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Season Six: Scamsgiving Part I: Fake it Til You Make it
49 Plays52 minutes ago
Welcome to Scamsgiving! Enjoy some Turkey and read https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/the-preachers-ex-wife-who-fooled-hollywood/ while you watch some football with family and/or friends.
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Transcript
Introduction and Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Murder-Free Holiday Series and Unintended Content
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime
00:00:59
Speaker
ah One of the things that happens throughout the year is people will send me messages and they will just ask. ah People will say, like, can you just not cover murder?
00:01:11
Speaker
And that was one of the ways we kind of got to home for the holidays, sort of, I think. um We didn't do very good.
00:01:23
Speaker
Well, no, no, I'm just saying, like. There ended up being quite a few murders. Yeah, well, that's true. This year, though, we had a couple series we did towards the end of the year. And there were there were a few cases that like I couldn't work into True Crime News.
00:01:39
Speaker
And I couldn't really work them into um like what we're doing for the holiday series. But I still wanted to talk about them. So I sort of put them off to the side. And I jokingly called them.
00:01:52
Speaker
i don't know what I called them in the message to you either frauds giving or scams giving. And I was like, these three things, we should move these over to basically Thanksgiving Day and then Black Friday so that we have episodes out for people.
00:02:11
Speaker
that were really not into the murder stuff year-round. I'll just go ahead and tell everybody. like the The Holiday series has murder in it. like It just does.
00:02:21
Speaker
But that it wasn't designed for murder.
Shift to Scams and Frauds
00:02:24
Speaker
Right. we We had a different theme. It's just that's where it led in some of the cases. Some of them are pretty dark. So I pulled one of those stories as just a piece of true crime news. It's pretty brief.
00:02:37
Speaker
And then i put together a couple of like stories about scams and frauds that I wanted to talk about. you know And we would use these to be... They're true crime.
The Graceland Saga Begins
00:02:48
Speaker
Don't get me wrong.
00:02:49
Speaker
But they're more weird than you're going to realize, I think. The piece of true crime news actually comes out of Memphis, Tennessee.
00:03:01
Speaker
And when I heard about this, i kind of looked at it and I was like, did I read... what I just thought I read. you ever have that moment where you're looking at something and you're like, that's just too ridiculous to be made up?
00:03:15
Speaker
Not anymore. i i don't know how to like edge people into this one, but I'll start by giving you a little background on somebody who used to be a major singer and actor and everybody should know who he is, which Elvis Presley.
00:03:31
Speaker
Do you know who Elvis Presley is? Of course, yes. Yeah. I think everybody would. My mom was huge into Elvis Presley growing up. Elvis Presley was born in January of 1936.
00:03:47
Speaker
three I think it's either 33 or 35. Somebody's going to hang me on that. He dies in August of 1977. Uh, he'd been born down in Mississippi and spent most of his life in terms of residence in Memphis, Tennessee. What we know of him is like this big, huge, famous guy.
00:04:07
Speaker
And he has this estate that he keeps called Graceland. He purchased it back in March of 1957. It's an mansion.
00:04:18
Speaker
if you go looking it up, I think it's on about 14 acres. So technically it was his place that he owned. He is buried there. um I believe both his parents are buried there and maybe one of his grandparents. And there's some other people on the property, including Lisa Marie Presley, who of course is his daughter.
00:04:39
Speaker
His grandson Benjamin is buried there. ah For all intents and purposes, it's off of US Route 51 in a neighborhood called the Whitehaven neighborhood, which is about nine miles from downtown Memphis.
Legal and Fraudulent Entanglements at Graceland
00:04:52
Speaker
um It's really close to the Mississippi border, which I didn't know that until I started looking at it for this. The the address is 3764 Elvis Presley Boulevard, which, as you'll find out, like is not a secret.
00:05:05
Speaker
um It's actually listed in the National Register of Historic Places. I think that happened in November of 1991. The site is one of the first sites recognized for its significance to rock and roll music.
00:05:20
Speaker
It has ah since been declared a National Historic Landmark, which is slightly different. That was in March of 2006. But it was also the first time that a National Historic Landmark was being recognized for its significance to rock and roll music.
00:05:39
Speaker
Now, Elvis's dad, Vernon, he inherits Graceland from Elvis when Elvis dies in 1977. And I just want to say he was born January 8th, 1935. Okay, thank you. He was 42 when he died. Okay, so we have that all cleared up here. I didn't want to make anybody upset because Elvis has some very, very, very Devoted? Devoted fans, yes.
00:06:10
Speaker
When Lisa Marie Presley turned 25 years old, so that's Elvis's daughter, she inherits Grace Lent. She dies January 12th of 2023.
00:06:22
Speaker
So her oldest daughter, Riley Keough, who is an actress and she's a musician too. i don't know a ton about her. I don't know. I know her as an actress.
00:06:33
Speaker
Um, she becomes the sole beneficiary and then the trustee and owner of Graceland. So Graceland is interesting.
00:06:44
Speaker
It used to be a farm. It was originally owned by a guy named Steven Toof. He is the founder of, um, SC Toof and company, which is a really old commercial printing firm. It might've been the oldest one in Tennessee.
00:06:58
Speaker
um I want to say it's the Memphis Daily Appeal. So Elvis purchases ah one home for himself, and he ends up basically sending his parents out, Vernon and Gladys. He gives them a budget. He says he's looking for basically a farm.
00:07:18
Speaker
As Graceland was available, that is how... It comes to be affiliated with him because of essentially his parents finding it.
00:07:29
Speaker
Gladys dies at some point back in the 50s, but Vernon is very much involved in Graceland along the way. Elvis is married along the way. Graceland becomes this place after Elvis' death.
00:07:44
Speaker
i was going to say, wasn't it a tourist attraction? where itd be Yes, it is a major tourist attraction for many, many years. like There is almost like a pilgrimage that people would take to where he had died. So he died in Graceland. and after that, like it was a very macabre southern thing that happens where – Everyone would come and visit this and kind of pay homage to Elvis, which is like the strangest thing to me. But it happens. It does. It does happen when there's – now, he he died. he he wasn't murdered, right? Right, right. He had some sort of health episode. So it wasn't –
00:08:28
Speaker
Well, like I mean, it it was closer to natural than murder, i guess. I don't really know. It's it's it's drug and health related. Right. and But in cases, you especially older ones, you can read about how family like distant family members would totally set up like an attraction museum yu after there had been a massacre. Yep.
00:08:53
Speaker
Yep. Craziest thing ever. Now, again... Elvis was not massacred. He just died from a health problem. Right. So there's this weird thing that happens in 2023.
00:09:07
Speaker
Catching up to the true crime note. In September 2023, this note is filed in a California probate court stating that Lisa Marie Presley owes $2.8 million dollars to a company named Nascene Investments in Private Lending, LLC.
00:09:27
Speaker
Because of this $2.8 million, dollars Graceland is sucked into the potential for foreclosure sale in May of 2024 because that claimant alleges that the thing they had security on the $2.8 million dollars was actually Graceland.
00:09:47
Speaker
So the idea was that Lisa Marie Presley had taken out about a $4 million dollars loan from this private lending organization in 2018, and that Graceland was the collateral backing the loan.
00:10:01
Speaker
Now, Riley, so the person who is eventually going to be the Presley heir to all of this, her lawyers get together, they look at the documents, and they say that the documents underlying the foreclosure are fraudulent.
Unraveling the Graceland Scam
00:10:19
Speaker
So they sue to stop the foreclosure sale because they're saying the foreclosure was brought about by basically an act of fraud. Now, Elvis Presley Enterprises, which is the thing that happens when you die and there's a major piece of licensing behind your name and all the merchandise related to your name and all of the music and all of the money that has to be managed into perpetuity because you're as big as Elvis Presley.
00:10:50
Speaker
They manage the rest of the Elvis Presley estate and they back Riley's lawyers saying, this is crazy. So Riley files a lawsuit or I'm saying her, but like it's on her behalf. It's really like a team of lawyers go into this.
00:11:07
Speaker
They include this affidavit from a woman named Kimberly Philbrook. Kimberly Philbrook is a Florida notary public who has allegedly notarized Lisa Marie Presley's signature on this crazy promissory note that puts Graceland up for collateral on a multimillion dollar loan.
00:11:29
Speaker
The affidavit states in part, I've never met Lisa Marie Presley. I never notarized a document signed by Lisa Marie Presley. I do not know why my signature appears on this document.
00:11:43
Speaker
That sort of pauses the foreclosure part of Graceland. But basically somebody was trying to take it. Well, right, because they were alleging that because ah it had been put up for collateral,
00:11:57
Speaker
that you know payments weren't being made. I don't know if they, like, I don't know if she formally attempted collection before she attempted to go through the foreclosure process.
00:12:11
Speaker
Well, that gets complicated because it's almost like she had no idea what she was doing at all. And it was just pure luck she managed to get it all the way to foreclosure.
00:12:23
Speaker
Well, and, you know, you can anybody can file anything. And if people aren't paying attention, like You can lose a house by by just, like, a a couple of pieces of paper slipping them through the cracks. I'm not so sure. If a judge is paying attention, that really shouldn't happen.
00:12:42
Speaker
But it could happen. It could. happened where it gets to the judge, at least we can say that. Okay, yes. It can get to the judge. However, you know, it's...
00:12:54
Speaker
it's The reason she's going, the process that should have been followed would be that if they had legitimately gotten money from this private lending company, not paid it back, and you know they could somehow support that with actual evidence as opposed to just you know random fraudulent documents, the and they would foreclose on it and take ownership of it to get their money back, right? Right.
00:13:22
Speaker
This sets off a series of hearings in 2023, 2024. Joe day Jenkins of the Shelby County, Tennessee Chancery Court declares the lenders claims invalid, primarily based on that affidavit from Kimberly Philbrook saying everything underneath this foreclosure sale is BS. I don't know. I didn't notarize anything.
00:13:44
Speaker
And that's enough. That's enough to nullify it. Right. So the lender, uh, drops their plans to go ahead with the foreclosure, and does not respond to Joday Jenkins declaring the claims invalid.
00:14:02
Speaker
So NBC News gets involved. They start hunting for Nossini Investments in Private Lending, and this representative that's listed in the public documents, Gregory Nossini, the hunt doesn't come up with anything.
00:14:19
Speaker
There's no evidence at all, according to NBC News and according to all the documents that have put together on this, New York Times went after it at one point. There was no evidence that Nascity Investments in Private Lending, LLC, was even actually company at the time it was foreclosing on Graceland.
00:14:39
Speaker
Fast forward a little ways to August 16th, 2024, and a woman named Lisa Janine Findlay from Missouri, who has a rolling list of aliases, including among them Lisa Holden.
00:14:56
Speaker
She gets arrested, and the U.S. Department of Justice charges Finley with identity theft and mail fraud, and it appears to be directly connected to the attempt to extort the Presley family and the Presley estate into selling Graceland.
00:15:16
Speaker
So there's a hearing August 16th, 2024. She appears in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri. This hearing only lasts seven minutes. So it becomes her arraignment.
00:15:28
Speaker
She waives her right to any kind of preliminary hearing or detention hearing. She agrees to have all of those hearings take place over in the Western District of Tennessee. So the U.S. government moved for her to be held, and they basically grab her and take her over to hold her in the Western District of Tennessee.
00:15:49
Speaker
From what I can tell at the time we're recording this, she's still in custody. on January 25th, she pleads guilty to account of mail fraud. Now, from what I read, i think you were going to talk about the sentencing or you want me to talk about it.
00:16:05
Speaker
You can. i Yeah, she's definitely in custody. Okay. So she ends up being sentenced for this mail fraud to 57 months in prison with a three-year supervised release. And we get a few details that come out of this, but not very many.
00:16:26
Speaker
So according to the U.S. s Department of Justice's Office of Public Affairs... This woman, Lisa Janine Finley, had posed as three different individuals affiliated with a fictitious private lender in order to falsely accuse the late Lisa Marie Presley of borrowing $3.8 million dollars from this Nascity Investments in 2018. Even though she's only on the mail fraud...
00:16:55
Speaker
She is accused of fabricating loan documents, forging the signature of Lisa Marie, and forging the signature of a Florida State Notary public. She then filed a false creditor's claim with the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles.
00:17:12
Speaker
She brought a fake deed of trust to file in Shelby County and the Register's Office in Memphis. She published ongoing fraudulent foreclosure notices, which is part of the process to foreclose on a house.
00:17:25
Speaker
The celebrity news site, The Blast, they say that they were told by someone working at Graceland, who they called an official, that they didn't believe that Lisa Finley was the scam's mastermind.
00:17:40
Speaker
And they stated, we believe she's the first domino to fall, but not the last. We do not believe she's the mastermind behind the scam. Prosecutors stated that the person responsible for this scheme may be an identity thief based out of Nigeria.
00:17:58
Speaker
Finley is also confirmed to have had history of similar criminal cases in the a state of Oklahoma, which led to numerous arrests and her serving prison time both in Oklahoma and in federal prison.
00:18:12
Speaker
I have to tell you, if you're going after something, something as big as Graceland has got to be your white whale.
Graceland's Financial and Legal Complexities
00:18:22
Speaker
Possibly, but like.
00:18:24
Speaker
That's so dumb. ah Right? Because, i mean, she got... There was no way she was going to get away with this. She got almost five years in prison. Yeah. and she's going to be ah on supervised release even longer than that. Correct. And so, was it worth it? Now, I like the way that the officials at Graceland said that they didn't think she was the mastermind.
00:18:55
Speaker
I feel lots of comfort and joy that. What do you mean? I mean, officials at Graceland, like really?
00:19:06
Speaker
I mean, what, the groundskeeper? Like, what are they talking about? Well, it's a whole entity. It's like a, you know. Well, the interesting thing is, if it's really a whole entity, like, it would have been impossible for Lisa Marie to have gotten a loan, right? Yeah.
00:19:26
Speaker
ah Exactly. like it's Exactly. And so when you're thinking, I mean, I think it's funny. I don't know. I have no idea. I am not surprised that I wouldn't be surprised if there were other people involved. I'm certainly not surprised that all they basically got her on was male fraud. Now she didn't have a trial. She pleaded guilty because she was guilty. Correct.
00:19:49
Speaker
And um it doesn't surprise me because honestly, i I realize that this is going to sound far-reaching, but it it shouldn't.
00:20:02
Speaker
You really shouldn't be able to pretend that Lisa Marie Presley borrowed nearly $4 million dollars from you with collateral being Graceland fraudulently and get away with it.
00:20:19
Speaker
Like, that should be stopped several places along the way, right? Yeah. And in this case, it seems like it got pretty far.
00:20:31
Speaker
Now, hopefully, when I assume, I don't know this for sure, but in a lot of states, in the United States, it's ah the sheriff who's responsible, or maybe the clerk of court is responsible for these types of auctions that they have.
00:20:47
Speaker
Right. Right. So hopefully whomever is responsible there would have noticed that they were auctioning off Graceland and perhaps gotten their supervisor to double check.
00:21:02
Speaker
Well, I'm with you. i don't know how stuff like this even like, first of all, I don't know stuff like this is thought up, but definitely I don't know how stuff like this gets as far as this did.
00:21:14
Speaker
um i did pull up a couple of things. and I, I have, I will be honest, this is not my forte, so I cheaped out on some of the sources here. i pulled up a Hello Magazine article from 2024 that was kind of talking about this a little bit when it started. And i was curious, like what are all the values involved? Because you mentioned again, it's like a $4 million dollars loan.
00:21:39
Speaker
And they're saying she didn't pay all of it, so they were going to foreclose Um, according to this, the 1957 purchase of Graceland was within the budget that Elvis gave his parents. a hundred grand.
00:21:52
Speaker
Now when he dies 20 years later in 1977, it was reportedly worth $5 million. Okay. okay So that's 1977 money. If you had to guess what it was worth today, what would you say it's worth today?
00:22:07
Speaker
Like today well are like last year? Well, I'm going to give you a number that I got that like is sort of batted around in 2020.
00:22:20
Speaker
In 2020? Yeah. hmm. I'm going to go with probably $200 million. dollars I don't know. $500 million. dollars That's what I was going to say if it was like today. Well, that's so it may still be in that ballpark. Right. And so, okay.
00:22:40
Speaker
Knowing that $500 million, dollars you're putting a lien against the property. You're not foreclosing on it. That's like a mechanics lien. Right. Like it doesn't even make sense. Right. Right. I think they were hoping to force like some kind of check to go to this fake entity. Right.
00:22:58
Speaker
Yeah, that I, yes, that's exactly what I expect they were hoping for, because what are they going to do with Graceland? Well, here's, it's interesting that you asked that. So first of all, how much do you think it costs to keep Graceland open to the public in 2025?
00:23:17
Speaker
uh like just the expenses involved the expenses to keep it open to the public the utilities the taxes the upkeep the maintenance all the things that like if you were looking at the budget for graceland the building that you just said you were thinking 500 million dollars today like what do you think it costs to keep that open I mean, a couple million dollars? It's $500,000 just to upkeep it and another $250,000 to pay like the basic expenses. So it's almost a million dollars just to own Graceland per year.
00:23:54
Speaker
Exactly, which is a lot of money for somebody who's stealing it. Now, weirdly enough, in licensing and other fees, they don't specify what.
00:24:07
Speaker
It is reported to bring in between $10 and $15 million dollars annually today. Right, so it pays for itself. Yeah, it pays for itself. That's a lot of work going into it. A lot of work. That whole entity that we don't really know what kind of entity it is. The estate is managing it. Riley owns it. But like a lot of stuff is going on there. like and you're foreclosing on it for $4 million. Right.
00:24:35
Speaker
Which isn't what would happen, right? Correct. You would literally put a lien on it. Right, yeah exactly. And that should be a red flag to begin with because I would think that eventually if you had put a lien on it you know you could call it into foreclosure, but that's nowhere near what it's worth.
00:24:58
Speaker
agree. I agree. I just wanted to bring this up because like it's one of the weirdest things I've ever seen happen. But when you actually like start to try and wrap your mind about it, it's very difficult.
00:25:14
Speaker
First of all, it is very difficult for me wrap my mind around just the ownership of something like Graceland. It's basically 50 years after his death. It's 48 years after his death. But still, like...
00:25:29
Speaker
That's like owning the White House, kind of. Not exactly. you know what i mean? Well, I mean, well, it would be like stealing the White House. No, no, I'm saying like like the ownership of it. like that's But you're right. like like That's where I was headed with this comment. Was like trying to foreclose on the White House sounds absolutely nuts to me. Well, if you want if you need a place to stay for the next five to ten years. You'll get it.
00:26:02
Speaker
Now, you're not going to be staying at the White House, though. You're going to be in prison. You're to staying at the Big House. And it, I don't know. I think that they were hoping that they could, that they would just think that maybe Lisa Marie really had done that.
00:26:22
Speaker
And that they would just try and negotiate a settlement, right? I think that the whole, like, Nigerian scam thing, i think that um that's a lie.
00:26:37
Speaker
i think that that's the woman backpedaling before she pleads guilty, possibly, right? Yeah, I don't know how they get there, so I couldn't i couldn't comment on that without knowing. i just, I think that that's...
00:26:50
Speaker
something that could have possibly, i think that that's something that, uh, she might've thought could get her out of it, but I don't know how they traced it to her to begin with.
00:27:04
Speaker
No, I mean, it's through the documents. I like, I love that they did it. Unfortunately, this all takes place in federal court. For those of you who don't know much about federal court, federal court is one of those places that's very secret and it's a giant pain in the butt.
00:27:17
Speaker
Um, it rarely is anything documented beyond like courtroom sketches and whatever you can write down while you're in there, uh, because you're not allowed to record audio or video in federal court for the purposes of any kind of broadcast.
00:27:32
Speaker
Well, plus like this was a, a guilty plea negotiated agreement or whatever. So there's like nothing to it on the record, hardly.
00:27:44
Speaker
Correct. So it It is an interesting story. I mean, if you're going to aim high, go for it. But again, i don't see this ending any other way. No.
00:27:58
Speaker
and And this is just the
Reflections on Graceland and Elvis's Cultural Impact
00:28:01
Speaker
opener, by the way. this is So true crime news to today, it was something because I couldn't figure out where to fit this in and the rest of the stories because on its face, the idea of thinking that you could steal Graceland It's so ridiculous to me. I didn't have anything else to pair it with.
00:28:18
Speaker
it It is really ridiculous. I think the White House might be a good comparison, but that's even that's different, right? Yeah, it's different. But it's still the same same idea. like I guess maybe Biltmore? don't know that like...
00:28:36
Speaker
As an exciting place. Right, right. don't know. I don't know. I can't gauge any of this stuff. I don't know, like, do people still go to Graceland? Clearly they do They have it open as a tourist attraction, right? Right, yes.
00:28:51
Speaker
And I guess they will forever. I'm not really sure. I have never been to Graceland. I will more than likely never go to Graceland. I am not interested in that. um And...
00:29:03
Speaker
So i I don't know. i don't know what it would really compare to, you but like, you know, at least they aimed high. i got I don't even know what to say about this. However, it did come up in the news because she did just plead guilty and she did receive her son. And I, so for me, i have been to Graceland. I've been to a lot of music places. um Music is a huge part of my life. It always has been. um I'm,
00:29:27
Speaker
I don't know that I would describe myself as any kind of Elvis Presley fan, but a lot of the things that Elvis influenced um are a huge part of my life. I would say that everybody's life yeah as we know it today was hugely influenced by Elvis. Yeah. like Whether you know it or not. Yeah. like It's one of those things, like for me, um i'm more into the Grateful Dead type stuff, Dave Matthews band, those type things that still are – Parts of them are up and kicking around to some degree that like I can go and enjoy them. If Elvis were alive today, it might be different for me. um i can't say that like, I think you and I were talking about this recently. ah Madonna, that's an influence. like Whether I know it or not, like there's a period of time through about 1992, any Madonna song that comes on for no good reason. I know all the lyrics.
00:30:20
Speaker
Not necessarily a Madonna fan, but I know the songs. I know the lyrics. I know the story. Right. Because it was everywhere. Yeah. And, you know, that's it's like that with Michael Jackson, Led Zeppelin. great And everybody recognizes Elvis's voice. Yeah. Oh yeah. hundred percent. And then everybody knows what he looks like. Yeah. he was a true entertainer who died really young. So that's another part. Like he kind of went out sort of in the middle of, I mean, he didn't get, he didn't fade away in other words. He just was gone. But then in being just gone like that, they live on forever. Right. Yeah.
Introduction to Nicole Park's Scam Story
00:30:59
Speaker
So I did find something to pair this with. I can't wait. And this is like a new thing that like is just fascinating to me.
00:31:11
Speaker
And that's what today and tomorrow are kind of about. um So there are these people in the world that are like, I don't know if it's like self-help influence or like social media influence or what.
00:31:26
Speaker
They have just decided they are going to fake it till they make it. And then they'll figure it out. So this is apparently, allegedly, possibly exclusively reported by Marie Claire magazine.
00:31:42
Speaker
The person who has it his name is Noah Kirsch. When I picked this up, it had been published in September. It's an article titled The Preacher's Ex-Wife Who Fooled Hollywood.
00:31:55
Speaker
um And I probably have dropped it in the show notes because you should go and read this article. But I'm going to spoil it for you. I'm going to tell you most of it because this story is so interesting to me. And his writing is well done.
00:32:09
Speaker
um And it's Thanksgiving. And like people want to hear stories. This is a good one. This one has the strangest twists and turns to it.
00:32:22
Speaker
But the bottom line is i this is a woman who styled herself as a billionaire benefactor. And her name is Nicole Park, P-A-R-K-E.
00:32:35
Speaker
He opens the article and he says, as wildfires devoured Los Angeles this winter, one woman emerged with a plan to lift the city from the ashes. Nicole Park, a self-proclaimed billionaire philanthropist, wrote a letter to Mayor Karen Bass offering to, quote, deploy...
00:32:55
Speaker
End quote. $100 million dollar disaster relief effort for affected Angelenos. She summoned publicists, sought deep-pocketed partners, and spoke with easy authority of someone used to commanding rooms and capital.
00:33:12
Speaker
Nicole Park claimed to have run $50 billion dollars investment fund and a medical supply company with deep federal ties. Since arriving in Los Angeles a few years prior to doing this, she had rubbed shoulders with celebrities like Akon, Blac Chyna, and Lakers legend Derek Fisher.
00:33:32
Speaker
On Instagram, she's posing with Kim Kardashian and the president of Costa Rica, who visited Nicole Park at her offices last year. Nicole Park's feed painted a portrait of rarefied wealth and luxury brands took notice.
00:33:49
Speaker
Bulgari and Cartier allegedly invited her to VIP events. Royce's feeded her at an intimate dinner where the chef served vegan soul food.
00:34:02
Speaker
In person, she wore crown-like braids and crisp Chanel blouses and spoke in a vaguely British accent. Park's palatial offices in Burbank complete the picture.
00:34:14
Speaker
They're lined with marble anchored by a five-tier chandelier. There's a floor to ceiling humidor, a cavernous personal garage, and a figurine depicting a private jet, what she claimed was her preferred mode of travel.
00:34:31
Speaker
There's just one problem. Nicole Park does not appear to have $100 million or $50 billion portfolio. or a fifty billion dollars portfolio Or apparently even the money for the Jets, jewelry, or luxury cars that she's s flaunting.
00:34:46
Speaker
This is according to Marie Claire's The Magazine. They fine just $585 federal contracts under her company's name.
00:34:57
Speaker
So they set out and start interviewing this woman's former associates, and they all tell a strikingly similar story. Twelve of her former associates say that she is not a billionaire.
00:35:09
Speaker
She just knows how to look like one. But the illusion has been persuasive enough to attract celebrities, government officials, and seasoned investors. According to those who knew her, Park simply mirrored their ambition, their longing to belong, and their hunger for a shortcut.
00:35:26
Speaker
According to these 12 people, she understood what success was supposed to look like and sold that image to people who wanted to buy in eagerly. The fallout has been devastating. Park 53 has left a trail of drained bank accounts, ruined friendships across the country, a close friend, a doctor, a landlord, an assistant, and a 10-year-old girl, among others.
00:35:52
Speaker
A group of investors claimed she helped defraud them out of $650,000. A five-star hotel alleged that she skipped out on a nearly $54,000 bill.
00:36:04
Speaker
And victims say they've been duped out of millions. Marie Claire puts out a statement with this article and says that Nicole Park, for her part, has denied all claims of wrongdoing.
00:36:16
Speaker
But Park and her companies have been named in at least 10 lawsuits with accusations ranging from fraud and unjust enrichment to emotional distress. In one suit filed back in July, her former assistant, Javon Cortez, alleged that Nicole Parker's son Enoch and their associates from a pundy run a Ponzi-style fraud.
00:36:37
Speaker
ah Now, no responses have come across to the fact-checking questions. And Marie Claire says that in a way that makes me think these people are still talking, but just not answering the questions.
00:36:50
Speaker
According to Javon Cortez, the mother and son duo lured victims with fake identities, falsified contracts, and elaborate lies. Multiple cases have already resulted in default judgments while others remain active.
00:37:04
Speaker
Park's victims say their lives have been upended and hers has only grown more lavish. And I got to say this. They put pictures in here of this woman. She's not anything other than a con artist in the pictures.
00:37:19
Speaker
I'm just going to throw that out there. She looks like a con artist to me. Like like somebody, if they had what they say they have, you would know who they were.
00:37:29
Speaker
You know what i mean? well yeah. I mean, that's why i'm I'm a little surprised. I guess not completely surprised, but yeah, I'm a little surprised.
00:37:41
Speaker
So accordingly, they tracked down her background. Before she makes herself into this fake it till she makes it billionaire style person, Nicole Park is apparently a pastor's wife at a small church in Queens, New York.
00:37:55
Speaker
So the description here is really nice. I'm just going to quote it directly. It says, Seedled across from a truck yard, the universal Calvary church is a steel blue building with the words Miracle Center and blazoned along its side in bold white letters.
00:38:08
Speaker
Its founding pastor, Emmanuel Osai Achampong, was a towering presence in the community and to an unusual degree. Some congregants refer to him as dad or daddy.
00:38:21
Speaker
Mingyunyet Walters, 73, whose late husband was a member of the church, said Nicole Park was admired by a lot of people and was a gifted member of the choir. Although Park has described herself to many people as Emmanuel's former wife,
00:38:36
Speaker
Walters recalled that their marriage was eventually nullified after it emerged that the officiant who performed the marriage was not officially licensed. She added that the pastor then married the church secretary, Elizabeth, who became known as, quote, the prophetess.
00:38:52
Speaker
So one fake ex-wife becomes a faux billionaire and the other one is referred to as the prophetess. According to Ms. Walters,
00:39:04
Speaker
Her husband had left the church congregation decades earlier because he was concerned about Emmanuel's behavior. There's another ex-member named Horace Gordon. He accuses the pastor of having dabbled in witchcraft.
00:39:19
Speaker
The current pastor of the church is a man named Anthony, who Emmanuel's son from a different marriage. And his quote from Marie Claire was that Horace Gordon has it backwards.
00:39:32
Speaker
The church's membership is globally diverse. He explained people come from across the islands that are being chased by voodoo, witches and all these things. And our God and our church delivered them from that. I'm glad he was able to clear that up.
00:39:45
Speaker
Right. So according to Nicole Park's friends, The stories that she told was that getting to that church was kind of turbulent.
00:39:56
Speaker
Her mom had fled an abusive marriage down in Trinidad, left the children alone with her father and moved to New York. And Nicole Park ends up joining her later. Now, Emmanuel, the pastor, takes him a while to get to New York, too. He's born in Ghana. He actually studied medicine in Kenya. He ends up in America and he establishes this church.
00:40:19
Speaker
the universal Calvary church. So together, Nicole and Emmanuel, who don't really have a marriage, have three sons.
00:40:31
Speaker
Their oldest is Enoch, who was born in 1994. So this kid's going to be 30-ish years 31 years old. thirty one years old so
00:40:42
Speaker
He plays drums, he plays guitar, he dreams of being a professional basketball player. Turns out he's short, so that's not going to work out. So he focuses on music. By 2009, Emmanuel and Nicole, they had separated, whatever that means when your marriage isn't real to begin with.
00:41:01
Speaker
And Nicole was struggling financially. That March, according to New York court records, she filed for bankruptcy. She tells the court that she has $100,000 in liabilities, and that's kind of a range.
00:41:13
Speaker
It means that she has more than $50,000 and $1 less than $100,000. She submits pay stubs at that time just 16 years ago, saying that she was working in a pediatric office earning $14 an hour.
00:41:29
Speaker
But her landlord in queen her. landlord in queens files a motion to evi Now, her bankruptcy petition ends up being dismissed because she refused to submit copies of required documents, including her federal tax return.
00:41:45
Speaker
So she moves with her kids down to Pocono Pines in Pennsylvania. She claimed to people she'd been in an abusive marriage, and she starts working there as a nurse. For the record, from what they found and what I found, no one with her name has been registered to work as a nurse in New York or Pennsylvania. also check New Jersey.
00:42:05
Speaker
As for the abuse claims, Anthony, the current pastor of UCC, he denies his father as being capable capable of any type of violence. He said he was not present when Nicole and Emmanuel were married.
00:42:19
Speaker
But his quote is, people have stories and they make up things all the time. And you know what? Well, is just really clarifying everything. Yeah. i You know what, Anthony? i I'm not going to argue with you that people make up things all the time. Otherwise, we wouldn't be sitting here talking about this.
00:42:35
Speaker
That's true. So they settle into Pennsylvania. And Nicole and her kids, they're living a totally normal, remote, quiet life far away from Emmanuel.
00:42:46
Speaker
And it appears that Enoch is going to be gaining traction as a music producer. By 2015, star is on the rise. That August, he ends up on Power 105.1, which is one of the hot hip-hop stations at the time in New York.
Park's Pandemic Exploits and Deception
00:43:04
Speaker
He's there to promote his company, EOA, or Excel Over Adversity. This is also a a company that's named after his own initials, which I'm not totally sure I'm saying his last name right, but it would be Enoch Osai Ashampong.
00:43:23
Speaker
So. That is a multi-use three letters right there. It is. it's a it's a lot of they're They're getting a lot of vowels in tonight.
00:43:34
Speaker
Yep. He says, I speak things into existence. I'm not happy to be here. i am meant to be here. While Nicole Park is standing behind him. This is him on the radio show.
00:43:46
Speaker
So I think this family is into speaking things into existence. A few years later, the family moves. She picks up everybody and she takes them west. They all go to Los Angeles. And Enoch is going to be the next big thing out there.
00:43:59
Speaker
According to different articles on the internet and this article... ah Marie Claire, he signs a deal with Blackstar Music and he's collaborating with industry names including Justin Bieber's longtime producer's friend Pooh Bear.
00:44:15
Speaker
um So I don't know why they're telling us all of these things, but it's so fascinating to me. we It's just trying to lend credence to like how this possibly could have happened. Right. Because you know Pooh Bear, yeah he's got it in.
00:44:32
Speaker
So, Nicole Park, she keeps their three-bedroom home they had in Pocono Pines. According to a lawsuit later filed by the landlord there, she just one day stopped paying the rent.
00:44:43
Speaker
And that homeowner created a payment plan for her, which she then allegedly defaulted on. By the time the case reached court, Nicole Park owed him $72,400. Okay.
00:44:56
Speaker
Now, what's wild about that is the owner was not able to do anything with that house. So the owner, not Nicole, lost that home to foreclosure because of trying to work with Nicole Park.
00:45:10
Speaker
That's six years ago. Right. And it doesn't seem like that should have happened. But no um i I feel like ah there's probably – fault to go around but she just stopped instead of being able to rerunt it out he couldn't evict her essentially or the the owner couldn't evict her right right yeah he couldn't figure out a way to evict her yeah yeah that's awful so they weren't doing well in la park has these kids in a two-bedroom apartment in northridge which is about 25 miles out of downtown and if you never lived in l la or been to la
00:45:50
Speaker
LA is not a place that 25 miles is easily covered at all. ah So they're not living in Hollywood or West Hollywood or Bel Air. According to this author of this article, what Nicole Park lacks in status she makes up for in charm.
00:46:08
Speaker
She meets Siobhan Cortez by chance on a corner of Ventura Boulevard in 2019.
00:46:16
Speaker
Ms. Cortez had just moved to LA from New York and was struck by the sight of a black woman and her son in that part of town. So they strike off a conversation. She says, Hey, I don't see many black people around here. Who are you?
00:46:33
Speaker
They become friends, but that's eventually going to not go well. According to court documents and this article, the way that Javon Cortez made her living was as a film producer Park explains that she makes music and they are in each other's orbit from the start.
00:46:51
Speaker
Nicole Park brings Ms. Cortez into her two bedroom home. She's cooking and she's talking about her son.
00:47:03
Speaker
And basically, although she's going to be the assistant for Nicole Park, she also becomes kind of a big part of these kids' lives. In fact,
00:47:14
Speaker
What Nicole Park told her kids was, this is your new auntie, which is a term of endearment to mean, like, this is someone who's instantly part of your family. The pandemic hit, the friendship doesn't go well, and Cortez is stuck in her own home, but she's following what Nicole Park is posting on Instagram.
00:47:36
Speaker
Then something weird happens. So the COVID lockdowns are going on and on, and Nicole Park stops being a single mom on social media. She starts being a socialite.
00:47:50
Speaker
She's posting increasingly luxurious content, including private jets, cigars, and trips to Vegas. While Cortez was kind of shocked by this, she assumes that it's because Enoch had done well in music. Because you don't always hear about the people in the background of music who might be making deals or putting people together.
00:48:12
Speaker
Right, and he was on a trajectory, right? Mm-hmm. So Nicole starts rebranding this entrepreneur entrepreneurial tycoon part of her life.
00:48:23
Speaker
Her background is too murky, and it's L.A. L.A. is a place where people come from all over the place, and if you're not paying a lot of attention, you can be pretty much anything you want to be. Well, and most of the time, people aren't paying attention to other people. They're too busy, worried about themselves. Correct. Correct.
00:48:41
Speaker
So Cortez realizes something is off. And by the time she realizes something's crazy, she and her children had lost a lot of money, tens of thousands of dollars, according to their court papers.
00:48:56
Speaker
And according to what we know now, they weren't alone. There were dozens of others who got pulled into this orbit and into whatever scam is going on here. When the pandemic hit in 2020 and most people were in lockdown,
00:49:11
Speaker
Nicole Park got big. According to her claims, the boom would be in personal protective equipment, which is being unleashed in kind of an unregulated frenzy.
00:49:25
Speaker
Everybody needs gloves and masks, and gloves and masks become kind of global currency. So Nicole sees this as an opportunity to change her family's trajectory, not just her son's.
00:49:37
Speaker
But she's able to broker what appear massive healthcare deals.
00:49:46
Speaker
Under normal circumstances, an average woman with no credentials would be unlikely to broker massive hair health care deals, according to this article. But during COVID, that was no longer true.
00:49:57
Speaker
Park and Enoch, they jump into the supply chain, claiming they could facilitate huge transactions between manufacturers and buyers like hospitals, government agencies, and private businesses. Together, they operate under the banner of Excel over Adversity.
00:50:14
Speaker
Nicole starts to serve as the founder and the chairwoman. She has Enoch as her vice chair. They meet J.J. Goldsberry, who's a fellow PPE entrepreneur at their Burbank offices during this time.
00:50:27
Speaker
There's an introduction from a mutual contact. And JJ is struck by their faith and he's struck by how charming they all are. He refers to her as Nikki here. he says, Nikki and Enoch are professed Christians and me and my partner are professed Christians.
00:50:43
Speaker
We're working during a gold rush and it helps to have God on your side. It was the craziest season of my life. He says, imagine the movie war dogs, but for healthcare care equipment.
00:50:56
Speaker
So the mother and son team impressed JJ Goldsberry. Nikki, was a master networker and Enoch had undeniable gravitas. JJ says he's a young dude, but young guy, he's a young guy, but dude, he carries himself like a king.
00:51:13
Speaker
Park would later tell friends that Enoch's music industry contacts gave the pair a natural starting point as they searched for buyers. Still, JJ Goldsberry said he never saw them close a single deal.
00:51:29
Speaker
Some of J.J. Goldsberry's potential transactions amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars or more, life-changing sums that would have earned him an eight- or nine-figure payday. The allure of that cash was intoxicating.
00:51:42
Speaker
Nicole Park knew that and allegedly used those heady numbers to draw more and more people into her web. So, if you're not catching what I'm putting down here, this woman is not doing anything but pretending to have money and connections.
00:51:59
Speaker
Does that sum it up in a very polite way? Yeah, it does. And what Goldsberry is sort of a alluding to here is he was introduced to them.
00:52:13
Speaker
He was doing the same thing. he was, I guess, actually doing what they were aspiring or pretending to do. Right. And he just, he saw like all the walk, but he didn't ever see it completely go through.
00:52:32
Speaker
And i have a feeling I know where, actually, I do know where this is going because I read the article, but basically i I don't know what people's experiences were, but during COVID,
00:52:46
Speaker
There were a lot of dollar signs in a lot of people's eyes. um oh yeah, we saw it. Like you and I were calling out the fraud left and right. at the It was absolutely insane. she She's going to take this opportunity and basically run everybody's life into the ground because it wasn't enough for her just to ruin her own life.
00:53:07
Speaker
She needs to take everybody down with her. In early 2021, she gets a new auntie for her kids. There's a woman there named Trudy Gray who shares Jamaican roots or Caribbean roots. She's from Jamaica. She's a former model. She owns a restaurant and she and Park click.
00:53:26
Speaker
Now, Nicole Park invites Trudy Gray to an event that's hosted at her offices. They're promoting this film about Dick Gregory. There's a lot of relatively famous-ish people there.
00:53:39
Speaker
And it looks really well put on. So Wendell McFarlane is Trudegere's husband. He comes along and he's just struck by like how awesome all of this stuff is.
00:53:52
Speaker
He plans to launch a trucking business with his daughter and Nicole Park offers an alternative. She says she already owns a trucking company as part of this distribution empire for this personal protective equipment.
00:54:06
Speaker
And she says he can use the cash he was going to use to invest with her instead. She has a, quote, director of finance, a guy named Ari Rosenthal, whom she calls her, quote, Jewish attorney. And some of these documents, I don't know. Like people are saying that's what she said. I don't know if she did or not. She said he'll take care of everything.
00:54:29
Speaker
So Wendell McFarland gives Nicole Park $200,000.
00:54:36
Speaker
She manages to talk him into another million. And she promises that she'd match the contribution of a ah million as a favor between friends.
00:54:47
Speaker
So McFarland says, I don't have that much like capital on hand. She tries to talk him into the possibility of mortgaging their house, but he will not do that.
00:54:58
Speaker
Still, Trudy Gray feels good about Nicole Park. Whenever she goes by, Nicole and Enoch are constantly on the phone. it seems like they're closing these huge deals. They see these people that they're, they call them celebrities. I'm going to say they're recognizable faces flowing in and out of here.
00:55:19
Speaker
ah There's always pictures being taken and it gives this opportunity this faux sort of business they're running, an air of credibility.
00:55:33
Speaker
According to Marie Claire, no one in the pictures, or and no one mentioned in terms of celebrities and faces you would know, would comment about this on the record.
00:55:44
Speaker
So according to Trudy Gray, everything Nicole Park is doing at the time looks authentic.
00:55:51
Speaker
The question remains, and everybody's trying to figure this out. This is what Marie Claire kind of bases all this around. How can she afford to work out of these offices she's working out of?
00:56:03
Speaker
Marie Claire asked every source in the story whether they knew of a single transaction eoa had closed and no one offered up any kind of example. Nicole's landlord in Los Angeles declined to explain whether there was some kind of, quote, special deal.
00:56:19
Speaker
Nevertheless, Even though it's all shiny and pretty with all these phases you might know, by 2021, cracks are starting to show. In March, a group of investors wire $650,000 EOA as a deposit for 1.7 million boxes of gloves.
00:56:38
Speaker
This is from a lawsuit filed in California that Marie Claire tracked down. Wouldn't that be a purchase, not investors? Well, it yeah, I mean, it could be either way. But it's because the group of investors is making the purchase.
00:56:52
Speaker
Okay. After the money arrives, Nicole comes up with a story that the gloves are not, there's a problem with the product. The gloves are not FDA approved.
00:57:04
Speaker
So instead she offers them unapproved gloves at prices that are above market, but below the investment. Like she's already kind of creating a Ponzi problem.
00:57:15
Speaker
Right. And she would have never had access to that many gloves anyway. That was when we were going through the shortage. Yes. Yes. So she claims she's going to return the fund. She sends confirmation that there's $50,000 coming, but that money never arrives. According to one of the complaints, she uses part of the cash as a down payment on a luxury home and then another luxury home in Porter Ranch, California.
00:57:38
Speaker
There is a court filing where Nicole Park's lawyer claims that EOA had gloves sitting in a warehouse ready to send. but that the plaintiffs, that group of investors, had rejected the product without seeing it. This ends up resulting in a default judgment against Nicole Park and her co-defendants in 2023. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that default judgment happens because they don't pay their lawyers.
00:58:01
Speaker
But I could be wrong. So Trudy and Wendell, the only thing that was in the back of their minds, according to Trudy, was every time I come to the office, it's just the two of them there.
00:58:15
Speaker
Behind the scenes, Nicole Park's public life gets further and further away from the reality of her private life. In September 2022, Nicole Park quietly files for bankruptcy back in Pennsylvania.
00:58:30
Speaker
She tells the court that she's got that $50,000 to $100,000 in assets and liabilities, but the petition is ultimately dismissed for, as I previously mentioned, failing to provide sufficient documentation, including her tax returns.
00:58:45
Speaker
The following spring, she checks into a storied five-star hotel in London called the Dorchester. She and her entourage reserve three suites for four nights, van builds and spa treatments, $14,000 worth of cars, in room service, she vanishes. Okay.
00:59:03
Speaker
four thousand dollars in cantonese food and seven hundred dollars worth of flowers and then she vanishes She does not settle a $54,000 bill.
00:59:17
Speaker
Now, Nicole doesn't contest the allegations, and she does make comments to Marie Claire. She says, i don't see why I should expend capital to defend myself against a frivolous lawsuit.
00:59:29
Speaker
She refers to multiple default judgments against her. Later, she claims that individuals mentioned in the story tried to perpetrate a fraud against, quote, her company, but she did not reply to an email asking for evidence or additional information.
00:59:45
Speaker
So for these two, this kind of extravagance is just the way they're doing things. It becomes sort of a virtuous and vicious cycle. The more they flaunt their wealth, the more money comes. And the more money comes, the more lavish their lifestyles become.
01:00:02
Speaker
Because they're not investing in anything. They're just spending the money they're scamming people from. So Cortez reconnects with Nicole Parker in 2023.
01:00:14
Speaker
And Nicole explains her newfound affluence in simple terms. She had secured PPE orders worth tens of millions of dollars per month. She owned 100% of her supply chain, including five cargo ships outfitted with 121 temperature-controlled containers.
01:00:31
Speaker
This is according to a lawsuit, which is still pending as of this as of the writing in our recordings. So they allegedly bolstered the story to showing, quote, her fraudulent pledge forms, contracts, and letters of decree purporting large transactions.
01:00:48
Speaker
Now, at some point, Park and Enoch claim that BlackRock managed 25% of their, quote, family office. Multiple times, Enoch logs into an ah online account that appears to show a balance of $500 million.
01:01:04
Speaker
dollars So Cortez is taken in by all this. She is watching Nicole Park. She no longer speaks with her Trinidad accent.
01:01:15
Speaker
She has this subtle British tone. She doesn't go by Nikki. She's now called Miss Park. And she got sucked into it all again. Now her husband, meaning Cortez's husband, is not sure what's going on.
01:01:30
Speaker
So they invest a small amount of money. It's smaller than Nicole's offers to allow them to invest. But realistically, what that money is, is their children's money.
01:01:43
Speaker
So Cortez lets her 10-year-old daughter, who is an actress who makes her own money, take $6,000 out of her savings account and invest.
The Unraveling of Park's Fraudulent Empire
01:01:52
Speaker
Her son puts in $7,000 of his savings four months later.
01:01:57
Speaker
Now, Nicole says she only accepted such small amounts of capital because they were, quote, family. So a judge ends up shooting down Cortez's daughter's demand for repayment.
01:02:14
Speaker
Cortez submits a request to the court to ask for clarification why that petition has been denied. Her son was granted $7,075 in a default judgment.
01:02:25
Speaker
But as of the publication in Marie Claire, they still haven't seen this money. According to Cortez... Park had offered her enormous commissions if she helped EOA land deals for these supposed products.
01:02:38
Speaker
So she and her husband end up dropping everything and they go to work. They start recruiting celebrities, colleges, healthcare care networks, representatives of foreign countries, and members of the Saudi royal family.
01:02:50
Speaker
She said the numbers were much larger than we where we were in our careers in the film industry. So she's not just handing cash to these people. She's investing in the company because it looks legit. She wants in on that.
01:03:03
Speaker
But even as high profile connections rolled in, none of the deals closed. Each time a potential partner would ask for any type of documentation, the transaction would fall apart.
01:03:15
Speaker
Now, Ari Rosenthal is copied on all of these emails, but Cortez recalls he never shows up for any meetings and he's never on any eight phone calls. It's not clear what Nicole Park's motivations are for all of this effort. There appears to be no documentation that she and Enoch closed a single deal, which I'll say on the face of that, that doesn't mean they didn't.
01:03:37
Speaker
It just means they were running a scam probably both ways. Or they did and they like ripped all these people off. No, they, yeah, they totally ripped everybody off.
01:03:50
Speaker
So Cortez wants in on the payday. She's got a family to feed. She wants these commissions. She's been promised. Eventually, she tells Nicole she needs to get a normal paying job. she can't do this PPE stuff anymore.
01:04:01
Speaker
So Nicole hires her on as an executive assistant with a salary of $15,000 per month. So that's going to be $180,000 a year.
01:04:11
Speaker
She's going to be paid quarterly, according to what Cortez says in her lawsuit. And she said, the job expanded beyond what I was capable of doing, and I became Enoch's personal secretary.
01:04:23
Speaker
She says, I was the butler, the house manager, the building manager. She recalls trailing them through designer showrooms like Hermes, Belguerre. At one, they would sip Aquapana in red velvet chairs, and they were talking to CEOs.
01:04:40
Speaker
One of the world's 10 richest people was standing behind them smiling. Over at Tom Ford, Enoch tries to rack up a bill of more than $600,000, according to Cortez, but then they failed to follow through on the invoice.
01:04:53
Speaker
So he told Cortez to have the brand contact, Harry Rosenthal,
01:05:01
Speaker
have to have Tom Ford contact Aria Rosenthal to sort out the finances, which I'm sure never happens. There were times when Nicole Park would give Cortez gifts.
01:05:13
Speaker
So 90 days go by from the start of employment, and she never gets paid. In her lawsuit, she says they were spending so much on luxury goods, and her labor and investments went completely unpaid.
01:05:25
Speaker
There's another ex-assistant of this group named Marissa Sample, She's a former hairdresser, a newly single mom. She had joined the staff in 2022 working for EOA. It was her first quote corporate job.
01:05:38
Speaker
And Park allegedly told her the first three months would be an unpaid trial. as she was supposed She said this was all supposedly standard in the white collar world. That is not true. That is never true.
01:05:51
Speaker
um She found their behavior strange. ah She was having to send back a lot of food from restaurants. She said they once made her return to Porto's Bakery because Enoch didn't like the size of the carrots in his sandwich.
01:06:04
Speaker
When she returned, they sent her back once more because they were missing a potato ball. She said any time they could find a reason to get money from an establishment or something for free, they would take advantage. Sample later quit, alleging that Nicole Park never paid her.
01:06:18
Speaker
She stuck around only because Nicole had promised her a cut of one of EOA's supposed PPE contracts with Saudi Arabia. It makes me cringe to this day that I allowed that, says Sample. I was also desperate.
01:06:32
Speaker
Court records, interviews, all suggest her experience was mirrored by others sucked into EOA. And this story goes on and on. I don't know how much of this you guys all want to hear. I'm going to go through a couple more because they're so interesting to me.
01:06:47
Speaker
Um, Mohamed Mansour is a Santa Rosa based naturopathic doctor. He has a roster of quote elite LA clients and a specialty in regenerative therapies, including laser treatments, nerve stimulation, and IV drips.
01:07:00
Speaker
When he meets Park and Enoch in 2024, he's under the impression they're very, very wealthy people managing a multimillion dollar medical supply company. And at their first meeting, The mother and son allegedly asked him to provide free services in exchange for introductions to potential high-profile patients like Justin Bieber, Jalen Brown, Jason Tatum.
01:07:24
Speaker
Park even claimed to have ties to the mayor of Los Angeles and to the White House. She showed him a photo of herself with Kim Kardashian and a screenshot of an apparent Zoom call with Magic Johnson to prove her access.
01:07:38
Speaker
And he told them he couldn't do it because it's all illegal and that's called kickbacks. So instead, they offer him a $125,000 retainer. He says, Nicole wrote a check but told him not to cash it yet.
01:07:50
Speaker
She allegedly promised to pay his invoices promptly. The check was just insurance in case she didn't follow through. She needed a little bit more time to prepare the transfer. She allegedly attributed the delay to bureaucratic issues caused by her contracts with the federal government.
01:08:06
Speaker
Months worldwide. And he continues to treat Nicole Park and Enoch on credit. And then Ari Rosenthal sends him a series of emailed excuses for delays.
01:08:20
Speaker
as his unpa As his unpaid bill goes through the roof, Mansoor gets fed up and he decides to cash the check. He tries three different bank branches. And guess what happens with that $125,000 check?
01:08:34
Speaker
It was rubber. Yep, it bounces. So in May, he files a lawsuit. So the language in the complaint alleged that Nicole Park's intentional misinterpretations and false promises induce him to provide services without compensation.
01:08:49
Speaker
It's not just Park and her son. It's also Aerie Rosenthal. And the quote is, he should have held strict ethics by virtue of his faith and vocation.
01:09:01
Speaker
know what they mean by that, but okay. So unless he doesn't exist, right? So Mansoor- was going to say, like, I mean, come on now. So Mansoor traces Harry Rosenthal's number. comes up a bust.
01:09:17
Speaker
It's a scam number. So Cortez gets involved. She spent endless hours meeting everyone in Parks World. She never met Harry Rosenthal. And then they start going through the list of people who had received emails from him.
01:09:31
Speaker
That's Trudy Gray, Wendell McFarlane, the realtors, the landlords, and at least one business that EOA owed money to. According to public records, there is no person named Erie Rosenthal licensed to practice law in California.
01:09:48
Speaker
Not in New York and not in Pennsylvania. Marie Claire contacted the phone numbers in Rosenthal's EOA email signature, but no one picked up. The email account that was listed in his name is no longer valid.
01:10:01
Speaker
In the lawsuit, Cortez's lawyers were explicit. Ari Rosenthal is not a real person. She claimed he's a fictional character devised to help EOA get out of financial jams, which is fascinating to me.
01:10:18
Speaker
So we have one more person who walks in that's interesting to the EOA's Burbank officers, and that is Major General John Wharton. He enters the private sector after retiring from the U.S. Army, and he tells Marie Claire that he was there to suss out the company on behalf of some friends who are contemplating a deal involving nitrile gloves. He says Nicole and her son were very kind, cordial, and wonderful as people.
01:10:44
Speaker
There came a point when EOA was asked to write a partnership agreement, but Nicole Park balked at paying for lawyers, the general said. For Wharton's partners, that was a little bit of a red flag considering how large of a company she claimed to be operating.
01:10:59
Speaker
The deal never went anywhere, but Nicole Park still snagged a photo with her guests. Slam dunk, she texted one of her associates alongside the image.
01:11:10
Speaker
So this is a familiar pattern. With other celebrities, the photos of victory into itself, even though a business agreement never materializes. Nicole Park used the same move with Kim Kardashian after she visited Burbank for a meeting.
01:11:24
Speaker
Come January, the LA wildfires presented yet another opportunity for Park to step into the spotlight. As flames engulfed the city, Park devised her $100 million dollars initiative.
01:11:36
Speaker
According Cortez, who she owes tens of thousands of dollars to and ask if he wants to be in on it she told him she had already secured at least seventy five million dollars in commitments but he declined to get involved he said i realized that it was just a ruse it was a way of playing people's emotions during a time of crisis according to cortez Mansour's instincts were correct.
01:12:00
Speaker
We can help rebuild L.A. and then we'll have access to whatever relationships that we want because we did a good deed for the city, she recalled of Nicole Park's thinking. Nicole Park even hired Erica DeMa to help her go public with the plans.
01:12:14
Speaker
It was a chance to make herself a brand name in l L.A. and perhaps land investments from ultra-rich benefactors. The details on how to follow through such a massive pledge could apparently be sorted out later.
01:12:27
Speaker
When DeMas arrived at the first meeting, Park and Enoch were receiving IV drips. She said it seemed very unprofessional and odd. DeMas recalled asking basic questions about where the $100 million dollars were coming from, yet she didn't receive clear answers.
01:12:43
Speaker
And I immediately sensed something wasn't right. So that press release never went out. Reads for comment about the debacle. A spokesperson for the mayor acknowledged that a member of his staff joined one meeting regarding Park's plan after receiving a disaster relief proposal submitted on her behalf. He insisted that the mayor's office had no involvement in the initiative that you're referencing.
01:13:06
Speaker
So, I don't know what's going on with this woman. I do. What is it? To be fair, she may have just, like, realized that...
01:13:19
Speaker
ah she could fake it until she makes it or falls flat on her face. Yeah. and you know, there's some basic principles here that for some reason, all of these people just ignore, deny. i don't know what's happening with them, but for some reason it doesn't send up any flags.
01:13:44
Speaker
I presume that When she's saying, you know, invest in my company so I can get you a good return too, that it seems too good to be true, right? Right.
01:14:01
Speaker
However...
01:14:05
Speaker
A lot of times, business real like professional business people who are trying to start a venture, they don't get capital this way. No, no, no. You can have meetings and networking this way, but it it then kind of goes to the lawyers and the other executives to be vetted. And if you have a board, it goes to them.
01:14:30
Speaker
Well, not to mention, like, I mean, i guess somebody could prove me wrong, but, like, if you're talking about, like, a hundred million dollar company or what I don't even know what she claimed.
01:14:43
Speaker
Like, see if you can go if you're not buying, like, stock in it. Right. Like on the stock, like on ah a stock exchange. Try going to one of the owners of the company and giving them money. i mean, you can't do that. Right. And it it's odd to me that she was able to convey this in to all of these people. Like, oh, you're family. I'll let you put money in When really she was pocketing all that money. Correct. And like literally nothing was happening here. Right.
01:15:14
Speaker
Oh yeah, nothing at all. He couldn't give an explanation. This is the period of time where nothing was available. Like people couldn't get hand sanitizer. they couldn't get the gloves. They could, you know, we were running short on masks. All of these problems, right?
01:15:31
Speaker
And she was exploiting that, essentially. She was telling companies that she could get it for them, But see, she never was able to close a deal because she couldn't actually get her hands on any of that stuff at that point in time.
Ethical Implications and Victim Impact
01:15:48
Speaker
But she was telling people that she was doing it and that because of, you know, the condition of the world, she was able to, you know, get charge a lot. And if they put money into it, they could get in on it and make a big return, which that is never how...
01:16:05
Speaker
ah a legit business is going to happen. i would say that I realized that COVID was a crazy time. And so people may have believed it, but she's she is probably one of the coldest people I've ever like heard sort of an autobiographical tale about.
01:16:28
Speaker
Like, just from the point of view that she took money from children and she put, you know, a woman who was a single mother... Like to work doing the stupidest crap, basically being their personal servant. Yeah.
01:16:46
Speaker
And didn't pay her. Right. Yeah. ah What are you thinking? It is possible. i will say that it is possible. She thought she might eventually hit a payday. Okay.
01:17:01
Speaker
Yeah. But it didn't happen. Right. Right. And I don't know if she was that. I feel like if she was legit going to be hitting, she felt like she was really going to be hitting a payday.
01:17:15
Speaker
You would have seen a difference in the way she was acting. Because when you were legitimately working and like trying to do something, ah you know, capitalistic, you're like cutting corners everywhere. you don't, you don't,
01:17:36
Speaker
show wealth you don't have, it's not a show, right? Yeah. Like that's for way later in the game, right? yeah But she had to do that because she had to convince people she had money in order for them to give her the money. But it ultimately, it's not even really a Ponzi scheme because she had, I don't think she had any plans of paying any of these people back.
01:17:59
Speaker
No, not at all. Literally had people working for her that she had no intention to pay. And she even told somebody it's normal to not get paid for three months.
01:18:12
Speaker
When, what? no If you're not doing it for the love of it, okay? If you're like legit responsible to be somewhere at a certain time and you're working at a certain rate, okay? You should be getting your paychecks like in whatever increment you agree to,
01:18:32
Speaker
Correct. It is not three months, correct
01:18:39
Speaker
ah is It is wild. i You know, i looked at this. i don't have a great way to sum this one up. I've started to recognize there are people like this. And I think you're right.
01:18:50
Speaker
COVID was crazy. But i i think I think she's preying on a weird type of person who like was kind of already destined for bad juju to begin with.
01:19:04
Speaker
Because if you were, like, cool with the idea of jacking up prices and making money on people that needed things during that time, I think you were sort of destined for terrible karma.
01:19:16
Speaker
it It is possible. um I'm not entirely sure that they... like I don't know... and see, this is where the perspective matters, right? I don't know what, like, a... nor like I feel like the lady that... um was I think she was the hairdresser, the one that worked for three months like without getting paid.
01:19:39
Speaker
I'm not really sure, but um I don't know if like just normal people who aren't running businesses, I don't know if they realize...
01:19:51
Speaker
like what had to happen in order for you to make a huge return. you You see what I'm saying? Right. I don't know if they realized that they were like denying necessities to people who needed them.
01:20:04
Speaker
Of course that wasn't even happening. Right. Right. There were no gloves changing hands here. Literally nothing was happening. I don't know if they were even trying. It seems like they were just living it up and they were trying to talk people into it.
01:20:18
Speaker
And I don't think she's ever been criminally charged with anything. No. So that's what we're getting to next. um A number of things have happened here. Lawsuits have stacked up. We've got Cortez, Cortez's children, Mansour, Nicole Park's landlord. There's a couple of marketing firms. um There's a realtor named Claudia Icken who's involved in all this. She sues Nicole and Enoch ah because she's pulled out this BS about – um Not her, but Nicole.
01:20:50
Speaker
There were fake contracts alleged to show eoe had business with Ghana and Qatar. Well, and I feel like once um you start faking documentation, that's sort of another sign that like you're not just really bad at what you're trying to do. yeah ah Because that's just fake. well Like, it's just fraud. Well, so according to Claudia Icken, and this is kind of the wrap-up for this article, she says that the fallout had been personal and financial, she had bonded with Nicole over the shared backgrounds that they had. She was very proud of her. Nicole would send her Bible verses. They would go back and forth over like Claudia's mom is going through chemotherapy. She brings her to the Burbank officers and shows her all these gloves that are supposedly used for like the doctors who are doing the chemotherapy.
01:21:41
Speaker
And like, this was a ah profound thing for her. And she said, it you know, since this has happened, It's been hard for her to get out of bed. She felt stupid. She's gone to the Burbank police, the security exchange commission, the FBI, the California attorney general's office. She's reported park everywhere. She can think of nothing's happened now as for Trudy gray. She and her husband are living apart. She said her father died last year and she didn't have money to pay for the funeral.
01:22:06
Speaker
Um, she said it put a strain on their marriage. Now the article wraps up specifically saying park has gone on the offense. In March of this year, her attorney, Matthew Morris, who appears to be her real attorney, has sent a cease and desist to Cortez, accusing her of making false and disparaging statements. He sent a similar letter to Trudy Gray and her husband, Wendell McFarlane.
01:22:30
Speaker
ah Now, Matthew Morris tells Marie Claire he issued, quote, cease and desist letters to certain individuals who were circulating demonstrably false claims. He does not respond to an email where they ask him to elaborate on what those claims had been, He does not confirm if he still represents Nicole Park or Enoch.
01:22:49
Speaker
ah He tells Marie Claire, I don't have any greater contact with you them than you do, which he's not allowed to say a lot of things in terms of if he's representing them in one matter or not.
01:23:01
Speaker
um They reach out to Nicole Park about these accusations, and she answers the call. She says... You have the audacity to pick up the phone to call me and ask about my company. Whichever witch hunt this is, they will not succeed.
01:23:15
Speaker
She declined to answer specific questions. She invites the reporter to visit her in person, I'm sure, in the Burbank offices. But she revokes the offer hours later as the reporter is entering airport security.
01:23:29
Speaker
So she remains defiant. She says, one thing you will learn about me, I will always be true to who I am. And so the way that Noah Kirsch wraps up this article, he says it would be easy to cast Park as a manipulator or a mastermind, but some former associates see a simple playbook, one where appearance in certain circles can be as powerful as proof.
01:23:49
Speaker
In Los Angeles, the right image, the clothes, the confidence, the company you keep can go a long way before anyone asks any hard questions. Maybe Park even started believing her own stories. Self-delusion can be a potent drug. After a while, said J.J. Goldsberry, the PPE entrepreneur who once admired her, it's easy to get caught up in it and apparently not easy to quit this winter as EOA's enemies are multiplying.
Reflections on Audacious Scams and Conclusion
01:24:18
Speaker
Enoch reached out to J.J. Goldsberry again. He said he's working on something new and he needs a favor. Guess what his favor is? I'm going to go with just a small loan. small loan of $10 million. dollars All this. And he has the balls to ask for $10 million.
01:24:42
Speaker
dollars One of the things that always like really interests me is perception of somebody besides me, obviously, because I know what my perception is I have trouble following what other people's perceptions might be.
01:25:01
Speaker
But to ah Nicole Park, is it possible that she thinks people will accept this as just like losing it out on any other investment? Yeah.
01:25:17
Speaker
Like, does she see it as the same thing? She thinks that she's just other people's tax write-off? Well, something... i don't see how she could do it, honestly. Like, she would have been better off, like... And I'm not suggesting anybody do this.
01:25:34
Speaker
In my mind, it would have been better to rip off, like, the money the government was giving during COVID. Correct. I would have preferred her to have ripped that off. I think that had more consequences than she knew it.
01:25:48
Speaker
Well, probably. but like, I just, I can't see what, I feel like you should have, like, an immense amount of guilt when you're literally, you know, taking, know,
01:26:09
Speaker
things away from people, like tangible things. Like when she wasn't paying her rent and a landlord had lost the house. Right.
01:26:19
Speaker
Um, that wasn't some like, you know, fat cat, uh, slumlord. That was somebody who had a house that they were renting out probably just enough to cover the mortgage. Right. Right.
01:26:34
Speaker
Okay. And, you know, that's not a great situation to begin with, but it's really bad when you can't effectively evict your tenant and you lose the house, right? Because foreclosures are disasters, right? Yes, yes. you have It takes a long time to recover. I mean, I know a lot of people were going through crap, but it seems like she, there were a lot of other opportunities she could have tried.
01:27:07
Speaker
a hundred percent. She knows it. She's running a scam. Yeah, that's what it is. It's just a scam. Okay. Before we go to the end of this, I just want to say this all was put together by a contributor to Marie Claire named Noah Kirsch.
01:27:20
Speaker
Noah Kirsch is a freelance reporter specializing in long form features and investigations. And he focuses a lot on the nexus of wealth and power and corruption He has been a senior reporter at the Daily Beast. And before that, he was a staff writer at Forbes magazine. And I just want to say to you, Noah Karsh, I am here for the Netflix limited series, buddy.
01:27:42
Speaker
When you sell this, I am watching it. Yeah, I mean, I would watch it too, but like I don't know if that's a great idea because she is still possibly doing this.
01:27:54
Speaker
Oh, I am 100% sure she's still doing this. And I used one source for all of this other than the court documents. The court documents are accusations. She's not been charged with anything that I know of by the time that we're recording all of this. If there's some kind of addendum have to put in here, I'll drop one in. But like the bottom line is for something that looks like this huge audacious scam, it's I am here for it. It appears that Noah Kirst has brought it. It appears that Nicole Park with an e has perpetrated it.
01:28:24
Speaker
And it is fascinating to me as it is as fascinating to me as it is terrible. And I'm with you. Like this woman has a level of audacity we rarely see in humans.
01:28:37
Speaker
And like she kind of missed her mark and her calling and what she should have been doing with all of this. crazy scheming she's doing. There's probably something else out there for her. But the bottom line is like karma is a bitch.
01:28:57
Speaker
I hope so. I mean, she may get away with it. I just think this is the type of situation for all the reasons you just mentioned that if it bites you, it is going to bite down and never let go.
01:29:12
Speaker
Oh, no kidding. Well, right. And if even if she's like deluded enough to like believe in what she's done.
01:29:25
Speaker
it's wild. Well, and it makes me feel sorry for her because like ultimately nobody wins in this situation. And I don't know in like California if this will happen, but like she has plainly committed fraud because if you go into business and you're not, you don't specify that you're like a think tank or whatever. yeah And you're saying like you're brokering these deals and you present your potential investors with false documents that makes it look like you have them basically all lined up or whatever they're doing. Right.
01:30:02
Speaker
Again, none of that was happening because it wasn't possible at that point in time. She was leveraging point in the market where literally everybody needed that stuff and they couldn't get it. Correct.
01:30:15
Speaker
And she was saying she had special connections somehow. So she was leveraging that. They were invisible. That's why they were special. I guess so. but If you have done what she did, whether she was aware of what she, whether she believed she was actually brokering the deals or not, which I tend to think not because why are you presenting like forgeries, right? Fake documents.
01:30:42
Speaker
um You have... defrauded investors. Well, i'm not i'm not no I'm not going that far because I haven't seen how she presented them. Are they laying on the table and you read them when you weren't supposed to? Or they're sitting on a screen that you weren't supposed to reading on a monitor and you fell for a really elaborate ruse that seems like – that's how you get away with the Netflix original series is you make everybody the bad guy.
01:31:05
Speaker
Because like they're like kind of committing a little espionage and nonsense on their own by digging into her and finding it. But if she doesn't present it directly as part of some kind of perspectives, I don't know how much fraud she committed here or not.
01:31:19
Speaker
Well, why did why were they giving her money? I i don't know. that Nothing that they have told me in this story makes me think they should give her anything. Exactly, which makes me think she had to have said something. What's right what's the old saying?
01:31:34
Speaker
a fool and his money are soon parted? don't know. It seems like something like that fits here. I'm just saying, and I'm not defending her. I'm just saying, like, this whole thing is about people who are told, you want to take advantage of a bunch of other people?
01:31:52
Speaker
If you give me a little money, i can show you how to do it, and i can cut you in on what I'm doing. And they said yes. Well, I guess. if that's But see, she came off like she was a legit business person.
01:32:06
Speaker
Who said, i am like, abusing things. Which, I mean, I would be wondering, like, how is it that you're a billionaire? Because i don't think people in PPE...
01:32:21
Speaker
are typically billionaires, especially not during like basically a complete supply chain like meltdown. Right. yeah And it, it, I do think that the fact that it happened ah in LA is important though, because it, it was the sort of just ah like you said, the appearance of it, right. She just,
01:32:47
Speaker
She was faking a lifestyle and everybody bought into it. Now, I don't know about the people who are just working jobs, right? Because a job is a job. But unless you're like, you know, an executive.
01:33:04
Speaker
Everybody here, everybody here is in on the scam.
01:33:09
Speaker
So you think they were all scamming? Yeah, I mean, he wrote the article from a very sympathetic perspective. But I think even the people, and I'm not saying they didn't get scammed, and I'm not saying it's not wrong, and I'm not saying that there's a bunch of crimes that got committed here.
01:33:25
Speaker
Go either way on this. There may be a bunch of fraud and wire fraud and all kinds of stuff happening. But the bottom line here is, everybody karmically was just in the wrong place, wrong time, doing the wrong thing and ended up paying a price for it that they ultimately couldn't really afford. Like a lot of this, that's like, they talk about the 10 year old girl, right? And the $6,000 and all that. First of all, letting your 10 year old invest $6,000 in this giant pile of nonsense does not make me on your side.
01:34:00
Speaker
That was a life lesson learned. Right. Right. and like unfortunately And like, you know, they're getting these default judgments. Like the the the older brother is ever going to get paid. oh She's just going to declare bankruptcy again. Well, I don't even know that she's going to do that. It seems like she's just ignoring everything. No, she declared bankruptcy with the last round. But what you said that everybody karmically lost out. What did Nicole Park lose out on?
01:34:27
Speaker
She is ultimately the one that could potentially have to pay for all of this. We don't know yet like what's going to happen to her Right. You're right. But unfortunately, I'm a i'm really... Look, i don't if you're... anything look Okay, say there's nothing on the other side of afterlife or whatever. just like just say that Just say Earth is it, right? Earth is it. Your life on Earth is it.
01:34:52
Speaker
She, at some point, is going to have the most miserable death in existence because... The only person that truly knows who Nicole Park is, is Nicole Park.
01:35:06
Speaker
Well, I'm starting to think she may not even know who she is. She may be like, you know. Well, then that means if if she is seriously mentally ill doing all of this, which that is also a strong possibility. That means she is already karmically living that out.
01:35:24
Speaker
Possibly. I don't know that that's always the case, though. so i i would not like I would never want to be that person. And maybe I'm misunderstanding like like what you're saying. But the bottom line is, what Nicole Park is doing with this money is not enjoyable to me.
01:35:40
Speaker
No, yeah. It's a waste. You're saying, like, like like what is she doing? I would not personally enjoy being a massive fraud, a fake, and a glutton.
01:35:52
Speaker
it Like, it would make me miserable. and So maybe I'm missing something on that end of it all. Well, no, it just doesn't seem like she's actually getting her just desserts. It seems like everybody's lost out on their money. It's clear that it it has tanked because at this point in time, she's not going to be able – there's no need in the market for – somebody to deliver on these PPE things. I mean, they're back in, you know everything's working again. I don't think any of that's real to begin with. Like to me, this is a bell curve, right?
01:36:24
Speaker
The PPE was on the way up the bell curve at close to the top. And that's where the money came into her. But like, I guess I'm wrong from the perspective of what I consider to be justice.
01:36:35
Speaker
This woman has like, she is going to run out of people who believe her nonsense, no matter what she does now. Like things are starting to be published where I can find her on the internet.
01:36:48
Speaker
Well, right. And i mean, we're talking about her here. So she has, she has run the gamut of the couple of dozen people that are going to buy her BS and her, like, no matter what happened, even if she lives shiny and happy for the rest of her life, it will be running. It will be in debt, but more than likely, nobody's after her.
01:37:11
Speaker
These are a lot of lawsuits and a lot of default judgments. So you may say nobody's after her, but like that paper trail pops if she tries to get a job alone, if she tries to make a new friend, if she tries to start a corporation, she tries to do anything in the future.
01:37:29
Speaker
Like her trying to rent a new place later is going to show all of these default liens against her. Like, she's going to have to develop an entirely new identity to get out of all this. and i don Unfortunately, I don't know that that's going to be a problem for her.
01:37:46
Speaker
Well, she's used the same name the whole time. I don't think she's capable of it. like And it'll always be under EOA because their ego is too big. like Like, they can't wrap their mind around the fact that, like, they're in the wrong yet.
01:37:58
Speaker
But the real thing that she's done that she's going to hate later, no matter who she is, she's ruined her children's lives. Like, she's she's already living in her justice. She should be charged with a crime. Yeah, she's committed like 50 crimes. You think that thats this is a way to live?
01:38:14
Speaker
No. No. So, I think if she gets to do this for the rest of her life, but she can never do anything else, I think that in itself is the equivalent of living in prison. Me, personally. I feel like that's getting sort of, I mean, that's kind of a ideological look at justice. Yeah.
01:38:33
Speaker
oh Oh, you're talking about you have about like a literal legal justice. I mean, this is that that's a real thing, right? What? and i I think she is has committed crimes that she could be held accountable for in a court of law.
01:38:48
Speaker
I'm betting the place they get her is in the financial transactions. Wire fraud. Yeah, that's probably all fraud, that kind of thing.
01:38:59
Speaker
Like something about the movement of the money. Because you've seen that before where somebody seems to be skating. That's all they do. Like a lot of times that's the only thing that they violated. But they can get substantial time for it.
01:39:13
Speaker
Yeah, I wonder how much of this is well-documented where they can track it over the last couple of years. It should all be in terms of the banking stuff with that an amount of money. Well, I was going to say, with as much money as she was like taking in it seems like she would have needed to be like registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
01:39:34
Speaker
I mean, where's all this money coming from? but Where's it going to? like What bank is looking at this and going, yeah, this looks great? She's literally spending it. like I bet she's just got a bunch of... I bet you like all she's made is like these amounts that they mention here have gone towards paying the debt she's been accruing. And she's like one of those people that just skates on the bill when it comes for everything. We're seeing the example of the hotel and the landlords, but I bet it's everything. Where else is she getting money from?
01:40:10
Speaker
the people that we're talking about here, the investors that are giving hundreds of thousands of dollars. Well, i know that, but that's ah only going to last for so long. Yeah, I have no idea. Like, if they're going to London and skipping out on a $50,000 bill, I don't even know, like, but what are they doing?
01:40:27
Speaker
Like, what else are they, like, how are how do you spend that kind of money? I don't know. I guess maybe now they're in too deep or something. That would be my guess. You can't extract yourself anymore.
01:40:39
Speaker
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. This is what I, this is my last thing to say about this. What I'm hoping in my heart of hearts in terms of like what I think you think is justice and what, what I think would be justice. I'm hoping that it's just such a morass. It's taking a minute for all of those entities to like pick it apart that they talked about here, like reporting it to, California and reporting it to the securities and exchange and the banks and the FBI. I think it's just like they're like some guy somewhere has like worked on it a little bit. And like, it's just taking a minute to get to the bottom of how whacked out it is. And it may be, even if it's just like 10 counts of wire fraud, I think I'd be happy with that.
01:41:24
Speaker
Well, i mean, it's entirely possible that like she has it where You know, they just gave her the money because she needed to borrow it. I don't know. i mean.
01:41:39
Speaker
all the logging into the but the one thing that struck me in this whole thing that like will make me even talk about it probably in tomorrow's next episode. Enoch logging into the bank account that seemed to have a $500 million dollars balance.
01:41:52
Speaker
That you think that was like. like Like what kind of nonsense? It could have been a QuickBooks account. yeah Like, Oh, so that doesn't exist I don't know. i don't know what it was, but depending, I mean, obviously the person telling that story believed it. Right. Yes.
01:42:08
Speaker
um But you can do a lot to make things look a certain way. Yes, you can. Now, to me, once you're getting into that territory, you know exactly what you're doing.
01:42:20
Speaker
Right, but like if you're not like showing them that for the purpose of like verifying your books, and they're looking over your shoulder at you logging in. That's them seeing something they thought they saw, but that doesn't mean that that's what they actually saw, all right? 100% true, yeah.
01:42:36
Speaker
And so, you know, i don't I cannot imagine a situation where... I would want to invest money in a company and somebody would log into their account and let me see what the balance is. This this this story makes me so mad. it infuriates me on so many levels. just weird. And she took advantage of a lot of people who...
01:42:59
Speaker
I guess i they maybe they were trying to get in on taking advantage of something, but either way, I mean, this it was wrong. yeah Well, i don't I don't have any more on her right now, but I can promise you like if there's some kind of Department Justice. I there's going to be some sort of follow-up. Oh, yeah. If there's a follow-up, I'm here for it. I'm not entirely sure that's going to happen, but...
01:43:23
Speaker
why And not nor do I know for sure that like there's really enough there. But from the article, which we have, it sounds bad. Yeah. like I have found a new point of anger for myself, and that is fake it till you make wannabe pretend billionaires.
01:43:41
Speaker
It makes me so mad. I did not know I could be this mad about something so dumb. It is dumb, but like I also sort of wish like I could have that.
01:43:54
Speaker
The delusion? You want a little bit of the delusion? If you could that and sell it where people could take injections? like i wouldn't I wouldn't actually take advantage of anybody. However, I wish I like had the like confidence, the chutzpah, the cojones, whatever it is, right?
01:44:12
Speaker
To like just be like, I'm a billionaire and like barrel through everything. It's very ah like Emperor's New Clothes. Exactly. There's like even a little bit of Willy Wonka in it all.
01:44:26
Speaker
It's so great. Exactly. And if you know you're going to skip, if I were going to have to skip out on a hotel bill. my I wouldn't spend jack. I would would literally barely lay in the bed. I could not even skip out on a hundred dollar hotel bill. I know, right? one like fifty they They skipped out on a new car's worth of a hotel bill. It was like a house almost. $54,000. And they're like eating like, I mean, oh i would feel so terrible about that.
01:45:01
Speaker
Like, and I wouldn't actually, I wouldn't do it. I couldn't either. and I would just sleep in my car or something. don't know. I feel guilty even reading about them doing it. But to maximize it like that, I just feel like people that are capable of that, they just live a completely different life than I do. Yeah, they're they're not. Me and these people are not on the same planet.
01:45:24
Speaker
Exactly. Even the ones that are just along. Like, like apparently there's an entourage making them that $54,000 bill. I couldn't be a part of that. That's crazy. That would make me, like, i would feel so guilty. I'd be sick for a year from that.
01:45:36
Speaker
I bet they don't even know, though. Probably not. She's like, because she's a billionaire. She's covering everything. Yeah, and she surrounds herself with like very carefully, like they look good, but you know, the manicuring is curated. Yeah, it's all curated. All right. That's all I got on this one. But we have one more that we're going to do in the next episode that it's not quite on the same level, but I don't know how different it is. Special consideration was given to True Crime XS by LabradiCreations.com.
01:46:07
Speaker
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01:46:26
Speaker
I break things like guitars.
01:46:35
Speaker
No scars. We're in trouble. We took it too far.
01:46:45
Speaker
Don't want to go, but it's cause I'll disappoint ya. It's all I've ever dreamed of, something I cannot let go of.
01:46:56
Speaker
I hate the competition. This culture's like a Jimin. I lost the motivation to get fit in your expectations.
01:47:07
Speaker
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01:47:25
Speaker
Thank you for joining us.