Scamfluencers - Eike Batista: Brazillionaire Boys Club

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

In the early 2000s, Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista was seen as the ultimate mining mogul: he was a speedboat-racing showman and a playboy who liked to show off his wealth. To expand his empire, Eike spun a web of bribes and fraud with high-ranking government officials. So when he was finally brought down, it created one of the biggest corruption scandals Brazil has ever seen.Be the first to know about Wondery’s newest podcasts, curated recommendations, and more! Sign up now at https://wondery.fm/wonderynewsletterListen to Scamfluencers on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/scamfluencers/ now."See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to scam influencers early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or Apple podcasts. Sachi, sometimes when we're learning about scams, I cannot believe how big the world is. It's like every country has its own way of doing things. You're not really sure what counts as a scam, but it's always juicy. I know.

I feel like different countries have different ways of scamming. And I feel like we hear from people all over the world about how their country does a scam. Yeah. One country I feel always brings a heat when it comes to scams is the beautiful nation of Brazil. And that's not me knocking Brazil. I just think so much stuff happens there in general that we can have our own Brazil spinoff.

Yeah, there are a lot of Brazilian scammers. There's something really interesting happening in the water there. Well, today's scammer was one of the most well-known figures in Brazil. Like many of our faves, he's a nepo baby with daddy issues who wants to solve his emotional life by getting rich. And when he finally gets taken down,

it's part of the biggest corruption scandal to ever hit Brazil. It's November 2009. Brazilian billionaire Ike Batista is hosting an extravagant dinner at his huge estate located about three hours southwest of Rio de Janeiro. The property has a giant mansion with a large balcony overlooking the ocean, private beach, a tennis court, and a pool. Ike is a fit, good-looking man in his early 50s, the kind of guy whose graying temples

only make him more handsome. His party guests tonight include Brazil's most powerful men and one of the world's most famous women, Madonna. Party of the century. Anywhere Madonna is, party of the century. Yeah, and the queen of pop is in Brazil to raise money for her new charity project. And this dinner is full of potential donors,

including the governor of Rio de Janeiro, Sergio Cabral. Sergio's been around for most of Madonna's trip. He even took her on a tour of one of Brazil's underprivileged neighborhoods. These dinner guests have deep pockets, but Madonna's probably focused on the host, because Ike is worth $7.5 billion. That is an incomprehensible amount of money. Yeah he is truly a real billionaire. And at dinner Madonna makes her pitch. She's backing a program called Success for Kids which would bring Kabbalah to low income children in Brazil. In case you lived under a rock in the early 2000s Kabbalah is a mystical sect of Judaism, and Madonna may be its most famous follower.

She tells partygoers that she's already raised $3 million during this trip to Brazil. And her goal is to raise a total of $10 million by the time she leaves. Immediately, Ike steps up and promises to make up the entire difference. A mind-blowing $7 million. Madonna is moved to tears by this generous donation. I know that $7 million is like very little to someone worth $7 billion, but this is a colossal waste of money. Yes, definitely. But here's the thing. Years go by and Ike's big donation fails to materialize.

He ends up giving the charity just half a million dollars, about 15% of what he pledged. Ike likes to make big promises. But that doesn't mean he'll keep them. And while stiffing a world-famous pop star isn't cool, the promises Ike makes to his investors are far more serious. And the payments he makes to government figures to help his business get an edge aren't exactly legal. When the Brazilian public tires of his rich guy antics, Ike's broken promises will land him smack in the middle of the largest corruption scandal in South American history.

They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, the Cotton Club murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. In the depths of an Atlanta forest, a clash between activists and authorities ends in tragedy. I'm Matthew Scherr, and on my new podcast, We Came to the Forest,

we expose the hidden truths behind a shootout that left one activist dead and countless lives forever changed. Binge all episodes of We Came to the Forest ad-free on Wondery+. From Wondery, I'm Sarah Hegkey. And I'm Saatchi Cole. And this is Scamfluencers. Ike Batista is one of the biggest names in Brazilian business.

And outside of the boardroom, he's got a flamboyant reputation. He's been described as swashbuckling, flashy, a maverick, and a playboy. But beneath the surface, Ike is running a scam way more complicated than your run-of-the-mill dirty dealing. It's a two-headed serpent of insider trading and bribery, and it's brought him unimaginable profits.

That is until a legal super team tighter trading, and bribery. And it's brought him unimaginable profits. That is, until a legal super team known as the Nine Horsemen of the Apocalypse come riding into Rio. This is Ike Batista, Brazil's bribery baron. From the day he's born in 1956, Ike Batista seems destined to be stuck in his father's shadow. His father, Eliezer Batista, is a rising star in the mining industry. In the 60s, Eliezer serves as the Brazilian minister of mines and energy, and then he becomes a president of the state's mining operation.

But in 1964, when Ike is around seven years old, the Brazilian military overthrows the government in a coup d'état. Anti-communism is on the rise, and Aliezer is targeted because he speaks Russian. And when Ike is a young teen, the Batista family leaves Brazil for Europe, a period Ike later calls a, quote, friendly exile. It's a turbulent time for Ike's family, and his parents aren't exactly the lovey-dovey types. Ike and his father don't have a close relationship,

and Ike's mother makes it clear that she expects Ike and his siblings to be just as successful as their father, if not more so. About a decade later, when Ike is 18 years old, the political situation in Brazil calms down enough for his parents to return. But Ike stays in Germany to attend college. His parents give him an allowance, but he wants more. So he becomes a door-to-door insurance salesman to make extra cash. He's a natural, sipping tea with stay-at-home moms and tapping into their anxieties to make more sales. Through this job, Ike learns two skills that will carry him throughout his career,

how to be charming and how to deal with rejection. In 1978, when Ike is in his early 20s, he stumbles on a news article about a gold rush in Brazil. He sees this as his opportunity to jump into the family business. So he drops out of college and returns to Brazil. And his dad is pissed. When Ike tells him that he quit school,

Eliezer pounds his fist on the table and he says he deserves a, quote, idiot's diploma. Excellent insult. Nobody can be mean to you like an ethnic father. Ha ha ha. Truly. I mean, I'm surprised my dad didn't say that to me. I feel like I've heard that one.

Well, Ike is still determined to make his mark. He borrows $500,000 from wealthy jewelers to start a gold reselling business. He actually makes some money at first, but ends up losing out when his business partners screw him over. Still, Ike isn't deterred. He puts his salesman skills to work and somehow convinces the same jewelers to front him another half million dollars. Of course, it doesn't hurt that his dad's a legend in the Brazilian mining world. Ike's Nepo baby background has served him well, but if he wants to stand on his own and make a name for himself, he'll have to travel to where the mining deals really go

down, the heart of the Amazon jungle. A few months later, Ike wipes the sweat off his brow as he steps off a tiny airplane into the Amazon jungle. The air is humid and the hum of insects is deafening. Ike is 23 years old now and determined to make his gold trading company a success. But he knows he'll have to hustle. He's just landed in a small boomtown deep in the Amazon where gold is delivered from nearby mines.

Ike acts as a middleman between peasant miners and wealthy buyers in Rio and Sao Paulo. Ike loves his job. He fancies himself a real Indiana Jones type. His sleeves are rolled up, the top few buttons of his shirt are undone, and he wears a silver amulet around his neck. I hate this.

I hate hearing about it, and I hate visualizing it. You know, people don't really wear amulets anymore either. Yeah, you're right. There's a real dearth of amulet culture happening. And obviously, Ike isn't the most honest broker. He takes advantage of the miners by using old newspapers to show them the price of gold, knowing that the price has gone up since the paper came out. So he buys low from the miners and then sells high,

pocketing the profits. He also gives loans to some of the miners and has a low tolerance for those who don't pay him back on time. One day at the mines, Ike confronts a worker who owes him money and calls him a son of a bitch. Then, as Ike walks away, the miner shoots him in the back. This isn't a fatal shot for Ike, but Ike's bodyguard shoots the miner, killing him. Damn. The amulet did nothing.

No, the amulet did not protect him. What's the point? I don't know. I guess it's just a necklace. God. And by 1980, just a year and a half after he dropped out of school, Ike's doing well. Very well. He's already made $6 million. He buys a black Porsche in cash and uses

the rest of the profits to invest in a mine of his own. He has a unique vision for this mine. Instead of using people to separate the gold from the gravel, invest in a mine of his own. He has a unique vision for this mine. Instead of using people to separate the gold from the gravel, he buys a machine to do it more efficiently. But Ike keeps running into problems. The fancy machine has to be delivered in pieces and reassembled on-site, which is tedious and labor-intensive. He also underestimates the jungle's brutal climate,

and malaria quickly becomes a problem, forcing him to replace old teams of workers as he gets sick. But he powers through. Here he is talking about that period years later with Charlie Rose. But ultimately the mine was so rich, and I still like to remember it was idiot-proof, because it survived all my mistakes.

And I ended up, when it started to run, I ended up making a million dollars a month. Ike loves telling stories of overcoming struggle. In his mind, it adds to his adventurer's mystique. And that's a big part of his sales strategy. People are drawn to his charismatic persona. And by playing this up, Ike can convince almost anyone to invest in his projects. When he's not on a dangerous adventure in the jungle,

Ike conquers another kind of wilderness, PowerPoint. Ike becomes known for using elaborate slideshows to market his company as a new version of the state-run mining company his dad ran and He's determined to outpace it fast Ike's already a success in the mining world But he'll need to make a big splash if he wants to get out from under his father's shadow And he's about to meet the person who will not only scale up his profile, but also his notoriety.

It's 1990, about a decade since Ike struck out on his own in the Amazon, and Luma de Oliveira is standing at the finish line of a speedboat race. Luma is a stunning beauty with a big smile and long, full dark curls. And she isn't just some podium princess. Luma is a celebrity in her own right. A few years earlier, when she was 22, she became famous at Brazil's Carnival by stealing the show with her dance moves and topless outfit. When she was on the cover of Playboy shortly after, the magazine sold out across the country. Today, she's handing a comically large check to the speedboat race winner, Ike Battista. By this point, Ike has become the chairman of a Canadian gold mining company.

And he's gotten really good at his rich guy hobby, speedboat racing. He's wealthy and he's a winner. Luma is definitely interested. Ike and Luma quickly fall in love. There's just one problem. Ike is newly married. But it's nothing a quick annulment can't solve. Four months later, Ike and Luma get married

with their first son, Thor, already on the way. This couple is seriously over the top. They both love attention, so naturally they become tabloid staples. One cover headline reads, Luma de Oliveira and Ike Batista, a love that resists Playboy. I mean, couples that want this much attention are just baseline weird. And oh so predictably, before long, Ike starts revealing that he isn't the perfect husband Luma once imagined him to be. He starts trying to assert control

in weird, manipulative ways. He gives her a diamond ring to persuade her to turn down a nude photo shoot, and he brings home milkshakes and chocolates to throw her off her diet. After a while, Luma's eyes start to wander in the direction of a young man she meets at a photo shoot for a fireman calendar. And after more than a dozen years of marriage and two kids, Ike and Luma divorce in 2004, but they manage to stay friends.

He even buys her a mansion right next door to his so their sons can stay close to both of them. Ike's work has given him access to exciting hobbies, big homes, and beautiful women. But he wants to have a hand in all areas of Brazilian business, and he sees major potential and big bucks in one of Brazil's other natural resources, oil. In the early 2000s,

Ike makes some big business moves, and they transform him from playboy hotshot to one of the richest men in the world. Ike expands his empire into new industries, infotech, energy, shipbuilding, entertainment, and real estate. And each of the new company's names include the letter X. Ike says it stands for multiplication of wealth. Seems like that letter has a strange allure for rich entrepreneurs. It's just such a sexy letter.

They can't, it's, you know, they all, they all wanna be the mysterious X. Well, the company that makes the biggest impact in Ike's portfolio is OGX, his oil and gas operation. At the time, the largest player in Brazil's oil business is the government-run company Petrobras. But when Ike launches OGX in 2007, it's an exciting alternative. He even poaches dozens of their engineers.

And OGX's launch couldn't come at a better time. Oil is reaching a record-breaking $145 a barrel. And just a few months later, Petrobras sells blocks of their offshore reserves, and OGX wins some of them by bidding big, in some cases, more than 10 times the next highest offer. But Ike is confident. He tells potential investors that OGX can expect

to get 5 billion barrels from these reserves, even though he hasn't actually confirmed this number yet. Here he is talking about Brazil's oil potential a few years later at a conference hosted by Google. Oil assets. There is a Brazil that is happening offshore, which is invisible and underwater and under the seabed, that this is a trillion dollar story. That sounds evil.

I don't think anything should have a trillion dollars related to it. It also is a pretty crazy thing to say when you truly have no idea if that's true. No plan. And Ike's famous PowerPoint presentations are filled with these unconfirmed statistics to get investors excited. And all his big talk plants a major seed of FOMO. So when OGX is listed on the stock exchange in June 2008, the company raises more than $4 billion in only a few days, a record high in Brazil.

One trader says that no one besides Bill Gates has made as much money off PowerPoint. Ike's reputation as a shrewd businessman and the promise of massive earnings have won over investors. Now he has to deliver. So he sets out to make powerful friends who are willing to grease the wheels for his oil company but for a high price. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about.

Everybody know there ain't no party like a Diddy party, so... Yeah, that's what's up! But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I made no excuses.

Disgusting so sorry. Until you're wearing orange jumpsuit it's not real now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace from law and crime this is the rise and fall of getting listen to the rise and fall of getting exclusively with one 3 plus. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called on drugs.

We covered a lot of ground over 2 seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time it's gonna get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Now I feel like I, like I. Around 2010, Bloomberg reporter Alex Quadros arrives at a 37,000 square foot mansion located

near the famous Chrysler Redeemer statue in Rio. Alex is a young journalist with dark floppy hair and thick framed glasses. He and a group of other reporters have been invited here by Ike, who owns the house and the 15 acres it sits on. Alex has been following the rise of Ike and other super rich Brazilian tycoons since moving to Brazil earlier this year. So he's not totally surprised when he notices that one wall in the living room is actually a large glass door,

which is large enough for Ike to drive a car through. On the day Alex visits, the car parked in the living room is a $1.3 million silver Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. Saatchi, take a look at this photo. This is a photo of a car inside of a living room. It looks dumb. As you know, I don't understand cars.

This could be any car to me. It could be a Toyota. Okay, well, that's just wrong. I mean, it looks expensive. Well, it looks expensive because it's in a house. No, it doesn't. Stop pretending you don't have eyes. I just don't get it.

Anyway, it's just one car from Ike's collection, which also includes many more BMWs and an armored Toyota pickup, which you know nothing about. He has a 17-person staff that attends to whatever he wants. And Ike has even gone on TV to boast about his favorite purchase, luxurious hair transplants. The service costs between $3,500 and $35,000, depending on how much real estate you need to cover. Honestly, that's probably the best use of his money so far. Go get your hair, why not? Why not?

Yeah. Alex recognizes that Ike is cultivating a real persona. He's shaping himself into a Brazilian Steve Jobs. And so far, it's working. Brazilians even start referring to him by first name only, just Ike. In 2010, Ike joins Twitter and quickly picks up millions of followers. Ike's already achieved his goal of becoming more successful than his father. So he decides to set an even loftier goal, to become the richest man in the world, and he wants to get there within five years.

But he'll have to dethrone the current title holder, Carlos Slim from Mexico. Ike talked about this race to the top with fellow billionaire, former king of junk bonds, and feature subject of a scamfluencer's episode, Mike Milken, at an event for Milken's American think tank. Once you are a racer or once you go into competing, you probably never get it out of your blood,

right? So I have to compete with Mr. Slim. You know, I'm, I don't know if I'm going to pass him on the right or left side, but I'm going to pass him. I feel like having a stated goal of wanting to be the richest man in the world is like saying I want to cause harm so that I can have the thing that I want. It's just a stupid goal to have. Boring.

Okay, richest man in the world, congrats, everyone hates you. Ike isn't going to become the world's richest man by sitting on his laurels. He has to find ways to keep expanding his empire. Luckily, it's a good time for big ideas in Brazil. The economy is booming, it's as strong as it's been in 25 years. But Brazil's economy has a major bottleneck, an outdated shipping infrastructure. So Ike has been building an enormous container terminal in a port town about 200 miles from Rio.

It can accommodate the largest boats in the world and would take the pressure off some of Brazil's smaller ports. Ike started building this port three years ago, but it's getting expensive. Luckily Ike has tons of allies in the government, especially his close friend, Sergio Cabral, the governor of Rio de Janeiro. Sergio's a jolly-looking guy with a warm smile. At this point, he's a trusted figure in Brazil.

In his tenure as governor, he's improved Rio's transit system and marched in the Pride Parade. I need you to look at this photo of Ike and Sergio palling around. This is two men with the whitest, fakest teeth I've ever seen in my life. And it looks like Ike is gonna do a little boop on his friend's nose. They look like they're smiling at each other because they see each other as wads of cash.

Yeah. They look like they're sharing an awful secret that I don't want to hear about. And Ike and Sergio's friendship is very convenient for both of them. Ike gives Sergio millions in cash and shares and access to his private jet. In exchange, Sergio helps Ike's port project by giving him tens of millions of dollars in tax credits and fast-tracks permits. In Brazil, corruption like this is almost normal. But the odds that you'll go to jail for it are basically zero.

One expert estimates that around this time, about 3 to 5% of Brazil's GDP is lost to corruption. And a lot of this has to do with the country's out of control financial inequality. Ike and his fellow Brazilianaires are used to getting special treatment, and they use these perks to maintain their power and increase their wealth. Right now, Ike's the biggest Brazilianare of all. In March 2012, he hits a major milestone. His net worth reaches $34.5 billion, making him the richest person in Brazil and the seventh richest person in the world. But the tide is about to turn against the brazenly wealthy and Ike will find himself at the center of the backlash. The same month he's declared one of the wealthiest people in the world, Ike and his family are

thrust back into the headlines, and not in a good way. On the night of March 17, 2012, Ike's phone rings. His 20-year-old son, Thor, had been driving home from a steakhouse in his dad's Silver McLaren. A man named Von Dersen Pereira de Santos, who lived in a shack along the highway, was riding his bike on the shoulder of the road. And Thor hit Vanderson, killing him instantly. It's a tragedy, and for Ike, a huge scandal.

Over the years, public opinion has started to turn against Ike. He promised up Brazil of the future, but things haven't gotten better for regular Brazilians. And now, with Ike's son responsible for the death of a low-income citizen, the gap between the Batistas and the average Brazilian has never seemed more enormous. The headlines read, Tycoon's son battles slum widow and Thor at the wheel, constant danger. Yeah, this is like one of those stories that's made for a tabloid that would absolutely get everybody to hate a rich family.

It's like designed for maximum loathing. Yeah, it's indefensible even if you think being rich is cool. Yeah, it's super evil. Yeah. And soon, Ike gets more bad news. He'd recently hired an independent team to analyze his OGX reserves to finally learn how much oil is really there. And their final report is shocking.

Only a few hundred million barrels can be extracted. That's a fraction of the 11 billion barrels Ike had promised investors just a few months ago. It looks like his company is wildly overvalued. So instead of sharing this updated, much less sunny information like he's required to do, Ike just sits on it. Around this time, Ike sees another big opportunity to cash in, the upcoming World Cup in Brazil. He pitches a big business proposition to his pal,

Governor Sergio. The government should lease out the Mar Canaio, one of the country's biggest stadiums, to private companies. Sergio hires one of Ike's companies to figure out the terms of a potential contract. And Ike's company comes back with a proposal, a lease period that would cover the upcoming World Cup and Summer Olympics in Brazil. The winning bidder will have to pay $2 million in rent to the government every year and invest

$300 million into the neighborhood around the arena. But they will make an estimated $700 million in profits by hosting games and events at the stadium. Once the idea gets approved, major entertainment and construction companies bid on the rights to lease the stadium. And surprise, a group of companies, including Ike's, wins the bid. What a surprise! How could this be? It's just luck, I'm sure. Yeah, and the Brazilian people are outraged at this deal. They see it as the privatization of a public monument.

So hundreds of people protest outside the stadium, wearing masks of Ike's and Sergio's faces, chanting, Ike, you thief, leave the Maracano for the people. And just a couple of months later, the unrest boils over. When bus fares are hiked, more than 100,000 people take to the streets in one of the largest protest movements in the country's history. Around the same time, Ike's son Thor is convicted of manslaughter for killing von Dersen, but he's given a relatively light sentence.

He quickly becomes a symbol of inequality in the eyes of the protesters. In mid-2013, the Brazilian stock market is extra shaky. Ike turns to Twitter to boost confidence in the market, especially in OGX, his oil company. He says he'll present a business plan soon. So even as he's pumping up OGX publicly, Ike quietly sells about $60 million in shares, about 2% of the company. Ike also starts selling off some of his possessions, his $26 million private jet, his marina,

and a 177-foot party boat named Pink Fleet. The Financial Times calls it a yard sale billionaire style. I would say that it is suspicious to be a billionaire and suddenly be trying to sell everything. That would be cause for concern. Yeah, I mean, this should be setting off big alarm bells and things just keep getting worse for Ike. In October 2013, OGX files for bankruptcy. He's produced only a fraction of what he promised investors in those flashy PowerPoints. And he can't afford to pay back his creditors.

The public has had enough. The judicial system and government agencies feel the pressure from the protesters to punish corruption. And a simple gas station in Brasilia will become ground zero for taking it all down, Ike included. In 2014, federal prosecutor, Deltan De Lingel is sitting in his office in Curitiba,

a city in Southeast Brazil. Deltan is in his early thirties, clean cut with dark frame glasses. He went to Harvard Law School and came back to Brazil to work as a prosecutor for the government. He's a devout Christian and an optimist who dreams of a better, less corrupt Brazil. Here he is talking about his mission years later

during a keynote speech at Acton University in Michigan. Fighting against corruption is a matter of compassion, of loving our neighbors, and of implementing human rights. That is what drives us. Dalton takes notice of a police investigation in Brazil's capital city, Brasilia. They're tracking a black market banker and known money launderer named Alberto Youssef. He's been arrested before, once after a high-speed car chase, which started when smuggled VHS players

fell off the back of his truck. This time, the police had been surveying a gas station they suspected was being used to launder money. The dirty money would come in, get recorded as earnings from the gas station, and then go back out into the world, making it much harder to track. During this surveillance, the police discover that Alberto is involved in the operation. And in March 2014, the police arrest him. They offer him a plea deal to get him to talk,

but he says he can't. He tells his lawyer, if I speak, the republic is going to fail. If I were to hear this, I would be like, this is either someone who is paranoid and like has a completely like grandiose sense of what's going on here or someone who like means it. Yeah, it would get me interested regardless. And Alberto finally cracks and starts writing down the names of his co-criminals. And it quickly becomes clear that he was not kidding. Alberto admits to laundering money for executives at Petrobras, the government owned oil company, and Ike's biggest oil industry rival. Dalton can tell that this local corruption case could lead to

something much bigger. So he starts a federal investigation called Operation Car Wash. Delton needs to assemble a team of experts to crack this case wide open. So he gathers the country's best prosecutors. Like any good team in a heist movie, each member has a specialty like money laundering or wire fraud. And as the case moves forward, the press gives the group a nickname, the Nine Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I find this nickname dorky, but it is interesting that the press and the public look at them like this because they are so hopeful that there's actually going to be some justice, which is clearly in short supply.

Yeah, I mean, it's a very intense name, but I think people are kind of seeing it as a moment of reckoning for this type of financial corruption. And by March 2014, the horsemen have enough evidence to arrest Paulo Costa, a former Petrobras executive. And when Paulo finally sits across from six prosecutors in a cramped office, he admits he'd been taking bribes from the country's biggest construction firm for years. In return, he awarded these firms seriously inflated contracts, adding up to hundreds of millions of dollars.

And countless Brazilian politicians were also cut in. These bribery arrangements aren't much different than what Sergio and Ike have had with each other for the past few years. This confession cracks the case wide open. Delton sends out a web of police officers to raid the homes of the allegedly corrupt officials. More and more defendants choose to cooperate, turning in evidence and information about

new crimes. The police seize countless sports cars and safes filled with money and jewelry. The hall includes so many valuable paintings that the police allow a museum to exhibit some of them, including a Salvador Dali. Operation Car Wash is on track to become the biggest house cleaning in Brazilian government history, and the country's mega businessmen are caught up in the sweep too. But Ike will have to face a higher court first, his investors. While this national corruption scandal is erupting around him, Ike has more immediate

legal troubles to deal with. In September 2014, a few months after the horseman's raid, government prosecutors indicted him for financial crimes. Suspicious investors urged the prosecutors to look into discrepancies between what Ike had been telling them about OGX's golden future and what was actually happening behind the scenes. The charges against Ike include manipulating the market, misleading investors, false representation, conspiracy, and insider trading. And if he's found guilty, he'll be one of the first people ever punished for financial crimes in Brazil. Ike's criminal trial starts in November, and right away it's a media circus.

Every time he makes a weird face or drinks a cup of coffee, someone takes his picture. And this happens more than you'd expect in a courtroom, because Brazilian courthouses have a waiter who brings around coffee on a silver tray. Oh my god, we have to go to Brazil. Sounds kind of nice. Yeah. Well, the prosecutors have a solid case against Ike thanks to three witnesses, a market regulator, a former OGX engineer, and one of Ike's shareholders.

The case is pretty straightforward. The prosecutors believe that Ike exaggerated the company's prospects to manipulate the forecasted stock price. They accused him of only sharing positive information and hiding anything that could hurt the share price. The prosecutors also believe that Ike had known for years that his oil reserves weren't very profitable but kept this information to himself. Plus, OGX had found so-called death gas at its sites early on, an industry term for oil that's very expensive to extract without killing the crew.

Ike didn't report that hangup to investors either. I guess it would have been unpopular to write a memo about the death gas. Yeah, I feel like it wouldn't really look good in a PowerPoint, you know? Tough to explain in a deck. So things are looking bad for Ike. And it only gets worse when his Twitter account becomes fair game in the courtroom. Prosecutors show that Ike told his followers that the company was going to make a comeback while he was dumping his own stock.

Ike defends himself, saying he honestly still believed in the company when he hit send. But the trial's judge, Judge Souza, openly disdains Ike, even complaining to reporters that he's a megalomaniac. To hit him where it hurts, Judge Souza orders officials to confiscate Ike's piano, 16 watches, and a Fabergé egg that turns out to be fake. Brazil's Sunday news show even runs a special on the operation to collect Ike's valuables. Ike's reputation is hurt dramatically by the ongoing trial and by February of 2015 his net worth sinks to a shocking negative one billion dollars. You know there's being broke, there's being in debt, and then there's being in debt for one billion dollars. That is an incomprehensible hole. Yeah, it does sound a lot worse than having zero dollars, right?

Zero better than negative billion, yes. But then things take a strange turn. One of Thor's friends lives in the same building as Judge Souza. And one day he spots Ike's confiscated Porsche Cayenne in the building's garage. Not long after, a Brazilian tabloid publishes a photo of Judge Souza driving the car. Sachi, take a look. Sarah, I'm sorry, this is iconic. It's so funny.

Driving his car around. Driving his car around out of your own home where people will see you. Clear window, not even an tinted window. Iconic. I love it. Well, when Judge Souza is confronted by a reporter, he says he wanted to protect the Porsche from potential weather damage in the police impound lot.

Already, we're in Shurjan territory, and it's soon revealed that the judge had taken another one of Ike's cars home and moved Ike's piano into his neighbor's apartment. The last thing a fraud trial needs is a corrupt judge. So in March, Judge Souza is taken off the case, and the trial is put on hold until further notice.

Ike may be off the hook for the moment, but Operation Car Wash is getting closer and closer to his doorstep, and his partner in crime is finally about to get nabbed. A few miles from the glass spires of Midtown Atlanta lies the South River Forest. In 2021 and 2022, the woods became a home to activists from all over the country who gathered to stop the nearby construction of a massive new police training facility, nicknamed Cop City. At approximately nine o'clock this morning, as law enforcement was moving through various sectors of the property, an individual without warning shot a Georgia State Patrol trooper.

This is We Came to the Forest, a story about resistance. The abolitionist mission isn't done until every prison is empty and shut down. Love and fellowship. It was probably the happiest ever bit of my life. And the lengths will go to protect the things we hold closest to our hearts. Follow We Came to the Forest on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can binge all episodes of We Came to the Forest early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+. ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. It's November 2016, about a year and a half since Judge Sousa was suspended from Ike's case. Federal police have just arrived at Sergio's beachfront apartment in Rio. They're here to arrest him. As they leave the parking garage with Sergio, just arrive at Sergio's beachfront apartment in Rio. They're here to arrest him. As they leave the parking garage with Sergio, photographers and cameramen swarm the black SUV.

By this point, he's no longer the governor of Rio. He resigned back in 2014 after the bus fare protests. But the Brazilian people are still pissed. A group trails the car, yelling and calling him a thief. Over the last two years, many of the construction executives that were exposed in Operation Car Wash have taken plea deals, and two of them shared some incriminating information about Sergio. They say the former governor got kickbacks each time he awarded them contracts. Sergio is accused of siphoning more than $60 million from huge construction projects and accepting bribes for government contracts. Sergio is accused of siphoning more than 60 million dollars from huge construction

projects and accepting bribes for government contracts. These projects include a major highway job just outside of Rio and the refurbishment of the Maracanao Stadium, which Ike had been leasing. Prosecutors say the government insisted on a 5% payoff per project, including some projects that were created to improve life in Rio's slums. Sergio made a ton of money off the scheme. One construction company paid him $100,000 per month for over a year. A prosecutor calls it

the cartelization of government resources. Sergio used the bribes to buy jewelry and $400 worth of hot dogs for his son's birthday party. Has anything been more me? Like, just a bunch of hot dogs and jewelry? No, I think that's basically like what I would do too, you know? Oh, is this just what women want? Truly.

And when Sergio arrives at Bangu Prison the night of his arrest, a couple of dozen people are waiting outside celebrating his takedown. The whole scene is broadcast live on TV. In Sergio's mugshot, he wears a bright green shirt and looks tired, with thin gray hair and stubble on his chin. Even with all the evidence against him, Sergio insists he's innocent. Now he must wait while the slow Brazilian judicial system

cranks on. In a real woe-is-me move, he spends his time in jail reading a biography of Nelson Mandela. Meanwhile, Sergio's partner in crime, Ike, has been toying with new business ideas while his insider trading trial is on hold. Like a new brand of toothpaste and a new version of Viagra. But new ideas aren't going to get Ike out of old problems.

And after Sergio's arrest, Ike can feel the feds breathing down his neck. On January 24th, 2017, Ike flies to New York. And when police go to arrest him two days later at his home in Brazil, they find the house empty. He is now an international fugitive on Interpol's wanted list. Less than a week after he left Brazil, Ike is on his way back home to face the music. He claims he was never on the run, he was just traveling for some innocent business, and now he's returning to face his charges. While waiting for his flight, he gives a brief interview to a group of journalists and says

that the investigation into Petrobras is a good thing for Brazil and that anyone who committed a crime needs to pay. On the flight home, he takes photos with fellow passengers. He doesn't eat anything the entire trip. He just drinks two glasses of milk. That might be the worst thing he's ever done. It's a weird choice. I didn't know they had milk on planes like that.

Have you ever seen anyone do it? I haven't seen an adult drink two glasses of milk ever. Gross. And when Ike lands, he's immediately put into a cop car and followed from above by a news helicopter. He's being taken to Arifranco, one of the country's worst prisons. It houses 2,000 prisoners, more than double its capacity. But Ike isn't there long. He's then moved to Bangu Prison, where his old pal Sergio is being held.

Bangu is more comfortable with less gang control and a smaller population, but it is still prison. On his first day, they give Ike a jail uniform, jeans and a white t-shirt, and by this point, his hair has been shaved off. A big L for his expensive hair plugs. Oh, he looks bad. What a fall from grace.

There's also something really strange about prisons in Brazil. The inmates are separated into two groups, those who graduated college and those who didn't. Inmates with a university education get private cells away from the general population until the end of their trial, and those without don't. Oh, that is deranged. That is some Hunger Games shit. That's crazy. What are you trying to create?

What is the purpose? Well, all I know is that I'm sharing a cell. Yeah, I'm not. Damn it. And you know who else is sharing a cell? Ike. Because he dropped out of college in Germany, Ike isn't granted any special treatment. According to Ike, his cell is only 12 square meters and he shares it with two other people.

One of the inmates in his wing allegedly murdered 200 people. And Ike only gets one hour of sunlight on weekdays, and none on the weekend. A few weeks after his arrest, Ike learns he's been charged with giving Sergio $6.5 million in bribes. This is a whole separate set of charges from his insider trading trial, which is still on hold after the judge went on a joy ride in Ike's car. The bribes between Ike and Sergio are easily traced to a few projects, including the leasing of Maracanao Stadium and

the construction of Ike's $4 billion port. A couple of months later, Ike is released from prison, but he's under house arrest until his trial begins. He's banned from running his businesses and forced to give up his passport. More than a year later, in July 2018, Ike is convicted of bribery and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

His love of the spotlight plays a big role in the length of his sentence. The judge believes that Ike's public profile made his crimes much more destructive. He'd ruined the reputation of not only Brazilian businessmen, but also the entire country, which was finally being seen as a good place to invest. The judge wants to make an example of him. Ike's allowed to stay under house arrest while the conviction goes through the appeals process, which could take a long time.

And in the months that follow, Ike becomes pretty active on YouTube. And get this, he's sharing financial advice and giving his takes on the day's business news. In September 2019, Ike's other trial for money laundering and insider trading is finally picked back up. Prosecutors said they found $203 million in new illicit transactions between 2010 and 2013, and he's sentenced to serve an additional eight years. Ike's roller coaster ride has reached some of the highest highs, and now he's at the

lowest low. He's past worrying about saving his reputation. Now he's worried about regaining his freedom. Operation Car Wash ended up becoming the biggest scandal in Brazilian history. Almost one-third of Brazil's sitting Congress people were investigated. It cost the country billions of dollars and stalled public projects,

putting tens of thousands of people out of work. The average Brazilian felt dute. The promise of economic stability and the optimism that came with it were all based on a lie. While Operation Car Wash cleaned out a lot of corruption within the Brazilian government, it also paved the way for the extreme right to fill the void. The nationalist presidential candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, came to power in 2019 on an anti-corruption platform.

That's so depressing. That's unspeakably depressing, actually. Yeah. And in 2020, Ike negotiated a plea deal in his car wash-related case. He agreed to confess to his money laundering and corruption crimes, name his accomplices, pay almost $150 million in fines, and served four years in prison. And in January 2024, OSX, Ike's only remaining publicly traded company, filed for bankruptcy.

But don't worry, Ike hasn't lost his love of attention. He regularly makes media appearances where he's called Operation Car Wash, quote, medieval and like the Inquisition. He still says he believes his charges will be overturned. Meanwhile, Ike's son Thor is trying his hand at business. He told GQ Brazil that he had invented an energy drink that intensifies your orgasms. He lovingly credits Ike for inspiring him to become an entrepreneur. Let's just hope he's learned from his father's mistakes.

Sachi, you know, it's really crazy what guys will do to stick it to their dad, you know? This is a story about three generations of guys who are going to torture all of us because no kiss from daddy. Yeah, you know, it's also really crazy because, again, with many scammers, he could have just been normal, rich, quiet guy who's doing a little bit of illegal activity and, you know, not being a part of one of the biggest corruption scandals in your country's history? If he was content with just one billion dollars, he could have gotten away with it for his

entire life. But he insisted on having the most billions of anyone to ever have a billion. You know what it is? I don't know why someone wants to be known while also being rich. You're not going to be the rich guy everyone likes forever. Like, show me that guy that never falls from grace, that everyone's kind of, like, happy with. And they're like, yeah, I'm so glad you're rich forever.

No one hates you. I mean, I think a lot of the men in this story want to be viewed as problem solvers, and problem solvers who then become very wealthy off of it because, you know, wealth is power. But they actually didn't have any solutions. They didn't have any plans. All of what they were saying was bullshit.

Yeah. Did you learn anything new about how to scam from our friends from Brazil? Yeah, you know, it's one of those stories where you're like, the stock market isn't real. I mean, it's just one of those, you're just kind of like, none of this was real. This is all fake money, moved around with fake promises. The lesson is, it's all fake, you may as well steal it.

Yeah, I think it's all fake. You may as well steal it. Yeah, I think that's exactly it. I feel like Thor is well on his way to his own scamfluencers episode. Apparently he has figured out a drink that's going to make all of us come. Oh, shut up. I hate you so much. I can't think of a better thing for the son of a megalomaniac billionaire who is later dethroned to sell than a drink that makes people cum. That's like the best

possible thing he could do. Anything else would be demonstrably more evil. This is a gas station product. This is what you see behind the gas station guy. Like, that's not real. It's not a real thing. It's the guy at the bodega who's like, do you want your dick to get bigger? Drink this spider venom. Like, you can't make that chic.

I'm sorry. If Gwyneth Paltrow sold it, I bet a bunch of women in Calabasas would buy it. Yeah. If you like scam flincers, you can listen to every episode early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts.

Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondry.com slash survey. This is Ike Batista, Brazil's bribery baron. I'm Sarah Haggie. And I'm Saatchi Cole. If you have a tip for us on a story that you think we should cover, please email us at scamplancers at wendry.com. We use many sources in our research.

A few that were particularly helpful were Brazilian Heirs, Wealth, Power, Decadence, and Hope in an American Country by Alex Quadros, How Brazil's Nine Horsemen Cracked a Bribery Scandal by Will Connors at the Wall Street Journal, and A Brazilian Magnate Points to Himself for Inspiration by Alexei Barionuevo in The New York Times. Jessica Ford wrote this episode, additional writing by us, Sachie Cole and Sarah Hagee. Olivia Briley and Eric Thurm are our story editors. Fact-checking by Lexi Piri.

Sound design by Sam Ada. Additional audio assistance provided by Augustine Lim. Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Free Sonsync. Our managing producer is Desi Blaylock. Our senior managing producer is Callum Blues. Janine Cornelow and Stephanie Jens are our development producers. Our associate producer is Charlotte Miller. Our producer is Julie McBruder. Our senior producers are Sarah Enne and Ginny Bloom. Our executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman, Marsha Louie, and Erin O'Flaherty for Wondery. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture

America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Raden was found dead in a canyon near LA in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Laney Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together they were trying to break into the movie industry but things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood in

Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.