Scamfluencers - Bill Mize: The Car Crash King | 221

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

Bill Mize always believed he was destined for fortune – he just couldn’t figure out how to get it. After flaming out as a restaurateur and drug dealer, Bill finally found his calling: orchestrating a sprawling fraud ring of staged slip-in-falls and car wrecks for insurance money. He recruited his closest friends and family into the scheme, then skimmed some of their portion of the payouts. His obsession with control over everyone in his orbit eventually led to his downfall – and a run from the authorities that made national headlines.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Audible subscribers can listen to all our episodes of scam influencers ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. A heads up to our listeners. This episode contains mention of suicide. Please listen with care. Sachi, maybe this is a dark thought, but have you ever been so broke you kind of wish to get a lot of money in a small, non-threatening or life-ruining settlement of some kind? I was hoping to get like a bunch of money from that like AI book lawsuit. Remember there was that class action that was like if your book has been used for AI training,

you were owed a little bit of money. I'm waiting. I'm still waiting. Well, I'm still waiting for my $49 in the Canadian bread fixing scam. I knew you were going to talk about the bread fixing. Which I'm also owed money from that. I lived there when that happened and I haven't seen a dime. Yes, you are owed money, but I did it right at the deadline. Sorry. A friend of mine just got $49.

Everyone's getting $49.11 or something. Well, today, I'm going to tell you about a proud patriarch who went to incredibly dangerous and sadistic length to get the life he deserves by forcing his family to pay the price. It's March 2014 in the Mojave Desert outside Henderson, Nevada. Angela Tarty is standing alone on the side of a highway in a pair of yoga pants, shielding her eyes from the hot, son. She's 30 years old with a round face and bright red hair. There's a knot in her stomach as she watches what's happening only a hundred feet away. Angela's father, Bill Mize, is behind the wheel of her seabring convertible. He's 53 years old with graying brown hair and hands decked out in gold rings and chain bracelets. He's a big guy with a square jaw and a smile that makes it clear

he's had Botox. Until recently, he and Angela have been estranged. But after years of watching her brother receive her father's love and admiration, she started to feel left out. So when Bill invited her here today, she said yes, even though what he's asking her to do is scary.

She's hoping to earn her dad's love and respect. Bill slams his foot down on the Seabrings accelerator, kicking up a dusty trail behind him. He takes aim at an idling, Mercedes, where his wife sits in the passenger seat. The seabring smashes into the Mercedes, and the sound of the crash echoes off the nearby desert cliffs. As soon as the cars come to arrest, Angela nervously walks towards them.

Bill exits a seabring as smoke pours out from under the hood. Angela takes his place in the driver's seat and slams the door shut. Then, Bill speeds off in a third vehicle. Once he's out of sight, Angela calls 911. When the police and paramedics arrive, they examine everyone for injuries. They find concussions, bruises, and open wounds from the crash. Angela axed and says, how could I have done this? Angela repeats the line she rehearsed with Bill,

that she'd been out hiking in the desert all day and was exhausted. She leaned over in the car to grab a CD, and then, boom. It's scary to lie so brazenly to the people sent here to help. But Bill told Angela that for her first staged crash, she'd have to play the at-fault driver. Angela isn't just doing a favor for her dad. She's being initiated into the family business. Bill has been orchestrating crashes like this for years, with the help of his wife, his kids, and a whole bunch of friends. These people in the crumpled Mercedes, they're in on it.

And the bruises, cuts, and injuries all over them were created by Bill before the crash using razor blades, sandpaper, and dirt. Right. So just to clarify, they're faking a crash. Her dad is making her fake the crash. And then he's also cutting her with razor blades and sandpaper and rubbing dirt on her. Exactly. Yeah. That's exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Also, playing the at-fault driver is harder and there's less money in it. But if Angela pulls this off, Bill says he'll let her play one of the victims one day.

That's when she'll see some real money. This crash alone nets Bill more than a quarter of a million dollars from insurance companies. He's got dozens of scams like this one already under his belt. But Bill's about to learn that you can only crash so many cars before the wheels come off for good. I'm Razor Jaffrey, and in the new season of The Spy Who, we go back in time to meet Benedict Arnold, the spy who betrayed the American Revolution. As America fights for freedom from Britain, Arnold emerges as one of the rebels' greatest generals. But when his loyalty is pushed to the limit, he turns spy and devises a plot to shatter the rebellion and make George Washington a prisoner. Follow the Spy Who now, wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can also listen to the full season of the Spy Who betrayed the American Revolution early in ad-finding. free on Audible. I'm Leon Nefok. What happens when OnlyFans becomes more than just a side hustle? Only Fantasy is an in-depth look at the world's newest profession and how the rules of human intimacy are being rewritten online. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Or binge all episodes of OnlyFantasy, add free only on Audible.

From Audible originals, I'm Sarah Hagi, and I'm Sachi Cole. And this is Scamfluencers. Legend. Bill Mize came from humble beginnings, but always believed he was destined for fortune. And once he came into a sizable inheritance, his main character syndrome went into overdrive. After failing as a restaurateur and drug dealer,

Bill finally found his calling, orchestrating a fraud ring of staged slip-and-falls and car wrecks. Bill liked to lecture people about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, but all he ever did was treat the people closest to him like crash test dummies. then conned them out of much of their share of the insurance payout. Bill's obsessed with exerting control over his family, financially, emotionally, and physically. But there's only so much even the most loyal family members can take. And eventually, the rubber will meet the road on Bill's dead-end scam.

This is Bill Mize, the car crash king. To understand how Bill came to threaten the lives of his closest friends and family for cash, we need to go back to 1979 in the suburbs of San Francisco. Bill is 17, a nebish guy with granny glasses, and today's a big day because he's meeting his biological father for the first time. His dad's name is William Mize II, and he wants to officially adopt Bill. Up until now, Bill has had a pretty turbulent childhood. He was born out of wedlock in El Paso, Texas, and raised by a single mother named Eve. Eve wasn't in a hurry to settle down, but she did spend a lot of time with wealthy men,

and this taught young Bill that a man's value is based on his wealth. Eventually, they settled in the Bay Area with one of these male suitors who became Bill's stepdad, but it was a toxic dynamic. His stepdad sometimes beat Bill so severely he couldn't attend school. Eve and his stepdad divorced after four years, but Eve never began to be able to be able to became a truly maternal figure. In fact, at one point, she left Bill in the care of another woman for a period of time. Bill later claims he was left in an orphanage. This childhood full of abuse, uncertainty, and neglect left Bill looking for some kind of control over his life.

And he found it through work. Bill got his first job at the age of 12 as a barback. He dropped out of high school after freshman year and emancipated himself at 16. By age 17, he owned his own home. For Bill, this newfound financial stability is a huge change from his rough childhood. And this is when, out of nowhere, his birth father reappears in his life, wanting to adopt him. We're not sure how this happened or why his dad reached out after so long, but Bill is thrilled. His birth father is a restaurateur from a well-known family in Kentucky, the kind of lineage that comes with old money

and a respected name. Bill agrees to adopt the surname Mize. And Sachi, we don't know why, but he decides to skip over being William Mize III, and he goes right for William Mize the 4th. For him, the discovery seems to affirm what he's always felt. He was meant to be someone who people respected, adored, and feared. What a scary thing to think about yourself,

because it also sort of suggests that he's been, biding his time to some degree waiting for someone to rescue him with a better narrative about himself. And here he is, and it is supercharging his absolute worst instincts. Yeah, I mean, it's truly one of those classic villain origin stories. Around this time, Bill visits his sister in Idaho, and when he gets there, he meets the girl babysitting her children, 14-year-old Teresa Maston. Teresa has dark hair and curious eyes, and she's immediately drawn in by Bill's long hair, confidence, and romantic sensibility. Despite the age gap, they start dating, and a year later, when Teresa is just 15 years old, she gives birth to a son, and they get married.

Bill has overcome a difficult, insecure childhood. Now he has a home, a wife, and a son, William Mize V. He sees fatherhood as motivation, not only to support his family, but to build the kind of empire he's always believed he deserved. Seven years later, Teresa and Bill are living in Sacramento. It's 1987, and they've added a daughter, Angela, to their family. Bill's now 27, and he's been working as a regional manager of TGI Fridays, adding shifts at a Tiki restaurant to make ends meet. His life isn't glamorous. but he's as determined as ever to make something of himself. In the last few years, Teresa has started to see the darker side of the long-haired hippie she married.

Bill is a serious control freak. They have constant disagreements over how to raise their kids. He wants more discipline, more control over them. But Teresa never rains them in the way he wants. Then Teresa learns tragic news. Bill's birth father, the man who came along, and gave him a sense of self and his name, has died. But Bill doesn't have a normal reaction to his father's death.

Rather than mourning, Bill seems thrilled. Because his dad has left him an inheritance of $700,000 and a house in Arizona. Sachi, can you read what Teresa later tells New York Magazine about how this money changes Bill? Yeah, this is what she said. It, quote, just changed his whole DNA. Almost like within 24 hours, he was completely evil. Money is so corrupting. Like, $700,000 isn't that much money,

but it doesn't take a lot of money for someone to indulge in their worst self. Sometimes it doesn't take much. Well, Teresa struggles to keep up as her husband transforms in front of her. The family moves to Acapulco where Bill works renting water ski boats to tourists. But Teresa can't stand it there. And after just a month, she moves back to the States alone. About a year later, Bill and the kids move back too. And he's ready to restart his life.

He buys a motorboat and a corvette. And with the rest of his inheritance money, he opens a bar and restaurant called Cricket's Food and Spirits. He wants it to be Sacramento's version of Cheers. Teresa should be happy, right? Bill and the kids are back in the U.S., and her husband seems to be putting his inheritance to good use. But somehow, she gets stuck doing all of the dirty work

of actually running the restaurant. Meanwhile, Bill saunteres in every night, dressed to impress, and barks orders from his corner table. I never worked in food service. I was a retail girly famously. Same. RIP smart set and Jacob. But I feel like this kind of restaurant guy

is very well known. Everyone's been at a restaurant or a bar where the manager is just yelling at everybody. And that guy sucks. He sucks so much. He thinks he's better than the servers. He thinks he's somehow worked harder than everybody. These are the worst restaurants to go to.

Yeah, it's really Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares vibe. Like, I could see the episode in my head. And it's not long before their marriage falls apart. This time, Teresa Lee's, for good, and she and Bill start divorce proceedings. The ensuing custody battle is vicious. Eventually, a psychologist is assigned to evaluate Bill's dynamic with his children. And the psychologist seems to validate Teresa's feelings, saying that, quote,

the father is controlling, extremely narcissistic, arrogant, and at times insists on his way. In response, in his declaration to the court, Bill takes pot shots at Teresa's new boyfriend. friend. He says, quote, he seems to represent a social class I had worked so hard to raise my family above. Oh, God, I hate people like this. Just own where you're from and be about it. But this thing of like, I'm better than it and I worked harder and I refused to be dragged down by some plebe. Guy, shut up. You got one inheritance check. It's not even that much money. You got one inheritance check and you own a fancy applebees. Yeah, I mean, he's a class traitor.

Yeah. So the court ends up granting the couple joint custody. But on New Year's Day, when Teresa goes to pick up the kids, there's no trace of them. Panicked, she contacts the sheriff's office. They search for Bill and the kids for hours to no avail. She later finds out that Bill took them to Acapulco and they have no intention of ever returning. Teresa is devastated. She's finally free of Bill, but at the cost of her children. She's distraught and shocked that she was married to someone for so long without realizing

his true dark nature, but she has no idea how dark things are about to get. It's a year later, and 33-year-old Bill is living it up in Alcapulco with his kids, Will, and Angela. By now, Bill has a booming business smuggling marijuana from Mexico up to the States, bringing in around $100,000 a year. He's got a gorgeous cliffside villa overlooking the water, and it's so palatial, he even has room for his cousin and her son Ryan to move in. Ryan's dad isn't in the picture, and they're barely getting by, so Bill rescues them and whisks them off to Mexico. According to Ryan, Bill was their savior.

Bill hasn't said why he went from owning a California restaurant to smuggling weed abroad, but maybe he wanted to get rid of anything that reminded him of Teresa. He did more than close crickets. He destroyed the place on closing night. He broke mirrors, poured Coca-Cola all over the floors, and used a shotgun to shoot holes in the walls and ceilings. Then he fled to Mexico. I don't know if he's destroying his property.

property because he's enraged or because he's going to file some bullshit insurance claim later. But this is so petulant. He shot into his walls and poured coke everywhere. That is idiotic. I mean, it is pretty annoying to clean up a sticky, spilled bottle of coke, so I do understand. After living in Mexico for a year and a half, Bill moves the entire family back to California. Teresa later says that she wasn't told they came back and that by the time she found out,

the kids seemed well established in their new home and school district and she didn't want to disrupt their lives. But it turns out those lives weren't all that stable because Bill is still smuggling drugs. And even though Will Jr. is 14 and Angela is only 10, they both tag along to work with him. Meaning they take family cruises back and forth from the U.S. to Mexico sneaking pot aboard the ship.

One day in 1994, Bill is sitting in the cruise ship lounge when a brunette woman with sparkling eyes approaches him. Her name is Sandy Tolento, and she invites him to have a drink. Bill tells Sandy that he operates a water-skeying business in Mexico. Even though his look is a bit dorky, his gaudy jewelry and purple tuxedo jacket really do it for Sandy. Bill soon learns that Sandy has a criminal justice degree. But when she eventually figures out his real occupation,

she apparently doesn't care. Good men are hard to find, I guess. They are hard to find, which is why you should just try to not find them. Yeah, I agree. There's no point. Give it up. Get a hobby.

Learn how to knit. Juggle. If you're the kind of girl who's into bad boys, like don't go for Bill. We can do better. go for someone wearing a leather jacket or something. I don't know. Yeah, this isn't even a cool drug to smuggle.

Weed? No, his kids are there. Boring. Well, Bill and Sandy officially start dating, and she's supportive of Bill's criminal activities. His kids stay with her in California, while Bill makes smuggling trips back and forth to Mexico. When Bill is thrown in a Guadalajaran jail for drug running,

Sandy brings the kids to visit. Bill gets out of jail a few months later and decides to give up the cartel life to flip properties in Vegas with Sandy as his realtor. But he's also running multiple small scams on the side. For example, he steals luggage from airports and reports it missing.

The airlines pay him up to $2,500 per bag. And by the new millennium, with all the money he's pulling in, Bill starts to splurge. He gets a bunch of cosmetic surgeries to become the beefcake he's always wanted to be. He gets corrective eye surgery, a nose job, and even his eyebrows tattooed on.

He's also now in great shape and tans regularly. Bill loves being the hot shot who drops off the kids at school in a jaguar. Bill also buys a huge McMansion in a gated community on the Washington and Idaho border. The house is perched on a cliffside, which lets Bill literally look down on his neighbor, like a king. Sachi, can you please describe these pictures of the inside of Bill's house?

Yeah, I got to say, these rooms look like what Trump would do if he didn't have any money. It's just like very masculine. The woods are all really dark, dark wood flooring, darkwood tables and bars and chairs, high back chairs. It's very rococo, a lot of leather couches. These are the rooms I would see in 90s pornography. It is uki-spooky and really male. It looks like the inside of the Bada Bing from Sopranos. Yeah, I think Trump would have loved that. In addition to the house, Bill and Sandy

buy sparkly outfits for their Chihuahua, Chica. Bill is finally transforming into the all-powerful, visually arresting Trump-esque figure he's always dreamed of being. But his time smuggling taught him something crucial. Keep it in the family. So that's exactly what he's going to do, whether they like it or not. It's 2007 and 46-year-old Bill is meeting with his nephew, Ryan.

Ryan's now in his mid-20s with short black hair and a square jaw. He looks like a quarterback with sweet eyes. But behind those eyes, he's under a lot of stress. He owes Bill quite a bit of money. And lucky for Ryan, Bill's got a repayment plan in mind. He tells Ryan that about a year ago, a neighbor rear ended him. After doctoring some bills, he managed to get some money out of it. And now he has an idea for another accident that could lead to a big insurance payout.

Bill wants to stage a scene where a ceiling fan falls on Sandy. Hey, why doesn't it fall on him? Why doesn't he do it? Try it. That is an amazing question that we will come back to. Well, Ryan isn't sure he actually wants to get involved. His uncle Bill is always pitching schemes to the other kids in the family. For example, 27-year-old Will Jr. has been voiding checks and pocketing cash at his restaurant jobs at Bill's insistence.

And when Will Jr. got hurt playing basketball, Bill coached him into lying for a payout and free pain pills. Will Jr. spent his entire adolescence trying to win his father's approval. And according to him, quote, cheating, lying, stealing, shaming, and breaking the rules is how you impress Bill Mize. 23-year-old Angela, meanwhile, is so fed up with Bill's constant schemes that she's removed herself from the picture entirely. Now it's Ryan's turn to finally be invited in. The idea scares him, but it's also validating.

Bill is the only father he's ever known and he's essentially just been asked to join the family business. He's in. A few months later, the day of the scam arrives. Ryan waits outside the guest bedroom, listening until he hears a loud crash. He opens a door and sees Sandy on the floor bleeding from a head injury.

The ceiling fan is sitting in a mangled heap nearby. Ryan looks over and sees Bill holding a metal pan and a razor blade. Bill was the one who caused Sandy's injury. He tells Ryan to call 911, then hides in another room. Ryan's hands are shaking as he dials. He knows Sandy is okay, but he can still feel a shock coursing through his body. Paramedics put Sandy in a neck brace and take her to the hospital. She plays a consummate victim, even rolling her eyes into the body.

the back of her skull. Sachi, here are some photos documenting Sandy's injuries. Can you please describe them? Oh, she looks rough. She's in the hospital. She really clearly has a head wound. It looks like she's passed out. There's another photo of her sitting on some steps with this little dog. She's got crutches. She's laid up in a bed. Her foot is elevated and bandaged. I mean, these are the kinds of photos you see after someone, you know, not to put too fine a point on it, but after somebody crashes their car. The images are really scary. Yeah.

It's scary to imagine someone knowing they're about to get injured and then ending up looking like this. Months later, Bill tells Ryan that the insurance claim went through. He shakes Ryan's hand and says he's honored his dead. Ryan is overcome with relief and pride. Bill is treating him like a son, praising him with love and affection in a way he had never really done before. And although Sandy has never spoken about why she helped Bill scam,

we can guess that she was also drawn in by his charisma and wanted his love and approval. Before this, Bill had already achieved so much of what he's dreamed of. The giant house, the fancy cars, the stacks of cash. But this new scam, which involves injuring those around him, gives him what he wants most of all. Control. This guy's been evil for a while in a lot of ways, but to jump from just sort of your garden variety asshole

to abusive restaurant manager to drug smuggler and now to I'm going to bludgeon my relatives in order to get rich quick is a terrifying progression. Yeah. And Ryan will soon learn that Bill isn't ready to let go of him just yet. More favors are in his future, because Bill has finally settled on the scam he wants to build his life around, and he's willing to put his family in danger to make it happen. You there, tis I, Queen Mortuana of the night realm, aka Kate McKinnon,

and her Raven Minion Jojo, aka Emily Lynn. If you do not download and binge my show, heads will roll air apparent on Audible, I will cut off your head Oh no Maybe just tell them about the guest stars Like Richard Kind Carrie Coon Jimmy Fallon at all

But they were in it And if you don't listen to them Then I will cut off your tongue Then cut off your head And then put the tongue in the head hole Ah you tried Listen now exclusively onaudible And done to the audible app today

You're off with your head I'm kidding I'm Raza Jaffrey And in the new season of The Spy Who They opened the file on Benedict Arnold, the spy who betrayed the American Revolution. America is fighting to free itself from the British Empire, and one of its foremost generals is Benedict Arnold.

He's a smuggler turned battlefield hero, and admired for his aggressive tactics. But when a war wound, a new wife, debts and politics test his loyalty to the max, he turns spy and devises a plot to shatter the revolution and help Britain capture rebel commander-in-chief, General George Washington. And that plot would make him the most infamous traitor in U.S. history. Follow the Spy Who Now, wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can also listen to the full season of The Spy Who Betrayed the American Revolution early and ad-free unordable. It's March 2014 in the Mojave. desert and we're back to where we started this episode. Bill's daughter, Angela, is sitting behind the wheel of a steaming Chrysler Seabring. As the cops ask her questions, she parents back the story she rehearsed with Bill. Angela is still new to this whole operation. More than a decade ago when she was 17, she distanced herself from her family and decided to live on the straight and narrow. But she didn't cut her family off completely and they made sure she felt their distance.

approval. Even though Angela didn't want any part of their world, being left out felt even worse. I really can't imagine being raised like this. I was raised by such staunch role followers. It must take so, so

much to first recognize that what they're doing is wrong and then also to try to get out of that situation. Yeah, exactly. And things came to a head last year when Angela tried to take her own life. Despite her attempts to distance herself from her dad, he was the one who picked her up from the hospital, took care of her,

and set her up with a nicer apartment when she was at her lowest. In return for his love and care, she feels like she owes him. Before long, she's being dragged into Bill's operation, and she quickly learns how his scheme works. Her dad enlists crash perpetrators and victims, including family and friends. Then he roughs him up beforehand to make the crash look realistic. Angela watches as he cuts them with a razor and rubs dirt in the wound. Sometimes Bill even pours urine on the fake victims to make it look like they passed out and lost control. A lot to consider here. Is he just collecting his own pee to pour on people?

Listen, there are elements of this that feel fetishistic, yes. Okay, well, interesting use of pee. Yeah, I mean, they're already getting hurt. Why not ask them to piss themselves? Couldn't it be their own pee? Like, oh, that's a bridge too far, pee your pants? Well, after each accident, Angela and the other actors head to the hospital. They received treatment, claim they forgot their insurance card, and bail without paying.

Then, Bill assumes a fake name like William Westfall or Chad Harris, and poses as a victim's advocate to help the victims get the biggest payout possible. He negotiates with the insurance companies, usually by threatening a huge lawsuit on his client's behalf. And the insurance companies, looking for a break, always settle. Since everyone involved in the crashes in on it, they let their insurance companies settle without a fight, knowing they'll get a slice down the line. After the Sebring crash, Angela gets her payout from Bill, $10,000 plus a brand new Cadillac. The biggest reward is that she finally feels like she's in her dad's club. She starts getting invited to his parties and on his vacations.

Angela has the fatherly approval she's wanted for decades. She's officially welcomed back into the family, even if it means she has to live a life of crime. But when felonies are the one thing keeping a family together, it's only a matter of time before they start to splinter. It's 2015 at Spokane's Davenport Hotel. Ron Wells, a local businessman, sits across from Bill, now 54. Ron is a big guy with bushy eyebrows and he's a decade older than Bill.

He's a successful real estate magnate who mostly focuses on flipping historic buildings. Everyone in Spokane knows him. Ron's not only a millionaire, but a respected man around town. Bill wants some of that shine and tells Ron he wants to join him in flipping houses. From their first meeting, it's clear they're not interested in the same kind of real estate deals. But Ron finds Bill refreshing.

Ron has recently come out as gay and is in the middle of a lengthy divorce from his wife. So he's in the mood to celebrate and make new pals. Ron quickly joins Bill's entourage. He parties with them at their palatial estate in Spokane and smokes high-quality weed with Bill. Bill even invites him on vacation with the rest of the Maize family in New Orleans. Here's a photo of them all together. Sachi, can you describe it? Well, I'll tell you what, they all look really normal. They just look like normal people having a

laugh, a couple of bright pink tops happening here, and Bill looks like someone who would be rude to me at a bar, so that feels right. Let's just say they look like they party. They look like they throw them back. I would be afraid to run into these people at the pub, you know? Oh, big time. And Ron is having a great time with Bill, but some of what he sees gives him pause,

like a briefcase full of cell phones, all labeled with different names. Bill tells him that he's an insurance consultant helping crash victims maximize their payouts. and Ron decides to believe him. One day, Ron complains to Bill he's having a hard time getting payments from one of his clients.

Bill offers to break the guy's legs in a serious enough manner that Ron is convinced he isn't joking. Ron was eager for a friend. And as he and Bill grow closer, he's become the master of looking the other way. Even if Bill is doing illegal things, at least Ron isn't involved.

But Ron's about to learn that Bill doesn't keep friends around unless they start pulling their weight. That same year, Bill's car crash enterprise continues to grow. He invites other trusted individuals into the fold like Misail Reyes to Himaroa. Misail was one of Will Jr's roommates, and he stayed a close family friend. Well, at least close to Bill.

Bill now has a small cabal of actors staging wrecks and pulling in payouts. But despite the money that's coming in, he sees that his kids are struggling with the carnage his scam requires. He can't afford to have them pull away. Otherwise, who will keep this cash cow going? So when Bill spots an opportunity, he seizes it.

Angela has a new husband, Steve, who's agreed to turn a blind guy to the family business. But when he tears his ACL, Bill knows exactly how to use this to his advantage. First, he urges Steve to fake an accident so he can get a big payout. But Steve refuses, which is noble, but the couple is struggling. So with thousands of dollars in medical co-pays piling up and Steve unable to work, Angela swallows her pride and asks Bill for help.

But Bill doesn't do favors. He uses their desperation as leveraged to pull her into another scheme with him. Later that year, Bill stages a fall at Angela's house using Missaelle. Before the so-called accident, Bill takes a razor to Missyell's head to create a wound, then pushes him down a flight of stairs. To Bill, the scene looks perfect. Misail is bleeding profusely while Angela calls 911. But when she asks to staunch Missaelle's bleeding, Bill forbids it.

He wants the scene to be as brutal as possible. Angela can't help but cry. And she's not the only kid who's starting to crack. Will Jr. is also struggling. He has a wife and kids and a crippling opioid addiction stemming from an injury a decade earlier. In 2013, he had a mental breakdown and spent two weeks in a psych ward. Bill's intense judgment pushes Will Jr. away,

not just from the family business, but from the family entirely. This is an unspooled person. He is so dangerous in so many ways. I would almost say it's a good thing that he's pushing Will away, but like it's actually just a testament to how unstable he is and how scary he is. Yes, it's going really far. But Bill isn't worried because in Will Jr.'s wake, another relative takes up the mantle of Golden Child.

Ryan. He never complains about staging crashes and never says no to Bill. But it isn't out of the goodness of his heart. Bill always finds a way for Ryan to owe him a favor. Like when Ryan meets his new girlfriend, Kimmy Boydo. She's a pint-sized former cheerleader with dark hair and tanning bed skin. They quickly fall head over heels for each other and Bill's over the moon, not because Ryan's found true love, but because now he's got another potential crash actor. He agrees to pay off Ryan and Kimmy's mortgage and let them owe him the money instead. All told, the sum is $225,000 with 6% interest. And Bill puts his name on the deed to the house for good measure.

Evil. Evil. This is such a bad idea. I can't believe they agree to this. He's taking advantage of his family in the craziest ways, and Bill keeps digging a bigger financial hole for his nephew. Whenever Ryan seems overwhelmed or unhappy, Bill swoops in. He sends him on vacation or love bombs him with words of affirmation. He can tell that Ryan just wants to make him proud, and he's more than happy to exploit that.

Bill's family is either dependent on him for money or scared to go against him. him, but everybody has a breaking point. And Bill's about to learn that he's pushing them all to theirs. It's a sunny day in 2016, and the Mai's house is filled with champagne and laughter. In the backyard, there's a large white tent covering a dance floor. A crowd of people dressed in 20s flapper attire watch as Ryan and Kimmy share their first dance as a married couple. It's a big day for Ryan, filled with emotion.

including gratitude for his uncle. Bill threw them a lavish, great Gatsby-themed wedding. And despite their differences, Ryan knows who would never be where he is today without Bill. Both he and Kimmy are now full-time car crash victims to help pay off their debts to his uncle. But beneath a gratitude for his dream wedding, Ryan is hiding darker feelings about Bill.

He's anxious and scared about what the future holds, and the work is taking a toll on him. Just a few months ago, Ryan was standing in Bill's bathroom preparing for his sixth accident. He gripped a set of pliers tightly, trying to work up the courage to chip his own tooth. Bill wanted him to claim it happened in yet another car crash. And after 30 minutes and a shot of Jack Daniels, Ryan finally got the nerve to do it. Later, in the aftermath of the staged crash, he spit out. the bloody, chipped fragment in front of the paramedics.

Gross, and also the idea that he asked him to do this, like a couple months before his wedding day, is unspeakably selfish. This guy is, like, in his own reality. Yeah, it's starting to seem like the humiliation is a feature and not a bug. But Ryan's commitment doesn't pay off. After the accident, Bill sat Ryan down and delivered the bad news. The insurance company denied their claim, which means no money was made from the tooth chip crash,

so Bill's name will stay on the deed to Ryan's house, and Ryan still owes him a huge sum of money. Ryan's starting to question Bill's operation. He and Kimmy have been doing more than their fair share of running scams, but Bill has been deducting what he calls expenses from their payouts, things like travel costs, meals, parties, and office supplies, it leaves them with barely enough to pay their bills. And Bill's demands have started to go beyond repayment with interest. Ryan and Kimmy are constantly on call for his various whims.

They clean Bill's house, cars, and boats. Bill forbids them from posting on social media. And when Ryan and Kimmy returned from a trip to Disneyland they didn't tell him about, Bill gets so drunk and angry that he shoots his gun into the Ottoman right in front of them. I can't think of anybody who should not have a gun more than Bill. There's nobody who should be less armed than this lunatic. He really is acting like a mafioso or something. He would like to be.

It's an attempt. Yes, of course. Organized crime probably wouldn't even have him. Too messy. Well, Ryan wanted to find a way out of Bill's grasp, so he turned to a trusted family confidant. Bill's friend, Ron. Ron has a ton of connections,

so Ryan quietly sent him his resume asking him, quote, can you do anything to get me out of this? But he never heard back. Ryan assumes that Ron must be afraid to cross Bill. It's clearer than ever. Ryan is trapped. But today's his wedding day,

so Ryan forces himself to snap out of his sour mood. He looks over at his new wife and smiles. There may be a storm clouds on the horizon, but he takes Kimmy by the hand and dances the rest of the night away. Ryan and Kimmy are spinning on the dance floor, but their debt hasn't gone anywhere, and neither has Bill. It's October 2016, and Bill is sitting behind the wheel of Ron's Dodge Ram. He slams on the gas and speeds toward a target he's never hit before, a speedboat. It belongs to Bill, and he towed it into the middle of the middle of the car. of the road for this very purpose.

The 36-foot boat jumps into the air and slams back down onto the hood of the dodge. Smoke pours out behind the twisted metal fragments of the hood. And with that, Ron is officially a member of Bill's Car Crash Club. Okay, so this photo of the crash, I think it's hard to completely grasp how violent and real these crashes are. I mean, the entire front of this truck is gone. Yeah.

It is twisted metal. This is so scary. I can't imagine this happening. Even as an accident, it would be so terrifying. But the fact that these are planned is incomprehensible. No, it's like going against every feeling of self-preservation. It's really crazy. Yeah.

Up until this point, Bill's been bringing Ron into his scam slowly. He's asked him for small favor. like depositing a $225,000 check that was made out to one of his so-called victims. Bill's bank refused to deal with the check, so he turned to Ron. With his financial connections, Ron was able to get the check deposited, cleared, and sent to Bill, no questions asked. Bill appreciates Ron's help, but he also knows that Ron's in a tough spot right now. His divorce lawyers are squeezing him, his credit cards are maxed out, and his money is tied up. up in real estate. Ron needs cash and quick. So when Ron asked Bill for a $20,000 loan,

Bill obliged, but he quickly grows impatient waiting to be paid back. So he tells Ron he's found a better way to repay him. If Ron just lets him destroy his truck for a huge payout, they'll call it even. Plus, Bill is happy to bring him into his entourage because Bill is becoming desperate. His crash test dummy ring is bleeding members. Will Jr. officially quit the group after his first breakdown, and he soon had another episode in Las Vegas. He was arrested after cops found him running naked down a highway during a drug binge. After that, his wife divorced him and said, if he wanted to see his kids again, he'd have to get clean. So that's what he's focusing on now. Even though Will Jr. is doing better, Bill doesn't show much empathy. He sees addiction as a weakness,

even though he pops Valium like candy. Well, it's not an addiction if a doctor prescribes it to you. I mean, Bill thinks he's on the outside of any rules. So, of course, he's not addicted. Yeah, why would it apply to him now? And now Bill has to lean more heavily on Missaelle, Ron, and the other members of his entourage. Like Michael White, a friend of Ryan's who fell on hard times

and got sucked into participating in two crashes. Or Bonnie Bonnie, a widow who accepted Bill's financial help only to get roped into staging three crashes, the last of which she didn't realize was happening until she had already been tricked into entering the car. Not everyone sticks around that long. A guy named Jason Westfall participated in one crash and then changed his number and cut Bill off. Luckily for Bill, he still has use for these abandoned actors, or at least their names. Insurance companies would surely catch on if a man named Bill Mize submitted three insurance claims a year. So instead, he submits claims under false names to escape detection.

And now he's got Ron, one of the most well-respected men in town on his roster. But for every new recruit, Bill is losing someone closer to home. And his lack of control is about to get the attention of the authorities. In November 2016, Bill gets alarming news. Misail has been arrested for trafficking drugs. A member of his fraud ring being rung up on charges does not bode well for Bill. So ever the strategist, he decides to speak at Misail's bail hearing. He wants to make sure Misail won't squeal about their other activities,

so Bill convinces the judge to make him Missail's legal custodian, meaning Misail can be released into Bill's care. as long as he shows up for court. Is that allowed? Is that how court works that if some kindly white man shows? I guess that is how court works. If some kindly white man shows up and says, I'll handle it, then they just let them.

Basically, but Bill's still paranoid that his protege is talking to the feds. Rumors are swirling that the authorities have visited Bill's notary, and some of Bill's banks suddenly close his accounts without explaining why. Bill feels the walls closing in. He starts to get depressed and then mottlin. Eventually, he takes to his king-sized bed, staring at the ceiling while blasting My Way by Frank Sinatra. He had Sandy burn a special mix CD for his downfall, which also includes the theme from the Godfather. He starts burning copies for his family members, telling them to play it in his honor when he inevitably dies or goes to prison. When he's not wallowing and self-pity,

Bill's going full prepper. He stockpiles food and weapons and outfits his home with a generator and barbed wire. In March 2018, after a year and a half of waiting for the other shoe to drop, Bill decides he deserves some fun. So he and Sandy indulge in one of their favorite traditions, getting remarried. They first got married to the 90s, but every single. Every few years, they divorce in order to declare bankruptcy separately. Bet you never thought about divorce this way, eh, Sachi? A new approach. I never thought about it this way.

It is opening up a whole new world for me. I didn't know you could do this. My whole life could have been different. Oh, yes. You're learning something about divorce that you never thought you'd learn, which is pretty cool. I hate to learn something new when I am the expert. How embarrassing. Well, Bill and Sandy cram the whole family into a stretch limo and head to a chapel in Vegas.

Bill's outfitted in a black button up with a white tie while Sandy wears a royal blue gown. She holds their chihuahua chika in her arms who's dolled up in her own silver sequined outfit. Their family watches from the pews as the officiant runs through the service. Bill taps his foot impatiently and then interrupts and adds his own vows to never. testify against each other and to always have each other's backs. Two months later, Bill's paranoia is validated when he hears a knock at his door in Spokane. It's the FBI. They've got a warrant to search his estate and Ryan's house too. They turn the place upside down and leave with boxes of evidence. The chips have fallen and

Bill is left exposed. The FBI has more than enough evidence to take him down. But it's not in Bill's nature to go quietly. A week before Christmas, 2018, Bill is finally indicted, and he's not alone. 22 co-conspirators are named alongside him, including his two kids, Sandy, Ryan, Kimmy, and Ron. They're charged with staging a staggering 33 accidents between them, adding up to 101 counts of money laundering and fraud. The feds claim that, all told, the family pulled in more than $6 million through their scam. The first hearing is held in the new year, and Bill pleads not guilty to 87 counts. To his relief, he's released on bond without location monitoring, and he promises to pay $750,000 if he skips court.

Bill might be a free man for now, but his life is quickly unraveling. The tight grip he kept on his family is gone. It's in every man for himself situation, and everyone starts spilling to investigators. In one of his meetings with the authorities, Ryan learns that Bill actually did get a huge payout from the tooth-chipping incident. He lied to Ryan when he said the claims were denied

and pocketed the entire check more than a quarter of a million dollars for himself. This is still not enough money. I still feel like that. Like, no one is making enough money for any of this, frankly. No, not at all. To get this guy to do all of that stuff to his face, to get him to do any of it, but to do all of that stuff to his face right before his wedding, and then to lie to him and say, oh, it didn't

work just so that he could keep like a little more than the already significant amount that he's keeping for something that he didn't even do. Like he hasn't even performed this fraud. He's just a facilitator. It's, oh, this is so gross. It's so upsetting on so many different levels, and I think just speaks to the hold he had on all of them. Yeah.

Over the next year, all the members of Bill's crew take plea deals and wait to learn their sentences. Everyone except Bill. Then, in June 2019, Angela receives a letter from Bill, postmarked from San Diego. Sachi, can you read part of it? Yeah, Bill wrote,

quote, please understand my options are all very bad. I know I do not want to die in jail and it will serve no purpose for me to be there. I will not be able to help anyone and would just be a burden to the few people in the world that even really care about me. Hey, what? That's not what jail does. It is the craziest logic. That's not the point of jail. As we have said many times, we do not believe in jails except when we do.

And this is one of those cases when I think. think we do. It does serve a purpose, which is that you will stop telling your nieces and nephews and children to break their bones and teeth for your enrichment. He's so delusional. He's so delusional. And with that, Bill is gone. While he's on the run, the rest of his family and friends stay in Spokane and deal with the fallout. Ron gets sentenced to a year of home detention and is ordered to pay $60,000 in restitution. Will Jr. also gets a year of home detention. The judge decided to go easy on him because he'd already left the crime ring of his own accord. Angela gets six months in prison, Ryan gets 19 months, and Sandy gets

the largest sentence of all, six years. In their sentencing statements, Ryan, Angela, and Will all take responsibility for their actions. Ryan even thanks a judge for ending their servitude, saying, quote, this has truly saved my life. And I will forever be grateful. This is so wild because what he's really saying is like, thank God you caught us. Like this is the only way for him to stop, the only way for him to have escaped Bill. Yeah, exactly. A year later, in early 2020, a familiar man is spotted walking through a liquor store in Henderson, Nevada.

It's Bill Mize wearing dark sunglasses and a Nike polo. He hasn't been seen since he went on the lamb a year earlier. When he notices someone staring at him, he freezes. A chill runs down his spine and his heartbeat quickens. Is he about to be tackled to the ground and cuffed? But then he realizes it's just a distant member of his extended family saying hello. Bill is relieved, but keeps their exchange brief and gets the hell out of there. Bill's proven that when the chips are down, he only looks out for one guy.

guy himself. But he's about to find out that what goes around comes around. After completing his year of home detention, Will Jr. went on to live a quiet life just like Angela, who left the family to relocate out west. After Kimmy and Ryan were released, they moved into Kimmy's childhood home in Spokane. They had to sell their old house to pay restitution. Ryan went legit, getting a job at a mechanic shop. They also launched a prison consulting business and started a TikTok account called the original prison couple

where they detail everything they've been through. It currently has more than 150,000 followers. As for Sandy, it appears she may have been released from prison early in 2023, though the exact details remain unclear. Bill Mize was finally captured in November of 2023.

U.S. Marshals arrested him at a marina in Jacksonville, Florida, where he'd been living on a boat. He was extradited to Spokane and sentenced to 12 years in prison. He also had to pay $7.1 million in restitution. According to Ryan's TikTok, he attended Bill's hearings, but not out of support. In the videos he posted, Ryan is now the one in control of Bill's story. In the end, Bill gambled big and lost it all. He wanted to be his own version of a mafia Dawn

was a family that would never go against him. But when they all finally turned, it was a car crash you couldn't look away from. Sachi, what would be on this CD you burn for your family to listen to upon your death or imprisonment? I have a feeling many men by 50 cent wouldn't be there. Yeah, well, you know how I feel about 50 cents. Yeah, and that would be positive for sure.

It's very positive. God, what would I play? I mean, I would probably leave everybody a really loquacious, like, voicemail from me, you know, listing out every grievance that I still had, everybody who still owed me something, feuds and fights to continue after my death, you know, commands. I would have directives for people to, you know, get some closure for me from beyond the grave. Wow, we really learned a lot in those few moments. God, this episode bummed me out. It's so sad. It's such a weird scam. There have to be easier ways to get, you know, six-figure sums here and there than getting your relatives to punch themselves in the face and cut themselves with razors and pull their teeth out.

There have to be better ways. I think he's one of those scammers that, like, control is, also as important as the money. Like, it's so clear he wanted to totally control everyone and it functioned like a cult almost. It's hard to get people to hurt themselves, first of all. And it's really hard to get them to do that for not a lot of money. So the manipulation element probably looms so large over their choices. Yeah, I mean, this is really what I don't get about this scam is like, you can get people to do this. You're convincing enough. You're scary enough to get people to do this. You can do anything.

Yeah, that's so true. You can do anything with that power. And of all of the things that he decided to do, it was, I want you to pretend that you chipped your tooth when you crashed your car. That is such a waste of such robust and impressive power. I've known people who had small injuries or something and have gotten money from insurance. And the thing is, like, the actual process is very, very taxing. It's really, really hard.

Bill had to be so good at speaking to these companies and being so annoying for them to just be like, fine, we'll settle. Yeah, I mean, the story is also a testament to the bullshit around insurance. Like, oh, if you're just persistent enough and if you're a good enough liar, you can kind of get away with it. Like, what are we doing? What is the structure of our society? The story is making me rethink living amongst humanity.

Knowing that he landed on the scam after doing multiple different scams is also scary as hell. This one's hard. Again, it's also interesting when someone's not a lazy scammer. They're also really disciplined about how much work has to go into making the scam believable. I think he's an incredibly patient person as well. I don't think there's any universe where it didn't implode the way it did. But for it to have gone on as long as it did meant he had a lot of patience, which is a very scary quality. when it comes to a very scary person. Scary patient people are the scariest of them all.

I guess the lesson today is to be cautious of any man too eager to do paperwork. I don't trust that. Why do you want to do that? What's wrong with you? And what are you up to? Agreed. And also that, you know, if there's someone you're terrified of and you notice your quality is that they can wait,

they are like one of those really scary animals that hunts you for days and days. before they kill you. You run. You run. If you are scared of someone and their patient, get as far away as possible, as some people did in the story,

which good for them, but still, yeah, terrifying guy. I guess the other lesson is you should get arrested. If you are so incapable of getting out of your own trouble, go to jail, just like a monopoly.

Wow, that is brilliant. I don't know what else we can even say. Follow scamplencers on the Audible app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to all episodes, episodes of scam influencers ad free by joining Audible. From Audible originals, this is Bill Mize, the car crash king for scamfluencers. I'm Sarah Hagee.

And I'm Sachi Cole. If you have a tip for us on a story that you think we should cover, please email us at scamphalancers at audible.com. We use many sources in our research. A few that were particularly helpful were collision course by Lauren Smiley for New York magazine, reporting by the Sacramento Bee and court documents. Madeline Cook wrote this episode. Additional writing by us,

Satchie Cole and Sarah Hagee. Olivia Briley is our story editor. Our senior producers are Sarah Eni and Jenny Bloom. Our associate producer is Charlotte Miller. Our managing producer is Desi Blaylock. Backchecking by Kalina Newman. Sound designed by James Morgan. Additional audio assistance provided by Augustine Lim.

Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Frieson Sink. The executive producer for Audible is Jenny Lauer Beckman. The head of creative development at Audible is Kate Naven. The head of Audible Originals, North America, is Marshall Louis. The chief content officer is Rachel Giazza, copyright 2026 by Audible Originals LLC. Sound recording copyright, 2026 by Audible Originals LLC.