The Big Flop - Listen Now: Criminal Lives

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

What drives a regular person to risk it all in the criminal underworld? On Wondery's Criminal Lives, host Danny Gold takes you inside the minds of some of America’s most successful black market entrepreneurs. From a larger-than-life steroids kingpin to the self described "Original Gay Gangster" who had a gift for numbers and an addiction to luxury, each reveals the rules of the game, the adrenaline-fueled highs, and the missteps that brought it all crashing down. Forget what you've seen in the movies. Criminal Lives brings you the unvarnished truth of what it really means to choose a life of crime.Binge all episodes of Criminal Lives exclusively with Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and get access to this and more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad free right now. Start Your free trial by visiting www.wondery.com/links/criminal-livesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I'm Danny Gold, the host of Criminal Lives, a brand new true crime series available exclusively on Wondery+. Criminal Lives is a series about everyday people who became criminal masterminds, as told by the actual criminals themselves. It's a show about ambition, greed, and what some people are willing to risk to get to the top. I'm about to play you a clip from the first episode of Criminal Lies, where we'll meet Greg Valentino, the Royd King, who went from scrawny kid to bodybuilding legend, and then stumbled into the dangerous world of underground steroids. Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the entire series right now, exclusively and ad free. ["Dumbbell Curls"] It's the fall of 1995, Yorktown Heights, New York.

Inside a hardcore no-frills gym, Greg Valentino is just finishing a set of 150 pound Dumbbell Curls. He's admiring his massive biceps when his phone rings. It's his friend Paul. Paul calls me and he tells me, we need to talk and we need to talk in person. Come right now, come down to the city,

because you can't talk about this shit on the phone. Greg and Paul are partners in a growing black market business. They sell anabolic steroids to fellow gym rats looking to get jacked Business has been good, but now there's trouble and when Greg gets the Paul's apartment He finds out just how much trouble they're in the whole house has been ransacked. Everything's gone It looked like a robbery and he said to me, bro. it's all gone. I said, everything as in everything? Yes, bro, everything.

And you know what that means now, right? That means that we're gonna have to go talk to Remo. Remo is their supplier and not a guy you wanna cross. He's like a badass gangster. I mean, a bad, bad, bad gangster. He was the kind of guy who would kill you at the blink of an eye. Remo had fronted Greg and Paul tens of thousands of dollars worth of high-grade steroids. And those steroids had been stolen.

Now Greg and Paul are on the hook. We're gonna have to explain to him that all that stuff he fronted us is gone. And you know he's gonna get psycho on us. Remo tells them to meet him at a parking lot in midtown Manhattan. Greg and Paul get there first, and while they wait, they practice what they're gonna say. And then a white Lincoln town car

with blacked out windows pulls up. Remo rolls down the window and tells them to get in the back. We get in the car and we start telling him what happened. And he starts punching the dashboard. Motherfucker! Motherfucker! Why didn't you move it? Are you that stupid? That means you're gonna have to fucking pay for that. And he fucking whips out a gun and he points it right at Paul's head and he says,

I should just fucking kill you right now! And he goes, we gotta figure this out. He puts the gun back and he just starts driving. It's after midnight and the roads are nearly empty. Remo sits behind the wheel, muttering and cursing to himself. I'm looking at Paul, Paul's looking at me and he's like, fuck man, I knew this shit was gonna be like this shit.

And I'm just sitting there going, please God, please God, please God, just get us out of this, just get us out of this. Just get us out of this. Remo drives north over Putnam Bridge and into the Bronx. They head along the East River next to the old railroad tracks. Remo pulls into a deserted parking lot,

turns off the ignition, and looks over his shoulder. And he goes, get out of the fucking car! And he goes, get on your fucking knees both of yous. And Paul's telling him, come on, come on, Rema, listen, we can figure this out, we'll fix it, we'll fix it. I'll just smack! And he hits Paul with the gun. With the butt of the gun. Boom, boom. And he starts hitting him with it. Paul's bleeding. And he's got the gun right to Paul's head, and he's holding it there. And he kept poking him with the barrel, and you could tell he's thinking,

should I just pull the trigger? And all I could hear was my heart beating in my ears. And all of a sudden, bam! Throws like two, three shots right in the dirt. And then he quickly pivots around and he puts the gun to my head. Normally, you figure there's going to be this, like, cold steel feeling, but it wasn't cold.

It was warm. I could feel the heat. And I'm thinking to myself, at any second, he can just pull that trigger. And now it's me. My name is Greg Valentino and I was probably the biggest steroid dealer on the East coast back in the nineties. Everybody came to me. Listen to Criminal Minds, exclusively on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.