The Binge Crimes: Night Shift - Lady Mafia | 4. “Cut up into Little Pieces”

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

Sara is introduced to a man who promises to help her sell the marijuana buildings that otherwise will cost her parents their home. One of Sara’s victims reveals how he got pulled in, why he loaned h...er money, and the moment he realized Sara was in way over her head. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, this is Jesse Tyler Ferguson, host of the podcast, Dinners on Me. And whether you're a first-time wine drinker or a wine aficionado, you're guaranteed to like America's number one luxury cabernet. Since 1981, Justin's Vineyards and Winery has been producing world-class Bordeaux-style wines from Paso Robles on California's Central Coast, and are what put the Paso Robles region on the winemaking map. They recently sent me some of their wines, including their Cabernet Sauvignon, and their flagship wine, Isocilis. I cannot wait to enjoy these with friends and family,
Starting point is 00:00:35 especially with the holidays coming up. Speaking of, Justin Wine makes great gifts for friends, family, or colleagues. They have curated gift sets and even custom etched bottles which you could add a message or logo to. It's very fancy. Shop all of Justin's exceptional wines at JustinWine.com and be sure to use promo code JESSI20 to receive 20% off your order today. That's Jessi20 for 20% off. Binge, Feej our true crime obsession. Remember what I said at the beginning of this story? Sarah King seemed to be speeding towards a collision.
Starting point is 00:01:40 She's bobbing and weaving in and out of traffic, searching for daylight. Well, at this point, the marijuana empire was stalled, but Sara's mortgage on those two industrial buildings wasn't going anywhere. I was losing big money and I had to sell them as fast as I could. So it was a nightmare. That's really when this nightmare number two happened and I met an even bigger crook in the whole world.
Starting point is 00:02:08 It feels like we need one of those walls with photos, pins and string on it. You know, the ones in a detective TV show. A murder board. Except instead of a map of bodies and bloody crime scenes, we're going to track money. How it moves from a contract on a yacht to cash in a Chanel pocketbook, to another contract in a glove box in a Ferrari. It seemed like loans were happening so fast and loose
Starting point is 00:02:34 it was hard to keep track of who owed what to whom. It was like trying to play a shell game in the bottom of the ocean. And on the bottom of the ocean, there are, what else? A lot of hungry bottom feeders. The LA Beverly Hills loan shark guy, like a big time. He isolates you from everyone that you know and just depend on him. He kind of got me on board to do whatever he wanted. And as soon as I ran out of money, he's gone. He's kind of a scary guy. He's not, he's no joke. Sarah was living the dream she told me that she had wanted.
Starting point is 00:03:16 Being the boss lady in charge, Lady Mafia. But it also looked to me like that territory came with a lot of riff-raff. Pretenders, felons, and hucksters. Now that she was a hard money lender, desperate people would come to her for help. She'd negotiate hard. They'd have to kiss the fucking ring. She'd be a kingmaker.
Starting point is 00:03:39 She'd be rich. But was she ready for it? From Sony Music Entertainment, this is Lady Mafia. It's a story about going from lawyer to lawless, living high and blowing millions. I'm Michelle McPhee. This is episode 4. Cut Up Into Little Pieces. cut up into little pieces. Welcome to the Orwell business. Billy Bob Thornton, Demi Moore, and Jon Hamm star in a new Paramount Plus original series. The world has already convinced itself that you are evil and I am evil
Starting point is 00:04:12 for providing them the one thing they interact with every day. You all right? Here we go! From Taylor Sheridan, executive producer of Yellowstone. Get everybody back! Go! Go! You just put a giant bullseye on this place. We rolled the dice one last time. Land Man, new series now streaming exclusively on Paramount+.
Starting point is 00:04:33 The following interview is being videotaped at the Dade County Public Safety Department, Miami-Dade County, Florida. And sir, would you identify yourself? My name is Ronald F. Provider. In 1976 a man in Florida tells a cop he has a confession to make. Arriving in Miami I proceeded to do certain things that I considered to be necessary and the crime that I planned to commit. I was looking for a hitchhiker potential victim. But instead of becoming his victim,
Starting point is 00:05:09 I became his confidant, one of the people closest to him as he recounted and was tried for his horrific crimes. From Orbit Media and Sony Music Entertainment, listen to My Friend the Serial Killer. Subscribe on Apple Podcast to binge all episodes now, or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. Here's what I know at this point.
Starting point is 00:05:38 Sarah's life as Lady Mafia is off to a rocky start. To pin up some of that red string here, Sarah is in trouble because she couldn't repay the money she borrowed for the marijuana buildings. She secured an additional loan from her friend that she also couldn't pay back. She thinks the way to dig herself out of this hole is to become a hard-money lender. She'd seen Brian Quinn make money giving loans to cash poor rich guys. If she charged high interest, she might be able to generate some money fast. But if King Family Lending is ever going to make bank, she has to sell those marijuana
Starting point is 00:06:18 buildings and get out from under her own debt. That's when Sarah told me a new man entered into this mess with a solution. I meet this guy named John McCape. One more dude can solve all her problems, right? The guy's Mr. Hawaii. I walked on his boat with Brian Quinn. It was Brian Quinn who introduced me to him, go figure.
Starting point is 00:06:42 Brian Quinn introduces John as someone who might be interested in buying Sarah's buildings. They drive down to a dock in Brian's white Rolls Royce. Sarah is wearing white jeans and a t-shirt, you know, all very laid back. Except for Brian, who is wearing a Gucci shirt with his hair slicked back. But that's the uniform of the Junior Mafia, so you can't blame him. Meanwhile, John McCabe is dressed
Starting point is 00:07:09 like he's about to go paddle boarding. He had this little hat on, and he's just in his board shorts and flip flops and T-shirt. In my mind, John McCabe looks like the dude from the cult classic, The Big Lebowski. Mid-50s, he's a tall, big guy, and sometimes has a beard, always lumbering around in shorts and slip-on shoes. And he's, you know, really nice, him and his assistant,
Starting point is 00:07:38 really nice people, and they said, come down into this like deck area. At first, John and his assistant give Sarah a business presentation. Sarah brings up the buildings that she needed to sell, and it turns out John is also in the marijuana biz. John McCabe says he owns this huge farm in Hawaii of marijuana, and he wants to buy the buildings
Starting point is 00:08:01 and put it together with his company in Hawaii and build something big. Let me tell you, I have tried everything to find this guy, John McCabe. His name comes up in this story over and over again. You're probably sensing a pattern. A lot of the people around Sara have made themselves scarce in recent years.
Starting point is 00:08:23 Sara said he once told her he was a pilot for Hawaiian Airlines. And I found a guy on LinkedIn who listed his job as a corporate pilot and reached out, nothing. My producers ran a LexisNexis search and I called all his numbers, nothing again. He has no social media presence, couldn't find any arrest records.
Starting point is 00:08:44 He had a boat, I met him on a boat, okay? so he said it's his boat. I'm thinking, okay, you got a boat, you got money. Okay. John seems to see an opportunity in Sarah, someone he can use. He was very excited when he learned I had a lending license. As she's telling me about this McCabe guy, I'm thinking, the Sarah I know likes to be the one calling the shots. She wants to believe she's in charge. But to me, she sounds like she's out of her league, like she's the prey, not the predator.
Starting point is 00:09:18 And he said, I found your buyers, you just don't know it. And at the time, I was so desperate. I mean, I literally was at the last stage of, I mean I almost lost absolutely everything that I believed in. And soon enough, Sarah said she and John started working together. And when the buildings were not selling, John McCabe said, I have this idea in Hawaii, let's partner your buildings with my project and we'll go and sell it. So we started doing that. Like Brian Quinn before him, John is good at making connections with the guys Sara's trying to get in with. He's very good at meeting people. He met all sorts of people in Orange County.
Starting point is 00:09:57 And he went from, oh, you don't want to invest in cannabis? Well, we have a lending company. Well, we, you know, it's where do you want to put it? In short order, Sarah said John's acting like King family lending is his to trying to protect your investors. We need your money kind of thing. So that's kind of how I started was just talking to people just letting them know what I did. But as a female, it sounds ridiculous, but it's really, really hard. And you know, it works having a man there to sell them on it. So he started getting people to invest
Starting point is 00:10:32 that he said it was his company. Maybe John is overstepping, but he also seems to be helping Sara reel people in. There are two sides to a hard money lending business. Getting investors to give Sara money so that they can make money. And the other side, giving out loans to men and women who needed money quick and don't want Citibank to ask a ton of questions. Sara told me there was a special type who could and would pay 30% interest on a loan.
Starting point is 00:11:05 Oftentimes, you're looking at a guy in Newport Beach who, God knows what he wants 20 grand for, right? Between 20,000 and 100,000 they usually need. And they gave me a Rolex worth 40. I gave him 20 grand. I don't ask the questions. I don't want to know what's happening. Yeah, it was a little weird,
Starting point is 00:11:23 but they had the hard assets to back it up. Some guys would hand me their wives Birkin bags and jewelry and they said just I have to get it back within a month time and I said okay in one month you know you're going to pay 30% on the money, big time money. Like these guys have boats and whatnot. Now they're poor all of a sudden. So they gave me the little assets and I literally gave them the cash for half the value and charged them 30%. So why would people okay with paying 30%?
Starting point is 00:11:53 Because I can tell you, like, I don't know, I'm broke as shit, but I'm still not giving my credit card company 30%. I will say that people do it because they're struggling for cash. I don't do a credit check. If you give me assets to hold that are worth the money, I will give you the cash without a question.
Starting point is 00:12:10 And that's a huge deal. That's what made my whole business work to begin with. If Sara was actually getting 30% interest on these loans, it was an insanely good business proposition. A little too good. John McCabe was like, oh, I have a lot of guys who want to do loans. And I started doing some just shady ass loans.
Starting point is 00:12:33 Sarah said she put all her trust in John McCabe. He would tell me that these people owe him money. They're just gonna use my account because he doesn't want to use cash because of his business. I said, remember I'm a fixer, right? So I said, no problem. So he uses the account.
Starting point is 00:12:47 I cash out the money for him and I never see it again. And I'm on the hook for owing people money. We later find out that John McCabe denies this. He says Sara wasn't even a business associate of his. Sara didn't seem to be taking careful note of where the money was coming from and where it was going. For someone who should have been dealing with hard facts, crunching numbers day in and day
Starting point is 00:13:11 out, Sarah told countless stories about money and collateral just disappearing in a bad deal. I'm not stupid by the way. I get that this likely isn't the whole truth. But this is part of what's so puzzling to me about Sarah. I can't tell when Sarah's lying to me or lying to herself. Things were not going well for Lady Mafia, and John seemed to be creating more problems. He hadn't even helped her sell the marijuana buildings. And it was looking like
Starting point is 00:13:46 Sarah was on the verge of losing her parents' home. So when she was dead broke, Sarah told me she decided to make one last gamble. I had like a hundred bucks left to my name, right? So I'd go to the store, I'd buy, I'd put a hundred dollars on the scratchers. My jaw dropped when she told me this. So let me get this straight. She went from big money deals with fancy people to scraping her fake nails off a scratchy. I take the scratches to my office. I'm like in tears, but I'm scratching and I'm winning, winning, winning. And I get the call that we've sold the buildings. And it was just amazing.
Starting point is 00:14:24 When a buyer eventually came through and purchased the buildings, Cyrus said John McCabe took the credit. When I finally found buyers for the building, he said, oh, those are my people. So I felt loyal to him. I was in such a stage of failure, I want to say, from the buildings.
Starting point is 00:14:42 At the time, my income was just terrible that I believed him. I felt like he was there buildings at the time my income was just terrible that I believed him. I felt like he was there for me the whole time. So, as of January of 2021, the pot buildings were finally off her plate. No more desperately trying to sell gummy bears at the country club. And the lending business Sara had been launching with John McCabe's help was finally getting off the ground.
Starting point is 00:15:08 We started needing all these big time investments, right? So that's when I started funding a lot of things. He buttered me up. He would come every day to my house and be my best friend. But John McCabe was unfindable. No LinkedIn, no Facebook. Our fact checker even tried a reverse image search for him with a photo Sara sent, but nada.
Starting point is 00:15:30 Deep into reporting this series, Sara told us that she wasn't even sure that John McCabe was his real name. That was gutting. I had spent months looking for this guy, and now, only now, she was admitting that the name might be an alias. Then one Friday my editor got a call. A man said, you've been trying to get in touch with me. We had.
Starting point is 00:15:55 Even sent a certified letter to his last known address in Hawaii. At long last John McCabe had called. The conversation was brief. That's when he denied even being an associate of Sarah King's. My editor wasn't deterred. She asked to send him a bunch of questions we had about his dealings with Sarah. He agreed. Only, we never heard from McCabe again.
Starting point is 00:16:19 Instead, his criminal defense lawyer, a guy out of Irvine, California, called us to say that he had advised John McCabe to not comment at this time. It was frustrating, but I wasn't ready to throw in the towel. I needed to find someone else who'd met John McCabe, someone who'd worked with him. I needed to understand what was going on with Sara's lending business. So I went hunting for one of the people who gave money to King Family Lending. If the story of King Family Lending sounds all over the place, yeah, you're not imagining things. Sarah told me time and time again that she was legit, that King Family lending was legit, until John McCabe showed up. The first five or six
Starting point is 00:17:12 loans there absolutely was and everything was totally cool and fine and it just turned out that they never got paid back so I had to try and fix that that money. I finally got someone to talk with us, an investor of Sara's, a man by the name of George Poulos. It's a fucking disaster. Pardon my fucking French, but you know, is what it is. George wasn't pulling any punches. Buckle up girls, buckle up. George is married, has two young kids, and used to run an IT business, but is now retired. Very comfortably, it seems.
Starting point is 00:17:48 He lives in a wealthy, family-friendly neighborhood in the OC. He looks a little like Christian Bale in his wiry beard era. George first met Sara in July, 2021, around six months after the pot buildings were sold. I met her through a friend. I was looking for an investment and that's how I got introduced.
Starting point is 00:18:10 They met at a restaurant in Laguna Beach overlooking the ocean. Yeah, she was, how do I want to word this, flirtatious to a male, of course. She's not exactly what I would consider ugly. She wore relatively revealing clothes, which no big deal I mean, but she told me about some of her deals and I had said I would be willing to split one with her and That's how we started progressing forward So Sarah came up with a deal for 125 K She told George a little about the person they'd be lending money to
Starting point is 00:18:44 It was a famous CPA accountant in Newport, she told me. I don't even know the guy's name, I know nothing about him. And we get the money back plus interest in 90 days. She goes, I've loaned him before, he always pays early, and he's a repeat customer. I went, oh, okay. While they were working through the deal terms, Sara introduced George to John McCabe. Sara and John, that is.
Starting point is 00:19:14 She always made it sound like he was protecting her. That's how she worded it. There didn't seem to be any love interest between the two of them. It was more of maybe a mentor type of thing. Why would Sara have needed protection? From who? Kind of strange, right?
Starting point is 00:19:34 George insisted on doing his due diligence. One day, and it was before I had put the money into the deal, I went, I spent a day with John McCabe. He drove me around. First, they met at Sarah's office and George asked to see the collateral for the loans. So she was holding the car with a signed pink slip from the owner. She had him in a little, like a little plastic envelope, like a clear envelope, just to protect them, you know, and I collected six of them because I wanted to verify VINs.
Starting point is 00:20:05 And so John was like, hey, no big deal. I'll take you to all the car places. George took the pink slips so that they could drive around to the lots and verify that each of the signed slips corresponded to one of the cars in their possession. Honestly, I mean, a smart idea. We went to a place kind of close to where I'm at now in Costa Mesa. There was probably 20 Ferraris, not all hers, but some. And there was one the guy was working on. He was a restoration.
Starting point is 00:20:33 He was working on it. It was a black one. And it was an older one, like in the 80s or something like that. But it was pretty well torn apart on the inside, but he was restoring it. And Chilton matched the Vins and I'm like, it matched. So we did that to the rest of the cars. I had lunch with John. Then he took George to the marina to see the collateral for his loan. An F-44 Tiara yacht.
Starting point is 00:20:55 So we go down into Newport. We go to Lido and it's down there. We go in. I go right on it. I'm standing on it. It's got a little dingy next to it, very nice condition, clean, not stinky, the whole bit. Oh, okay, he fires it up, see? Bah, bah, bah. And next, they went back to Sara's office. You know, she spilled a bunch of jewelry and watches onto her desk out of the safe she had under her desk.
Starting point is 00:21:20 You know, it was like 12 inches by 12 inches square and she just dumped it. You know, she had tags on them saying who they belonged to, you know, that kind of thing. So it seemed like all the collateral checked out. And what was more, Sarah seemed looted. She showed me her Rolls Royce she was having wrapped. She had a 2019 Rolls Royce Dawn. It's an almost $400,000 car. And she was having it wrapped white on white
Starting point is 00:21:55 with a navy blue soft top. It was kind of trashy, but also kind of gangster. Her Rolls was an advertisement that if you worked with lady mafia, you'd be rich too. You know, when you're in that mode, you're excited because you're theoretically going to make money. George just came off a day where he verified a half a dozen vins on some supercars, tore the yacht, and eyeballed a bucketload of rocks and watches. And so it all looked legit. So I said, let's go ahead and do it.
Starting point is 00:22:30 So she drew up a contract and we just did a deal for that particular deal, $125,000 for me to go in and then I'd have the money back in 90 days plus X amount of money. The rate George was promised was 36% a year. To put that another way, imagine if you could wave a magic wand and make $11,000 in three months, not lifting a finger. And George was confused too. Who is on the other end of these loans? What kind of person can afford that much interest but is that cash poor? And they're like, well, these rich people get paid once every three months and they
Starting point is 00:23:12 need this money just to bridge from one paycheck to another. Their checks are so big, it doesn't matter to them. And I'm like, okay. And this might not make sense to you and me, but George lived in the OC. He told me he knew somebody who said he was worth $100 million after doing a decade of hard money lending. Imagine, you took that $125,000 and invested it for a full year. By the end, you'd have almost $200 grand.
Starting point is 00:23:44 In 10 years? By then you've made around $4 million. And why stop investing at $125,000? At that rate, which is better than almost anything else out there, why not pour in your whole savings account? What if you discovered the secret for getting not just comfortable, but filthy, stinking rich? George became more and more involved in Sara's business. They were going out for lunch.
Starting point is 00:24:17 Each time Sara was dropping a couple of hundos on the table for the bill. Yeah, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I heard it. I heard it. She wanted to make like a lone mafia situation down in South Orange County. And that was kind of our motto. We were all like, it was me, her, her assistant, John, and another guy. We're like, let's just put our heads together.
Starting point is 00:24:42 We have all these skills here. Let's make something of this. Let's make it like a legit big business and let's use her business model that she's got running, which at that time we didn't know was false, to build upon. And you know, I was going to be the guy to like, technologize everything because everything, there was nothing on the computer. So I was going to do that side of it, you know, take care of all the technology and you know, everybody was going to do some of their part and she was on board.
Starting point is 00:25:11 So George was doing his part being an IT business guy and all. I had worked with an online software company to put her loan business online. And so we could track it. We could look at everything, all the loans, where they are, where they are in their process, how much money is gonna come back to us, everything, it was all spelled out. Well, so I said, I got it all running
Starting point is 00:25:36 and I worked with her assistant to both learn it. The guy gave us lessons and the whole bit. This online setup could take the whole operation to the next level, make their lone mafia legit. But George started hearing hints, just little whispers, that people were after Sara. As John and I got to know each other a little bit, he goes, dude, you don't want the people
Starting point is 00:25:59 that are looking for her after you, you don't want it. And I was like, what have I stepped into? You know, because I got two kids at home, dogs, wife, the whole thing. I don't need any trouble. George got spooked, but not enough to quit. He was still on board with the idea of becoming the lone mafia of the OC. So he was still moving forward with his part of the operation, getting the business online. When I got this system all running, I needed to put the loans in. And she had made comments like, well, we
Starting point is 00:26:33 have 10 or 15 loans out that are in flight, that were in process, including the one I was on in her. I go, great, give me the list, and I'll put it on the system so we can get this thing started so it's like active. Oh, all right. She hands me a fucking napkin with like chicken scratch on it. And I go, well, what's this? Well, those aren't loans. I go, what loans? I don't see anything on here about any money. I go, what about the one I'm on? What's in there? It's right there. And it was just chicken scraps, right? On like a little piece of paper. And I'm all, you don't have like an Excel spreadsheet or something that this is in? No? Why? I mean, it's all in my head. I go, then write it in fucking English, right? Loan one.
Starting point is 00:27:24 How much was it for? Who? How much did you put in? What's the end date? And what kind of profit? Let's get columns so we can just look at it and know where we are. It's a fucking mess. He said she couldn't find the paperwork for a single loan.
Starting point is 00:27:40 Massive pile of dog crap. Massive. And she couldn't produce one. I gave her a couple days. You know, she goes, I'm working on it. I'm working on it. And then to pay for the software, she gave me her credit card, which, shocking, bounced. You know, they wanted like a small fee per month for four or five users, and she couldn't even pay that.
Starting point is 00:28:01 We could pay that. Between 1979 and 1989, a dozen people from Dallas, Texas died mysteriously. Why do you think it was so difficult to tie Terry to these deaths? Because there's no smoking gun. From Sony Music Entertainment, this is Scary Terry. Coming December 1st to The Binge. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. RINGING MUSIC Hello, it's your beauty and wellness BFFs,
Starting point is 00:28:43 and we're here to answer all your burning questions. Skincare, makeup, parenting, and more. We have got you covered. Oh, yes, we do. We'll speak with industry insiders, celebrities, and our close friends. And give all our honest and unfiltered thoughts always. Listen to Lipstick on the Rim now on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. So how did that little piece of chicken scratch turn into a Rolls Royce?
Starting point is 00:29:14 How exactly was Sarah able to run a financial business with such sloppy accounting? One of the ideas that's come up is the possibility that Sarah was never actually a lender at all. She was just actually a lender at all. She was just taking investments, taking money. I've heard this from several people we've interviewed. The idea is she was running a Ponzi scheme from the very beginning, using new investments to pay old ones. It's a person that is running a Ponzi scheme. Here's our expert on hard money lending again, Derek Lewis. He's familiar with her story.
Starting point is 00:29:50 Essentially, she keeps borrowing. She knows she's got to pay off other people. She's lending money in situations that are probably more and more risky. She's got the signs of this escalating need for higher and higher return, the documents prove that out. She's just somebody that's getting behind the eight ball constantly and probably has more confidence than she has ability to make it work because she's not paying her bills as they come do. That's certainly what it looks like to me. I asked her about it. No, absolutely. I absolutely did do loans. So yeah. I told her receipts would be helpful. Still waiting on them. Later on in a text message, she claimed all the paperwork was on a computer that had
Starting point is 00:30:37 been stolen. We pushed for anything that would prove her business. She'd message back with a text-only list of supposed bank transactions or old photos with people she claimed to have loaned money to. Sara gave us the names of a few people she said she loaned money to. A global investor in culture. Another dude with a crazy long rap sheet. We reached out to the name she gave us but never got a response. I feel for her and the mess she got herself into. I think she's fearless, funny, a total character, but at this point I'm starting to think
Starting point is 00:31:16 she's a compulsive liar, a loan shark with a license. George's filthy rich dream had turned into that massive pile of dog crap. And what was more, George realized it was highly unlikely he'd ever get his $125,000 investment back. So when I saw the lack of any records, I went, uh-oh, I'm screwed. And she kept making excuses. I'll get them. I have them. They're in my house. I lost it. You know, all this bull crap.
Starting point is 00:31:50 It's like third grade. You're like, really? I mean, you claim you're a lawyer. You don't lose stuff. George decided on a strategy at first, stick close to Sara, in hopes that he'd be the first in line to get his money back. But he wasn't the only investor Sara wasn't paying back. And these other guys were just about fed up. They weren't going to play nice.
Starting point is 00:32:12 At that time, they were watching Sarah's house 24 hours a day. She was on full surveillance by non-PI people 24-7. Her relationship with Dew John had begun to sour. She was on full surveillance by non-PI people 24-7. Her relationship with Dude John had begun to sour. I honestly thought she would not make it. Honestly. Between all of us, I thought somebody's going to get her. I didn't know who it was going to be, but I just thought, you know.
Starting point is 00:32:42 And George says that all of these guys who did not meet her well were watching her from across the street. Her apartment, I think it was a fifth or sixth level and across the street was a parking garage where you could go up to the top and you could park. And that's where they were observing her from. And they had some sort of binocular telescope, whatever it was. I wasn't there, but I knew where they were. They bring food and they just sit there and watch her. And you could see her buzz around her apartment at midnight. And you're just going, what
Starting point is 00:33:11 the fuck? And what they saw was Sara's life spiraling out of control. She's doing Adderall nonstop. She's up all night because she goes, she just doesn't sleep. And I go, she just looks very jittery, whatever the word you want to use. I didn't know at the time what was going on until, you know, they all told me. And even John would go, she doesn't go to bed. George saw this one video of Sarah. It was three o'clock in the morning, you could see the timestamp on the iPhone, 3am, and
Starting point is 00:33:42 Sarah was on a treadmill, singing at the top of her fucking lungs. And it was like 3 10 in the morning. She's a messed up individual. I mean, there's no way around it. She's down there bringing like birthday cards to people with a hundred dollar bills in exchange for Adderall at different places. In this mix, George met another guy Sara had fleeced. I ran into one of her other people.
Starting point is 00:34:10 Again, he shall remain nameless. And they had loaned a similar amount of money that I did, but he involved his mom and dad. And they're part of a very large, wealthy family here in Newport Beach, like horrifically wealthy. And these horrifically wealthy people, they had a different strategy with Sarah. The dad, they invited her or I don't know how the phone call went to get her to go to this restaurant, but she showed up. Maybe they said, we're going to give you more money. Maybe they tricked her. I don't know. I wasn't there. But the dad leaned in and just told her, if we don't have all of our money by tomorrow morning,
Starting point is 00:34:46 you're not going to make it until 8 o'clock. And you'll be cut up into little pieces. There'll be no investigation. There'll be nothing. You will cease to exist. And they had all their money the next morning. Complete. Just boom! He goes, I don't want any fucking profit out of you. I want the money you took.
Starting point is 00:35:14 Next time on Lady Mafia, with threats pounding on Sara's door. She was physically overpowered by some of the people she ripped off. And she got scared. She told me some pretty bad stories. I think there are certain people you shouldn't defraud in this world. Sara chose a Shangri-La that many have fallen for. I started to panic and actually when I finally told, you know, I told Cameron, I'm like, this is what's going on. Like, I don't know how to handle it. And that's when he said, okay, you're good at these thoughts, win back because he's seen me win tons of money on him. So I said, okay.
Starting point is 00:35:41 In the midst of a financial wreck, Sara chose to follow the promise of easy money in Las Vegas. You kind of go down this rabbit hole. You know, I told you, my dad's quote to me is, winning isn't everything, it's the only thing. And so you get competitive against a stupid machine. And you should know better than to gamble against the house. Like, it doesn't ever pay off, ever. That's next time on Lady Mafia.
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Starting point is 00:36:53 ["Lady Mafia"] Lady Mafia is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment. It was hosted and reported by me, Michelle McPhee. Odelia Rubin is our lead producer and wrote this episode with a little help from me. Catherine St. Louis is our story editor. Shara Morris and Jonathan Hirsch are our executive producers. Sound design and mixing by Scott Somerville. Theme and original music composed by Hans-Dael Shee. We also use music from Epidemic Sound, Lou Dot Sessions and APM. Our associate producer
Starting point is 00:37:32 is Zoe Kolkin. Our fact-checker is Fendel Fulton. Our production manager is Tamika Balans-Kolasny. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rosick, Jamie Myers and Ally Kilts.

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