Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Scammed Millions of Dollars With Pigeons - The Arlan Galbraith Story

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

Apparently we need to get into the pigeon racing business 😳-Arlan Galbraith known as The Pigeon King, ran one of Canada’s strangest and most devastating Ponzi schemes, convincing hundreds of farmers across Canada and the U.S. to buy expensive breeding pigeons with promises that he would buy back the offspring at a guaranteed profit. Galbraith claimed he was building a massive pigeon-meat and racing-bird industry, but no such market existed, and the only money coming in was from new farmers joining the scheme.

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and he's living in Canada, and bro really, really loves pigeons. He loves raising them, he loves training them, he also happens to love money. Now, he and his family, they have a farm, and they raise cattle and pigs and stuff, but what he's really focused on are the pigeons, specifically raising. Pigeons, which are like a pigeon trained to race. Here's some sample footage of pigeon racing just so you can sort of see what it looks like. And so one day in 1980, the worst thing happens to Arlen. The dude goes broke, and he has to file for bankruptcy.

So now, in order to earn a living, he has to do farm work for other people just to keep himself and his family afloat. Now, it's around this time that he starts getting more involved with his local pigeon racing communities. And he becomes a member of several official pigeon racing organizations. And he breeds pigeons and he races them for years. And so decades pass. And it's now 2001. And around this time, he decides he doesn't want to be broke anymore. And he gets this idea to start a company around pigeon racing and breeding.

But the problem is he isn't particularly doing anything special to set him apart from other pigeon racing companies. So he thinks the only way to get people's attention is to just lie. So he starts telling people that he's developed his own genetic line of pigeons, like super pigeons. And these super pigeons are specifically bred for racing, and they're going to be the fastest pigeons anyone's ever seen. So he sets up this company based around this lie, and he calls it Pigeon King International. Then he starts running classified ads in some local farming magazines, trying to recruit some investors. And this surprisingly works.

Soon, he's in meetings with investors who are mostly just farmers, but they're willing to invest. And he like bullshicks these guys. He tells them this whole story about how pigeon racing is huge in the Middle East and that he has contracts in Saudi Arabia and how there's so much money to be made selling racing pigeons in that part of the world. Arlen even brings along a picture of Mike Tyson to these meetings

and he shows it to people because Mike Tyson is, I guess, famously into pigeon racing. So Arlen tells these investors that he sold pigeons to Mike Tyson before. And these farmer investor guys are impressed and they like believe him. Now, Arlen tells these people that if they buy two of his super racing pigeons off of him and breed them, he guarantees that he will buy back all the pigeons off spring later at a higher price. So they will end up making money off this deal. It's not just buying birds.

this is actually an investment, according to him. But regardless, it works. The people are like, sold. So now the money is flowing in, and Arlen is pulling in new investor after new investor. Now, in order to keep investors believing that his scam is legit, he is actually fulfilling part of his deal. When the first investors come back with their offspring pigeons,

Arlen does, in fact, buy them from them. Then he just finds more investors to sell those baby pigeons, to and he tells them the same lie. So it's not long before this pigeon selling scam turns into one big Ponzi scheme where he buys back the young bird from current investors and sells those same pigeons to new investors. And if you're like Ray so what he's not scamming that much money how how much could a few pigeons really cost? Well actually they cost a lot because each investor buys a lot from him. One family even takes out a loan and borrows $125,000 from the bank to buy 360 pairs of pigeons.

So all of this adds up really quickly. And Arlen soon, he's making millions of dollars off this bird scam. But then things get even worse. Because apparently, these millions of dollars just aren't enough for Arlen. He wants more. And so, after spending so much time telling all his lies about prize-winning super pigeons, I guess Arlen starts thinking that he can make even more money if he makes up a different lie. So he starts telling his

investor slash farmers that he is going to eventually sell these pigeons that people are breeding to the meat market for people to eat. And that pigeon meat, which is known as Squab, squab is going to be the next big thing. And that it's going to be the equivalent of chicken and that

in five years everyone's going to be eaten at McDonald's ordering a mixed squab. And surprisingly, this works too. It keeps investors interested. And more and more people buy into Arlen's scam. And as more people buy into the scam, Arlen expands his company. He hires other salesmen and they start recruiting people to buy the pigeons outside of Canada, like in Pennsylvania and across the American Midwest.

And so now, Arlen has built a whole community of pigeon breeders. And in 2007, hundreds of breeders are made. making literally thousands of dollars a year selling pigeons back to Arlen. And Arlen, he's pulling in a ton of money as well. And so he just keeps building on this Ponzi scheme and building his wealth. Until... Until around 2007. When a Minanite Nut Grower somehow discovers that Arlenzance whole pigeon selling operation

is just one big get-rich quick scheme. And I don't know if this guy buy pigeons from. Arlen, or what, but the guy figures it out. And he goes and he ends up tipping off this guy, Thornton. And Thornton is like a one-man vigilante. He runs a website where he tries to take down scammers operating things like pyramid schemes and Ponzi schemes and such. So Thornton is very interested in hearing about this super pigeon scam that Arlin is doing. And when he starts investigating and looking into it, he immediately sees that it's shady as hell. And so now Thornton is determined to stop it. And so he gets to work and he starts posting online all about

Pigeon King International because he's trying to warn others about investing. Then he starts hitting up banks and feed companies in agricultural areas in North America and telling them all about this scam and telling them to not get involved. So it seems like he's trying to make as much noise as possible so that he can stop people from investing. And so suddenly there's a whole lot of focus on Arlin and his pigeon business. And then, this local Ontario magazine called Better Farming decides to do a piece on Arlen's business. And they like speak with pigeon experts and squab processors and the whole thing.

And they conclude the same thing that Thornton does. That it's just highly unlikely that there's this huge market for pigeons that Arlin is over here preaching about. And so the magazine publishes a 16-page expose on Pigeon King International. And pretty quickly, this article freaks investors out, and they stop buying the birds. And so Arlen goes from not having enough pigeons to keep up with demand, to having holding barns full of these birds because no one is willing to buy. And with no more investors coming in, he can no longer buy all those pigeon offspring he was

supposed to buy. And so his Ponzi scheme officially falls apart. And in 2008, poor Arlen is forced to close up pigeon king. International and file for bankruptcy. And of course, he takes no responsibility and blames everything on fearmongering and on people like Thornton. But by this point, he's taken an estimated $42 million from investors. Investors gave him $42 million for pigeons. Anyway, him filing for bankruptcy causes a trustee to review his finances and I guess they see some shady Ponzi scheme business going on and they hand the case over to Ontario police,

and so then they start investigating, and it takes a couple of years, but in 2009, the police have built their case against him, and so bam, they arrest him. And I can't find his mugshot, but here's a picture of him in real life. And so ultimately, he goes to trial, and he decides to be his own lawyer and represent himself,

which, unsurprisingly, doesn't go well for him. And he's found guilty, and he's sentenced, to seven years in prison.