Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

Episode Date: May 11, 2025

During the 2016 Rio Olympics, U.S. swimmer Ryan Lochte falsely claimed that he and three teammates were robbed by men posing as police officers. In reality, surveillance footage later revealed that the group had vandalized a gas station bathroom and were confronted by security guards, leading to a payment for damages rather than an armed robbery.#truecrime #truestory #riodejaneiro #raywilliamjohnson

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My whole world is falling apart right now. It's chaos. Watch the Hulu original series. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for Bumno subscribers. Terms apply. Remember when this famous athlete destroyed his career by lying about a robbery? Now his name is Ryan and Ryan is 32 during this time and he's a very well-known Olympic swimmer.

Like the dude has five gold medals. He's like a hero to little kids and shit. But one night in 2016, he screws it all up because the Summer Olympics are happening in Brazil in Rio de Janeiro. And boom, Ryan wins yet another gold medal because of course he did. Afterwards, he decides to go out with some of his teammates and celebrate. And so they head over to a party, where they drink a ton with a bunch of other athletes. And hours go by, and it's now five in the morning. And these guys are still out partying, because I guess it's just that kind of night.

But eventually, Ryan and three of his fellow swim buddies are done. They've had their fun. And so they call a taxi to take them back to the Olympic Village where they're staying. And these four guys, now they're in this taxi heading back and the taxi stops at a gas station on the way. And the four guys get out and they go to the restroom. Now for some reason, that reason is probably alcohol, Ryan and the other guys, they start acting like dicks. They break the restroom door, they apparently break the soap dispenser off the wall, they damage a mirror, and they tear down a please do not enter sign off the wall.

And here's actually some security footage of the guys. exiting the restroom afterwards. And to top it all off, Ryan ends up peeing outside in public. But whatever, when they're done, they get back into their taxi, like nothing ever happened. But then, I guess the gas station workers discover the damage. And they're like, what the fuck? And so they go over to Ryan's taxi and order Ryan and the three bros to get out. Then these armed security guards show up. And they're like, you have to pay for the damage you did now, or else we're calling the police. Here's the thing though. The security guards are speaking Portuguese and Ryan and his friends they don't speak Portuguese so they have no idea what's going on.

And so a local bystander who just happens to also speak English, he starts translating for them. And it turns out one of the security guards tells them to sit down until all this is figured out. Now Ryan and his swim bros, they're still pretty drunk and they're also all scared. And so three of them are like, sure, whatever, here's some money. and they hand over $20 to pay for the damage. And another one of them hands over $100 reals, which is like the equivalent of $30 US dollars. And Ryan, he doesn't hand them anything.

Like he's not about to be extorted. And so he stands back up and he starts yelling at the guards. Like he didn't do anything wrong. And all this commotion starts to cause a scene. Now allegedly, and this part is in dispute, but allegedly then the security guard pulls out his pew-pute. And he tells Ryan to chill the fuck out. And so Ryan chills out.

And ultimately, the swimmers are allowed to get in the taxi and leave. Then they go back to their Olympic village where they're staying. And they go to bed thinking, well, that sucked. We were just goofing around and we got confronted by gas station security guards. But whatever, not a big deal. It's not like anyone's ever going to know. Until. Until Ryan talks to this woman, his mom.

Now, Ryan's mom is also in Rio de Janeiro, probably to see her son compete in the Olympics. But at some point, somehow, while she's there, she breaks her foot. And so anyway, at some point that day, Ryan is talking to his mom and he tells her what happened the night before, but he exaggerates the story. And he tells his mom that he was robbed at gunpoint. Later, his mom is out, and she gets on a local shuttle bus. And she sits down and a guy sitting next to her notice. She's got a hurt foot and he asks her if she's okay and they start chatting and she tells the guy that her trip to Brazil sucks because she broke her foot and also because last night her son Ryan got robbed at gunpoint because that's what he had told her

Now that guy she's talking to just happens to be an Australian reporter and so this Australian reporter is like oh shit an Olympic athlete got robbed at gunpoint Croyky! And so he goes and he tweets, Breaking News, gold medalist Ryan Locti has been held up at gunpoint at a party in Brazil. And then, of course, the rest of the media starts printing the story and they run with it. But then it gets worse. Because around the same time, Ryan happens to run into this guy, Billy Bush. And Billy Bush is the TV host, and he's also the same Billy Bush who was on those Access Hollywood grabbing by the pussy tapes years ago with the three.

president. Same guy. But anyway, Billy Bush is also in Rio de Janeiro for the Olympics, and he coincidentally runs into Ryan and he wants to get an interview. And in this interview, Billy asks him about this news he had heard about him getting robbed. And Ryan starts to exaggerate the story again. He says he got robbed by some cops. They pulled us over. They pulled out their guns. And then the guy pulled out his gun. He cocked it, put it to my forehead and said, get down. And he took our. money. He took my wallet. He then reiterates this robbery story on Twitter. And so now the news media, instead of talking about the Olympics, they're talking about how this athlete got robbed in Brazil

by guys pretending to be cops. U.S. gold medalist Ryan Locti and three of his swimming teammates say they were held at gunpoint when men posing as police swarm their taxis. Now of course, this is a huge international story. And so Brazilian police start investigating. And they start asking the swim bros questions about what happened, like, why didn't you report the crime right away? And funny enough, none of them could remember the details, like what color the taxi was they were in. Now at this point, Brazilian police are looking at security footage of Ryan and the guys from that morning when they had just returned to the Olympic village. And they're thinking, these guys don't look like they were just robbed. And so eventually, they get suspicious. And they order Ryan and the other three bros,

passports to be taken until they can get to the bottom of the robbery that they believe might be made up. However, lucky for Ryan, he had already left Brazil and flown back to the U.S. But two of the other guys hadn't left Brazil yet, and so they're questioned and immediately they admit that Ryan had greatly exaggerated this robbery story. They weren't robbed by guys pretending to be the Brazilian police. they were confronted by gas station security guards after they roughed up a bathroom. Then a few days later, Brazilian police

find the gas station this took place at and they get surveillance footage from the security cameras which confirms that, yeah, the robbery story was made up. And so they hold a press conference telling the world Ryan's story was bullshit. And of course, this scandal blows the fuck up. I mean, it is everywhere.

It's all over the news. It's all over the internet. This is easily one of the biggest stories of 2016. And so then, Ryan, he's got to do the embarrassing thing and, like, apologize. And he makes an Instagram post and he apologizes there. And then he goes on the Today Show and does it there. That's why I'm taking full responsibility for it. Because I over-exaggerated that story.

And if I'd never done that, we wouldn't be in this mess. And as a result of his actions, the Olympic Committee suspends him from swimming in competitions for 10 months and he loses a ton of money because he loses like four major sponsorships. And in Brazil, Ryan is actually charged with false reporting a crime, but ultimately those charges get dropped. And unfortunately for him at the end of all of this, this like really screwed up his whole career. It was insane.