negotiated probably 300 contracts of my own and contracts for other people. And what I found is what's frustrating to me is that when there's a disagreement over some kind of contract, a lot of people don't want to negotiate. They just don't want to meet with you. And so the letter gets them to meet with you. Once they meet with you, you're likely to get a negotiation. And by the way, you have to give something up. And usually that's money. I know some people say,

they owe me X amount of dollars, $10,000. I'm not going to settle for less. You know what? Sometimes if you get two, you should be happy because it's better than nothing. You know what? Sometimes if you get two, you should be happy because it's better than nothing. And it's also better than spending years trying to get the 10 and maybe getting it or maybe not. Now, the main reason for moving forward all the way to the end is if you're doing it out of principle. And I admire people who do that. I do that myself. But you've got to make sure that you're going to cover the entire cost and not expect to get anything back. Unless you work on contingency. Do you have any tips for getting lawyers to work on contingency? It's hard. So I once had a lawyer, a big law firm working on contingency for me on a patent case. And the way I put it is after a year of working on

contingency, I fired them because they were too expensive. The thing is even zero cost can be bad if the lawyers are not doing a good job. Yeah, or they're making it worse or messing it up. I would also say I recently hired a lawyer on contingency and I found this out in the process that you can negotiate your contingency as well. So it went from, he sent me a contract for 30% contingency, and then I negotiated it down to, I think it was 20%.

Well, everything's negotiable. In fact, I've got, sometime in the future, I want to write a book on negotiations. Like I said, I've done a lot of them. And what a lot of people don't understand is that everything's negotiable, but I also believe it's better to have a win-win situation than a win-lose i the best way to negotiate is to find out what the other party wants figure out what they want that you don't care much about and give them what they want that you don't care about and then they've won they got something better and it didn't matter that much to you people don't seem to understand that and it's not always money by the way. I've gone into negotiations with people and I've seen somebody try to negotiate for you know for a better money deal but you realize that if you realize the other party wants respect or their name

in a on a paper and a book or they want some publicity or whatever it is, you can trade that for the money because that matters more to them. Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoie. Our researcher is Emily Holmes. Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions, moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagram at moneynews and TikTok at moneynewsnetwork for exclusive video

content. And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.