Scamtown - Disconnected | 1

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

In the ’80s and ’90s, fraudulent telemarketing is booming, often bleeding senior citizens dry. Law enforcement is nearly powerless to stop it, until Tim Healy, a zany young FBI agent out of Salt Lake City, comes up with an ingenious undercover plan to scam the scammers and beat them at their own game.Scamtown is an Apple Original podcast, produced by FunMeter. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.http://apple.co/Scamtown

We are calling you from the Department of Social Security Administration. The reason you received this call... Telemarketing calls. Phone scams. We all get them. That robot lady telling you once again that the IRS is out to get you? Or the car you don't own is out of warranty. You hang up in disgust.

These calls interfere with all aspects of life. Dinner time, lunch time, study time, work time, sleep time, pretty much all the time. Back in the early 90s, telemarketing fraud was exploding, creating challenges for law enforcement. It was like the Wild West, a rampant problem. That is until one lone FBI agent went undercover with a brilliant scheme to scam the scammers. The result? A nationwide bust three years in the making, which later paved the way for one of the largest fraudulent telemarketing undercover operations in history. We're sorry, you have reached a number that has been disconnected. Welcome to Scam Town, an Apple original podcast produced by Fun Meter. I'm Brian Lazzarte. And I'm James Lee Hernandez. We're filmmakers who've been trading stories now for quite some time, obsessed and compelled to bring some of our favorites to life. We love

a surprising heist, an intricate scam, or just pulling back the curtain on something you think you know. Entering a world that's stranger than fiction and writing that line between comedy and tragedy. This is Scam Town, a place for our favorite stories that do just that. Today's episode, Disconnected.

The world of the telemarketer in the 90s was elusive. Equal parts Wolf of Wall Street and Glengarry Glen Ross. A world of high stakes, rampant drug use and dial after redial. Who were these guys behind the phone line? Well, a perfect example is this guy from a report on telemarketing fraud on Dateline back in the 90s. He's talking about what he does to get ready. Picking up the phone, punching in the numbers, pounding the hook, as they would say. You would do a couple lines of Coke, have a few drinks of Jack Daniels,

becoming stronger inside because a strong telephone salesman does not take no for an answer. And that kind of prep within the telemarketing world was more common than you'd think. During this time, these Coke-snorting, Jack Daniels-drinking telemarketers are cropping up across the United States. Their home? A boiler room. These guys, tightly packed next to each other, constantly calling every number they can and not hanging up until they hear a yes. But they aren't selling legit goods or services. Instead, they're essentially selling glorified garbage. A cheap pen with your business's name on it, bogus travel vouchers, and shoddy health products. Buy these products, they say. And you could be entered into a contest

to win something much better. Cash, a car, a Rolex watch. It's pretty good, James. But as we all know, it's all bullshit. I had my first taste of fraudulent telemarketing in Huntsville, Utah, which was a town that had one cop. And he says, I think these guys are doing something wrong. That's special agent Tim Healy. Back when he was a young guy, he was just getting his feet wet in the FBI. The cop in Huntsville had received a few complaints from victims. They told him the telemarketers promised amazing prizes if they bought this junk. But of course, the prizes never materialized or were worth pennies. I was in a three-man RA in Ogden, Utah, about 34 miles north

of Salt Lake in beautiful country. And I did the criminal stuff. Anything that came in, kidnapping, bank robbery, fraud case, I did them all. An FBI resident agency, or RA for short, is basically like a regional field office, but much smaller with less bells and whistles, essentially filling in the gaps between the larger cities. Now, at this time, the inner workings of a boiler room were a bit of a mystery to Tim and much of the FBI. When Tim received this phone call from the cop in Huntsville, he wasn't sure where to begin. He and the cop began investigating. They do surveillance, try to build sources. You know, everything it takes to work a traditional case.

They identify a young woman who is working as a secretary at the boiler room in Huntsville. They share with her that her bosses really aren't on the up and up and eventually convince her to wear a wire. From all the intel gathered, it further illuminates the scams these guys were running. Through this source, they build enough evidence and arrest the fraudulent telemarketers. Tim begins exploring other boiler rooms across Utah and targets a much larger room out of Ogden. He follows the

same steps as before, builds a source, gets information, and eventually arrests the telemarketers, personally taking the two owners in the back of his car. They were older, and they had been involved in telemarketing for a long period of time. And after I arrested them, I said, look, I'm not going to advise you of your rights. I'm not going to ask you questions. You are so effed. Their names are Warren Rupp and Jerry Barney. These guys were career telemarketers. Warren was this tall and lengthy guy with a perm and this glorious 70s mustache. Jerry, on the other hand, was more a ton with long white hair and a beard, almost like a telemarketing Santa Claus. Tim offers them an olive branch. But here's the deal.

I want to learn more. He said, would you like to work with me? Once I arrest you and drop you in jail, I can't talk to you again. I want to know about how this works. Because at that point in the FBI, we didn't know what was going on inside the room. Warren and Jerry take a beat and consider the FBI. We didn't know what was going on inside the room. Warren and Jerry

take a beat and consider the offer. They're facing charges of wire fraud because they know that the products they're offering, much like the chance

to win a fabulous prize, are about as real as Milli Vanilli's recording of their hit song, Blame It On The Rain, which is to say it sounds good, but it's completely fake.

A judge agrees to hold their pending charges in jail time if they cooperate with the FBI. Warren and Jerry take the deal and begin bringing Tim deeper into the shady world of telemarketing fraud. So I'm sitting there talking to Warren about how it works and how the process works and what they do and how they do it. It's kind of like a love-hate relationship with them because, you know, they're funny. I mean, God, they're funny. And they have to be funny because they're great salesmen. And these guys laugh and joke about victimizing these people that an FBI agent is sworn to protect. If you actually sit down with a fraudulent telemarketer and ask them what they do and how they do it, it would make you sick to your stomach. People like Warren and Jerry

had great success targeting the most vulnerable, senior citizens. What's the age range? Some said as old as we can get, you know, 80 to 90. You're thinking, you know, why do you want an 80 to 90? They go, okay, yeah, I know. So you can victimize them. One victim, the victim had passed away and I'm interviewing her son. I'm interviewing over the phone and he wants to kill these people. And he is so angry and so furious. She probably lost like $10,000. It was a huge amount, especially back then. And he says, mom passes away. Okay. I go to her house. I look through her bills. I go through all this stuff. And I find in a refrigerator, she's got dog food, dog food. And I said, okay. And he goes, Tim, mom doesn't have a dog. Doesn't have a dog.

And he said, you don't understand. I have to live with the fact that my mother died eating dog food and she couldn't tell her son that she died eating dog food because she was ashamed. My mother was ashamed to tell me that she'd been victimized by these a-holes. And I have to live with that for the rest of my life.

The rest of my life. That's one in millions. This problem was spreading like a virus through the United States. You had millions and millions of victims. You had hotbeds in San Diego, L.A., Las Vegas, New York, Miami, Fort Lauderdale. It was all over the place. And for the FBI, cracking down on these telemarketer boiler rooms was even harder.

When you arrest the salesman, they go, look, I just thought it was all real. I thought it was the harder. When you arrest the salesman, they go, look, I just thought it was all real. I thought it was the truth. And when you're in the room, everybody knows it's garbage. Everybody does. And they don't communicate that. They don't say it's garbage. They just know. And they don't want to talk about it

because they know if they talk about it, they got problems. What proved to be even more difficult was that as soon as these guys got a whiff of law enforcement poking around, they'd immediately pack up and leave. But then, soon enough, they'd pop up in a new town, often under a new business name, doing the same thing. So how do you crack that nut? I'm sitting there talking to Warren and Jerry about how I can infiltrate it. But it wasn't as simple as just going undercover. If I walk in there and I say, I want a job,

and I sit down on the phone and try to make calls, and I don't sell anybody, they're not going to talk to me. If I start creating victims, I'll have to lie to do that. So I can't go in as an undercover agent and, you know, violate the law. You might say that Tim is a bit obsessive. When I have an issue or a problem, I have a hard time sleeping until I resolve it. I just keep thinking about how I could do it, how I could do it, how I can do it. These boiler rooms were a thorn in his side. And he couldn't stop thinking about how he could get these guys to admit on tape

they were committing fraud. I was trying to come up with a product that I could offer the owners. If there was a product out there that would help them, they would have already grabbed it. Tim is running idea after idea by Warren and Jerry. They've got credit cards, that's not going to work. And then you have a lead list, that's not going to work. And you offer them, you know, some type of system where they can contact them and a mailer, and that's not going to work. And you offer them, you know, some type of system where they can contact them and a mailer and that's not going to work and blah, blah, blah. Until on a drive home, something clicked. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. I thought, oh my God, what are you doing? The son of a bitch doesn't have to be real. It can be pretend. I got it. An automatic dialing machine that calls people at a rate of 1,000 per hour.

Insert trumpet. The Vox 2000. Vox's Voice 2000. Unable to contain the excitement of his fake invention, he puts on his best salesman voice and starts to test the waters. The manager gets on, and I start talking about the Vox 2000. And now I'm making up a pitch. I'm just chatting with him, but I'm saying, hey, look, let me talk to you for a second.

You got a minute or two? Are you interested in me eliminating your lead cost? Because you don't have to buy leads because they call you. Are you interested in me, you know, eliminating your phone bill? Are you interested in me having your phone ring off the hook for qualified leads that have been called by a machine that said, congratulations, you won this award. And they're calling in to ask you, tell me about the award. And the manager is going nuts. He's going, yes, give me your name. And I'm not prepared to give him my name. I'm not even prepared to give him my phone number because

I'm not even an undercover agent. As Tim just mentioned, he's making these calls and hasn't even gotten official approval to go undercover. I'm just going, well, yeah, it's 6060, but let me talk to you some more about it. Could it do this? Yes, it does that too. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So then I just hang up. It was obvious that the boiler room manager

was salivating at the idea of having Tim's phony machine. So Tim begins designing the Vox 2000 on the fly. I'm literally getting requirements from fraudulent telemarketers about this machine. He brings it to Warren and Jerry, and they begin to build the perfect pitch, something that would entice the con men. But Tim just wants to be the idea guy. He has no intention of going undercover. Eventually, he and his supervisor, Dave Barker,

fly to headquarters with the undercover plan in hand, hoping to get some funding and kick off the operation. Greg Meacham, who was the supervisor at the time, looks at it and says, oh my God, this could solve the problems. And he looks at it and he's like, approve. Now, as we said before, telemarketing scams were a really rampant problem at this time. The FBI was having a hard time cracking down on all these boiler rooms across the country. Tim and his new Vox 2000 were kind of like the perfect Trojan horse.

It was a means to take these guys down from the inside. Dave and Tim are excited to get started, but Dave has one condition. He looks at me, he goes, look, no one can do this except you. Give me a freaking break. And he's like, no, you have to do it. And I said, I don't want to do it. I want to be the case agent of this. And he goes, okay, I'll tell you what, I'm going to give you a case agent and he'll be like an administrative agent and you'll be the case agent too, but you'll also be the undercover agent. This was the last thing that Tim wanted to do. And I go, Dave, this sucks. And he goes, okay, I'll do it.

So I do it. After two weeks of intense undercover training at Quantico, Tim is ready. But in order to fool the salesman, he's got to look the part. I had a normal suit, an FBI suit. And I had normal shoes, FBI shoes. He goes, okay, you need a $500 suit. Now, I've never met Greg Meacham, nor know anything about his fashion sensibility,

but he was the supervisor of economic crime at the FBI. So it was a little surprising that he was the one so tuned in to how Tim needed to look. Brian, I don't know if you know this, but the FBI are very fashionable with their grays and their dark grays and their grays.

They look great. Well, one thing was clear. Tim had to get shopping to better look the part. Cue the shopping montage. I go, Meech, you gotta, or boss, you gotta be shitting me. He goes, no, five, five hundred, five hundred dollar suit. It was a huge amount, especially back then. A five hundred dollar suit is like a five thousand dollar suit now, right? So I get a five hundred dollar suit and then he says,

you need to get shoes. I said, what's wrong. And then he says, you need to get shoes. I said, what's wrong with these? They go, they look like agent shoes. You need expensive shoes. I said, you gotta be kidding me. He goes, no. So I am literally shopping with Warren to buy these effing shoes and the suit, okay?

It's like Pretty Woman, but just way different. In his new suit and shoes, Tim begins going undercover. He's joined by Warren Rupp, one of the telemarketers he flipped earlier, and another agent. Everything has led to this moment. What was once a crazy idea was now becoming a full-blown undercover investigation. They step out of the car, steady their nerves, and begin documenting their operation.

I would wire up, and I'd say, this is Special Agent Tim Healy. Yep, should be on. It's 4.05 p.m. On Thursday, the 26th of September, 1991, we're here with Special Agent Healy and Warren Rupp. We still rolling?

Yep. It's 4.18 p.m. We're on our way in now to Rosson Court. They walk to the entrance, adjust their suit and ties, and swing open the door. They're hit with a wall of sound that rivals the stock exchange in the 1980s. We're talking lots of yelling, reading scripts, and shouting about a once-in-a-lifetime deal. I'm telling you who you're with. Mike Manson. From Atlanta? Yeah.

Tell me, is Ken back there? Okay, can you tell him his appointment with Mike Manson is here? Manson? Is he here? Manson? I'm sorry. Thanks. So when I introduce myself, hey, I'm Mike Manson, call me Charlie. You're like Charles Manson. And everybody got it. So they'd laugh.

They'd laugh. That would be a joke with fraudulent telemarketers. That's how you call me Charlie. But Tim constantly has to stay in character. And that could be something of a grind. You'd be enrolled the whole time. And in a long undercover, deep undercover, it's grueling. Fraudulent telemarketers, these guys know body language.

They know communication. I mean, they are looking for every cue that you have, and you're playing all of those, all of that. Step one was to get a meeting. Step two, have them buy into the Vox 2000 and what it could do for them. He'd show these guys his straight-from-Staples, 90s black pitch binder. And it was filled with pages of clip art,

pictures of befuddled salesmen and women smiling on telephones, and the piece de resistance itself, the Vox 2000, which basically just looks like a regular old-school computer. Yes, but it's not just a regular computer. It's the Vox 2000. It's the software. That's what it's all about. And so I said, here's the Vox 2000.

It's an automatic dialer. It calls 1,000 people an hour, 12,000 in a day. It eliminates your lead costs, eliminates your phone bill, eliminates your costs. And the people call in. This calls locally in Miami, so you don't have that call. So we tell you, hey, listen, we want to hit everybody in Kansas City, Missouri, or whatever city we target. What you say is, you say, Mike, I'm interested, let's get going.

And once we get going, we'll turn it on and make your phone ring off the hook. Because the guy's going, how are you doing it? Because your bill's got to be crazy. I said, no, it only makes local calls. So I'd actually do it for free. So this machine's making 1,000 an hour local calls and telling them in Miami to call Dallas or San Antonio for this free award. And so I say, I've got these all around the country

making calls. And see, the truth is, I don't know if you're big enough to be able to handle the kind of volume I can create for you. The owner's like, yes, we can. And I said, no, you can't. As Tim tells them about the amazing benefits of his make-believe automatic dialer, he's also taken in the room, seen how it looks, who's behind the phones. This dialer that you're looking at right now, that's a 12-line system. We've got a 24-line system now with T1 capability, okay, that will call 12,000 people a day.

With the T1 installed, it'll call 24,000. So you just double what you see there. Now, think about that. This guy's a fraudulent telemarketer. And sometimes it starts getting hot. When it gets hot, they close down, they move to another place, okay? And I'm saying to them, to the owner, this gives you unlimited flexibility, wink, wink. You can change your number, wink, wink. You can change the whole pitch, wink, wink. You can go somewhere else, wink, wink. You can go to another state, wink, wink. And they're like, oh, this guy knows me. I said, yeah, dude, I know you. It may sound like Tim is putting on the hard sell, but he's also just getting the hang of it. Well, I've been involved in telemarketing for about eight years on the phone. Warren's like a 20-year, 22-year guy.

What type of telemarketer are you? You name it. We know what the problems are with telemarketers. High direct mail costs, sales have been dropping, you've got phone bills, you still have lead problems, still have phone bill problems, and there's still high turnover rates. This thing was made for a telemarketer. I got together with Warren and with this computer expert and said, hey, make me a thing that does this. That was just, here's how it works. If you're interested, we'll come back. And so we left. No one was not interested. We never got a never come back. Never, ever.

Tim could tell these guys were falling for it, hook, line, and sinker. They wanted his product, and Tim, maybe a little too much in character, wanted a fair price. I would even get into arguments with the owner about the percentage I was going to take. And I thought 20% was fair. This guy says, that's BS. I said, what do you mean BS? And I'm arguing with him. And he goes, take 15. I said, says, that's BS. I said, what do you mean BS? And I'm arguing with him. And he goes, take 15. I said, I'm not taking 15. I'm taking 20. And we're going back and forth.

And then I'm thinking, hey, Healy, you're an undercover agent. You're not really a fraudulent telemarketer. Take the 15% so you can come in and talk to these guys, idiot. And I'm going, OK, 17 is the lowest I'm going to go. OK, we'll go 17. And the Oscar goes to Tim Healy. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Greatly appreciate it. And I'm going, okay, 17 is the lowest I'm going to go. Okay, we'll go 17. And the Oscar goes to Tim Healy. Thank you. Thank you, David. Greatly appreciate it. That's all it is. The goal is to get them to admit the fraud. That's the goal. It wasn't just that he needed them to admit

to fraud. He needed to get it on tape. Now, if you remember, the way that he would explain the Vox 2000 to them is that it would send out these pre-recorded messages to thousands of numbers across the country telling them that they won a fabulous prize and to call back, which obviously was not true. Well, that pre-recorded message needed to be recorded. And so he would ask every owner if they could help him with a pitch and record it. I'm not going to get a piece of paper that's going to tell me how to say it. It's not what it says. It's how they deliver it. So if you want to do this, you know, fraudulent telemarketer owner, you're going to have to allow me to talk to your most experienced salespeople. So while recording the pitch talk to your most experienced salespeople.

So while recording the pitch with one of the top salespeople saying, you just won a prize, call back to claim it. The hope for Tim is that take after take, he'll actually get the salesperson loose enough to admit that it's all bullshit. What do you sell? What is your unit cost? What do you sell? I mean, not what do you sell, what is it cost? The product? What do you sell your product for? Oh, well, you know, our average order size is $699. What do you buy it for?

Well, it doesn't, what I buy it for, I give other stuff away. I know, but hang on. The product that they're getting is about $70. The gift that they're getting, like a TV or a piece of jewelry, what we justify the money we're spending on is more, you know. And just as Tim had hoped, he gets it. It's more. What we justify the money we're spending on is more. A telemarketer admitting on tape that their business is not on the up and up.

It started out like any grassroots undercover investigation. You start with one office, then you add another office. Soon you start building evidence one call room at a time. And sometimes, Tim would even go alone. The justification was, it's white-collar crime. You know, this is not dope. I flew in, and I'd just go there and talk to him, and then I'd leave. I mean, it was relatively low-keyed.

But it soon expanded with even more agents joining Tim's merry band of pretend telemarketers. They dubbed it Operation Disconnect. We had like seven or eight undercover agents around the country. I would make the initial call for all of them, you know, and then I would come and do the initial pitch, and then we'd bring the other undercover guys there that would come as well. It was amazing. I could brief what we were doing at the pool, at the hotel.

And if anybody sat and listened to us talk, it sounded like we were salespeople getting ready to do a pitch. No one had any indication that we were anything because we got that good. Even though they were slick, Tim was always aware of the risk that someone from his real life, like an old classmate or something, might call him out while being undercover. And that almost happened one day when Tim and a group of agents decided to make a little pit stop at McDonald's. And all of a sudden, I look out and I see my suburban pulling up. My wife, and she's got the kids in the car. And, you know, there could be fraudulent telemarketers in the McDonald's. And I'm sure there are.

And I'm like, we're going to be had. Now, I don't know if there's anybody there. So she literally walks in. And I give her the face. And she knows the face. And so she starts acting in role. She acts like she doesn't know me. And so she gets in line, and I get behind her.

And she is the cutest little Italian you've ever seen. I fell in love with her my first date. We've been married 43 years. She's my high school sweetheart, and she's my soulmate. And I'm standing behind her, and I'm saying to her, I said, you are cute, and you are hot. And I'm talking in this tone. And she turns, and she said, I'm married'm talking in this tone. And she turns and she said, I'm married.

Thank you very much. And she turns around and I said, he's a loser. Dump him. And this guy in the other line turns and says, bud, back the F off. And another guy turns around and said, and we mean it. Like, I'm going to get my butt kicked for making a pass at my wife. And she turns around and winks and she said, you better listen to him. Operation Disconnect was in full effect, but it wasn't the only one.

At this time, there were a handful of other FBI operations throughout the country dealing with telemarketing fraud. That's when Tim's supervisor, Greg Meacham, you know, the fashion critic, invited him to share his progress and success at an FBI conference in Las Vegas. Tim was one of a handful of agents and assistant U.S. attorneys, or AUSAs, asked to speak about telemarketing fraud and the issues surrounding this white-collar crime.

The AUSAs were talking about how they hate these and no one wants to do them and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and talked about how difficult they are to work. And it was just abysmal. And then all of a sudden, Meech says, tomorrow you're going to hear about how you can get confessions. And then when I got up, I literally talked almost two hours and told him what we did. Tim went on and on about each operation and his technique. I would explain it to them. So it's digitally recorded, right?

I can change the voice. Like in New York, they like a New York voice. But like in the suburbs, they like kind of an English voice. I don't know why, but we get a lot of good feedback from English voices, right? And all this crap I'm making up, right? It's all made up. And so, you know, and it's just, it's just all make-believe. Tim goes on to explain how all of the telemarketing bosses would eat it up, and they would allow him to record their top sales guys, or ours, into a mic, shooting the shit between takes, eventually capturing them admitting to fraud.

There was someone special in the audience this day, a revered FBI agent who had been tackling telemarketing fraud for quite some time. His name? Darwin Wisdom. Yes, that is his real name. Well, at least that we know of.

Tim was fully aware that his pitch was going to be scrutinized by the best of the best. And I played tapes and showed them. And I will never forget it. Darwin is in the middle. He raises his hands. And he had gotten up the day before and talked about how he's getting so frustrated he's just going to retire and he feels like a failure and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And he gets up and says, this is incredible. This is amazing. This is the most ingenious thing I've ever heard in my life. Can we play? Oh my God. Oh yes, Mighty One. At this point, there have been no arrests. Tim was still building cases against as many fraudulent call rooms as he had the manpower for.

The plan was to take down every telemarketing boiler room at the same time. That way, they couldn't just shut down and flee like they had in the past. As they continue to follow leads and build cases, they get a tip of a boiler room out of Las Vegas with potential mob ties. This could be huge. Tim sets up a meeting and flies out to meet the boss. He hits him with his normal Vox 2000 spiel, but this time it's not working. This guy's skeptical. He needs some proof in the form of assurance from some past customers. Here's the deal. I can't do anything now. Let me see if I can get one of my customers

that'd be willing to talk to you. That's the best I can do. And he goes, okay. Tim knows he's got a big fish on the line, but there is that pesky little problem of protocol. So he immediately picks up his phone and dials one of his supervisors. But there is that pesky little problem of protocol. So he immediately picks up his phone and dials one of his supervisors. He tells him he needs more money. He wants to build something even bigger than a fake computer. I need about $10,000 to build a fraudulent telemarketing room in Salt Lake City. There's a pause.

And he goes, I said, no. And I started explaining it to him about this is what, and he goes, you need to come into Quantico and you're going to get a psychological evaluation tomorrow. And I said, no, no. And he's like, I'm not asking you, dude. You're going to Quantico to get an evaluation. Tim flies to headquarters, takes a psychological evaluation, and passes.

Thankfully for Tim, he hadn't lost it. And better yet, he gets the extra funds to build his fake boiler room, all to prove to the made guys from Vegas that this is legit. So Tim actually showed us a video of what this fake boiler room looked like. And it was almost a Hollywood level production.

You got to think, drab office space crammed with undercover agents posing as telemarketers. Their desks stacked with papers and coffee cups. They had a fake scoreboard with how many sales each person had made. And one of the gimme gifts was hung on the wall, and it was a framed letter

signed by George Washington himself. While he was president, this is a one-of-a-kind document, treasured collector's item from our American Heritage Collection. Now, currently, letters from Washington while he was president are going for $30,000, up to and sometimes more. Okay. So that would be, obviously, the award that most people would want. Okay. Now,

is that the gift up there next to you there? Yes. As a matter of fact, it is. That's Warren Rupp talking, by the way. It was fantastic. We used like a couple agents and then we used clerks. And we had the supervisor, his wife worked as a clerk. We had it divided up so that we had two rooms. We had it all wired up and we did a couple of those rehearsals. I was so proud of them.

They were so pumped. Jimmy Cross, who was an undercover agent that did white-collar crime, he posted the owner, and he was hilarious. My wife was a nurse. She was a home nurse. She would go to people's houses. So she got pictures of her patients with the gift, and those hung on the wall.

It was absolutely hilarious. They walked in, and the phones were ringing, and it was part of the Vox 2000. The room was bustling, deals being made left and right. It made the Vegas guys feel right at home. And what their job is, they call, don't call the order, and sell my fantastic health care products

to indecision. The closing rate's 20, 25%. He wanted to make sure we were real, and he figured if I go into a room, I'll know. All right, so Tim mentioned that there were two rooms. Each room is made to look like a bustling boiler room, and they were populated by undercover agents. In the event that the Vegas guys wanted to listen in to look like a bustling boiler room, and they were populated by undercover agents.

In the event that the Vegas guys wanted to listen in to any one of these conversations, they needed to make sure they always had two people on a line. You need a caller and a receiver. But because Tim was on such a budget, they came up with this brilliant plan that no matter which room the Vegas guys were in, the agents would just switch roles. So if you're in one room with the Vegas guys,

they would be hearing telemarketers talking to real people. And those real people were agents in the other rooms pretending to be victims. And when they walk the Vegas guys into that room, those agents would immediately switch roles to becoming telemarketers. This way, there was always a real conversation to be had. He walks into a room, walks around, and he's convinced these guys got it. He walks out, he says, we're in. It was a good day. Operation Disconnect could not have been going better. They were getting admission after admission of fraud

from the top sales guys, thinking they were just recording a script for the Vox 2000. But after three years of undercover work, it was time to take them all down. They were going after everyone for wire fraud, which could carry a sentence of up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. We're all excited, and I'm actually planning on going out and doing all the arrests.

These arrests were going to happen across the country, from Atlanta to Buffalo to Salt Lake City. And the boss, he says, no, Tim, you're not going anywhere. I said, sir. And he goes, no, you got to identify all the people. I said, sir, you're kidding me. And he goes, no, you got to identify all the people. I said, sir, you're kidding me. And he goes, no, no, order, order, have to. So our arrest was supposed to go down at eight o'clock. As you might imagine,

Tim doesn't like to take no for an answer. He wasn't about to let a bunch of field agents take all the fun by cuffing these bad guys. He had to get at least one for himself. And I called Shane Miner. Shane Miner is a police officer in Ogden County. And he's probably 5'5", and he can bench like a million pounds, right?

He's huge. I said, Shane, you want to do me a favor and you want to help me with a bad guy? And he goes, sure, brother. And it was this guy that had laughed about ripping off these old people and went back to his high school and it was this guy that had laughed about ripping off these old people and went back to his high school to basically ridicule

and show him his check and say that they were, he said, I called them all losers. And he said, you're losers, losers, losers. And you thought I was going to be nothing and you're a loser. He was just an arrogant a-hole. And I knew him and I knew the team that was going to arrest him, and I was angry. It's early morning.

Shane and Tim drive over to this arrogant a-hole's house. With a warrant in hand, he walks up to the front door. He tries the handle. It's locked. I go around to the side, and I don't know what it was, but it's a sliding glass door, and I've never touched a sliding glass door that hasn't been locked. And I push it, and it just slides open.

Divine force saying, I'm going to let you in this place. Divine force or not, you've got to lock your sliding doors. He walks in, gun drawn. He creeps through the house, noticing a light on in the bathroom. And I know he's in the shower, and he may have a gun, who knows. And I literally push open the door, and I call out, I said, the guy's name, FBI, don't move. And there's this pause. He turns off the water. He starts asking questions. I said, let me see your hands. And I can hear him kind of slipping out of the tub from the shower. And I see his hands and he's totally soaking wet. There's obviously no gun.

Tim orders the perp to step out of the shower with only the bubbles of his Irish spring to hide his privates. I just said, sit down. He sits on a love seat that's leather. Leather, very expensive. I'm looking for clothes for him. He starts pooling, and he's cold. It's March, and he's wet. And he says, can I have a towel?

And I said, no. And I threw him a shirt. I said, put it on. I threw him pants. The guy's wearing tights jeans. He puts his pants on. He's having a difficult time. Can I have socks? No. Put the shoes on. Let's go. I threw him pants. The guy's wearing tight jeans. He puts his pants on. He's having a difficult time. Can I have socks?

No. Put the shoes on. Let's go. I'm in a hurry. Cuff him. We take him to the office. And he's sitting in the back, advising him of his rights. Tim arrests the telemarketer and drags him in for processing.

And so I walk in, and the boss looks at me, and he goes, Tim? I said, sir? And he goes, what are you doing? And I said, I ran into him coming into the office. What'd you want me to do? And Whatever he got, he deserved. And when you laugh about ripping off old people, you don't get your underwear when you're wet. That's all. It's kind of a new proverb to live by. At the end of Operation Disconnect in 1993, around 240 people were arrested across 13 states. But this was just the beginning. It dovetailed into what later became one of the largest undercover telemarketing busts in U.S. history called Senior Sentinel, where they used AARP members and actual victims along with the FBI. Years of work resulted in 1,200 successful arrests and hundreds of convictions.

Tim went on to several other undercover operations before he retired from the FBI in 2013, some of which we will probably never know about. For Tim, the actions of these telemarketers and the countless victims they created still haunt him today. These crimes touched us and the victims touched us. And no one should die like that. No son should feel like he failed his mother and live with that. Just unbelievable. And these guys joke about it. They laugh about it. It's funny to them. It's funny. I took everything. And you know what? I almost grabbed the kitchen sink. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. No.

You're going to rot in hell if you're lucky. And all of a sudden, we beat them at their own game. My machine was as fake as their first prize award. It's actually pretty funny that the scammers were ultimately brought down by a scam. Tim made the Vox 2000 basically out of thin air. But ironically, that is currently the state of technology and computer engineering. Now, most systems are capable of calling thousands of people per day.

What made the Vox 2000 so convincing was just how possible it seemed with where technology was at the time. The work that Tim and his team started completely wiped out this type of telemarketing scam. But unfortunately, it didn't stop telemarketing fraud altogether. Now, it's not just callers trying to get you to donate to bogus charities or give away fake vacations. There's all sorts of new stuff. Credit card scams, IRS scams, car warranties. Not to mention phishing scams on your cell phone, emails, Nigerian princes.

And now AI, which can replicate any voice. At this point, we probably wish it was as simple as it was back when Tim started. Truth is, the FBI continues to be hard at work at cracking down on wire fraud scammers. And although we don't have a front row seat to those operations like we do with Tim's, we hope they've taken lessons out of Tim's playbook to find ways to beat these fraudsters at their own game. Yeah, like the Vox 20,000. Oh, that'll work. I just hope that more arrests involve suspects trying to put on tight jeans over their soaking wet legs on a leather couch. Yeah, that's got to be brutal.

We'll see you next episode. I got to go. My phone's ringing. On the next episode, a bomb disguised as a copy machine is found in a crowded casino. I was just astounded at the size of it. And I'd say it was a holy shit moment. That's next week on Scam Town. Scam Town is an Apple original podcast produced by Fun Meter.

New episodes come out each Monday. If you want to check out a few extras from our show, you can find us at Fun Meter Official on Instagram. The show is hosted and executive produced by us. I'm Brian Lozarte. And I'm James Lee Hernandez. Maggie Robinson-Katz produced this episode. Our co-executive producers are Shannon Pence,

Nicole Laufer, and Matt Kay. The show was edited and sound designed by Jude Brewer. Final mixing by Ben Freer from Fiddle Leaf Sound. Music for the podcast was composed by James Newberry. Additional music by Five Alarm.

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