Speaker 0 (0s): Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the true life podcast. I hope wherever you are, whatever you're doing, the sun is shining on you. The wind's at your back and you're thinking good thoughts. You know what today is? You want to know what today is any guesses. It is true. Crime Friday, true crime, Friday, Friday, Friday. We're getting into it today. You know what? I think everyone can on some level respect a good hustle, respect a good scam.

If you remember last Friday or a few episodes back, I talked about a scam that I was in your boy, George, over here, getting hustled a little bit, but I turned it into a educational experience and I even flipped it and did my best to scam the scammer. If you haven't checked that out, you should go back to the podcast archives and look for the mushroom scam. It's pretty interesting and comical and a little bit humbling for yours. Truly this particular day, we're going to be talking about something called the fall of the billionaire Gucci master.

It's an article from business week and it's written by Evan Ratliff who wrote an amazing book called the mastermind drugs, empire murder betrayal. You should definitely pick up that book. In fact, we could be doing a, hopefully, maybe a show on it and definitely a book review on it coming up. But it's a great book. The book's called the mastermind. This is a different scam. And this is a recent article out of business week. And this is about a guy, a scammer, a hustler, a fraudster huckster, any guesses where this guy's from.

Come on and take a guess. You can give, you can do it. Take one. Guess where this guy's from. You're right. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Nigeria, Nigeria man, home of the great Nigerian prince scam home of the email, phishing scams, Hey, you send me one Bitcoin. I'll send you for Nigeria. You know what I'm talking about? Hey, here's my WhatsApp address. Yeah, I'm totally legit. Just send it over here. So this guy, while we love a good hustle, we love a good scam.

We hate being scammed ourselves. That's a box, but you know what? I find like a little bit of shot and Freud in. You know, what I find brings a slight smile to the corner of my cheeks is when some buddy scams the banks, I love it. I love it. It's like they scam the scammer. You know, here's the legitimate scammer. The banking industry is reaching into your pocket every day here, we're going to create some money out of thin air and let you buy a house. You got to pay us back five times what it is.

Maybe I'm jealous. Maybe I'm jealous because the banks are hustlers maybe, or maybe I think they're pieces of shit. And I'm glad when they get scammed, especially by a Nigerian scammer, take that banks, but then your pipe and smoke it. Let's talk about it. The guy's name. Let me give you a little brief. I'm going to read a little bit of the article. I'm going to comment. I'm going to read a little bit more of the article and I'm going to comment, but I'm not going to read too much of the article because I want you to go and read it and give the author.

Evan Ratliff credit. Let's give credit where credit is due. Let's begin authority, say Ramon, a boss, a K a at hush puppy. That's an Instagram thing, perfected a simple internet scam and laundered millions of dollars. His past says a lot about digital swagger and the kinds of stories that get told online. Everybody knows about that. Be aware of the Instagram swagger for Ramona boss, the Instagram influencer popularly known as Ray hush puppy at hush puppy hush or the billionaire Tucci master birthdays were always at time for reflection aren't they always reflection and extravagance.

But then extravagance was hush puppies brand a 365 days a year affair. A way of being on October 11th, 2019, the day he turned 37, he was living in a penthouse apartment at the Palazzo Versace Dubai with a private pool, private hot tub right there on his Lanai, a typical ad hush puppy post on Instagram, where he had more than 2 million followers featured a boss, smiling in front of one of his Ferrari's or his rolls Royces kicking back on a seat on a private jet or moving in and out of posh stores like Louis Vuitton, fin days, her Mays always flawless, never the same outfit twice.

Hashtag Gucci more often than not. You don't become the billionaire Gucci master any other way, folks. All right, you can't be wearing the same outfit more than once. Man. You gotta be matching your shoes to your hat. Maybe put some diamonds in your smile. That's how you become the Gucci master. You know what I mean? I'm often remember, I don't know why this is popping in my head, but remember that song by the Gucci crew. Oh, whoa, Sally, that girl, that, that, that, that girl, that they should play that song.

I should play that song while I'm doing this podcast. Maybe I'll go back and edit it probably won't. So right off the bat, I am thinking of Dan ball's Arion. Here's another guy who had private jets, limos cars, you know, talking all this shit online about how great they are and how much money they have. They are on one hand showing you how great they are. And on the other hand, trying to tell you how dumb you are, how weak you are.

Maybe they're not trying to tell you that, but it's that level of, Hey, look at me, look how much I have. This is how great I am. And I think that says a lot about our society. I think that these scams where people portray themselves as billionaires are usually an outgrowth of the cancer, that is our materialist society. And like I said, it bothers me when the scammers hustle people that don't have anything when they hustle small Mo old grandmas and grandpas and working people.

And I don't like that. But again, the Nigerian scammer over here, who did he get? He got the banks, he got the banks. So for that, in that category, I think he targeted the right audience. I think he targeted the right audience. And I don't think there's anybody here who I think I would rather this scammer scam, the banks and the bank scammy. Okay. Continuing with the article, even back in 2019, there were questions about how much money Abbas really had and how exactly he acquired it in Nigeria, where he was born, his Instagram presence had turned him into a celebrity adjacent to the biggest names in pop culture.

He had appeared in social media with pop idols, DeVito and the Wiz kid and soccer players on English clubs like Chelsea and man city. So you can see he's getting some credibility with his wealth. And it just goes to show you that wealth will buy you credibility, which leads us back to the outgrowth of our whole world system. Based on finance is kind of based on a scam. It goes to show you that if you have money, you can buy credibility.

If you have money, you can buy influence. Even if you're a piece of shit scammer. Even if you're just a piece of shit. If you have money, you buy influence. Think about that. Like that's why our world is so messed up. All you have to do is do a couple of scans and all of a sudden you have credibility. It may not be a lot of credibility, but you can buy credibility. And that's why so many people in positions of authority today are pieces of shit. Cause they have no experience.

They have no real life ability to be leaders. They have money. They may have pulled a scam or maybe their dad or their mom worked hard. But the majority of people in positions of authority probably are pieces of shit. Just so everybody's clear on that. Okay? Maybe not everybody in authority, maybe I'm having a rough morning. All right. Maybe I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, but I'm thinking of, I don't pick your poison. Trump Biden, politics, bankers, insurance companies, drone pal.

It seems to me, these people are all pretty much Nigerian scammers. They might as well be they're stealing from the American people, right? So you're probably thinking to yourself, all right, George, I get it. This guy, this Nigerian prince, Mr. Abbas, he's flexing on Instagram. He's got gold and diamond and crusted Rolex. His Ferrari's he's living in Dubai in a Versace mansion. How to get his money. George will scan that he pole, you know what he did. He did the old business email compromise the B E C the man in the middle attack, little, a little old, you know, the old one to the old, Hey, opened his email here, dating and you're in, but he did it.

Okay. So he fires off his BEC his business email client scam. And the story goes that it was a New York law firm. The money was meant to be a payment owed to one of its clients. Who'd refinanced a piece of real estate at citizen bank. You know how much for $922,857.

This is just one of this guys scans. So one scam, $1 million. This is just one. I want you to read the article. If you want to see some of the rest of them, but this was this guy's emo man in the middle attack, email, he fires off a piece of code that gates in. He's able to socially engineer the operator on one end fires off an email. Yes, this is me.

I'm the person that's supposed to go to. The clerk looks at it. Okay. It looks good. Fires off a P a question to, to verify like a, to FFA. This guy has got control of it. He verifies the two FFA bada Bing, bada boom million dollars in his account. Good to go. A few months later, the customer that reified the properties, looking at his bank. Doesn't see it wonders what the hell is going on. Oh, I don't see it there. Yeah. It never showed up. So who's on the hook for it.

That a law firm, the law firm in the bank, fuck them. Fuck them. I'm glad they lost their shit. You have any people every day are losing their money. Good morning. Law firm. There you go, pal. Welcome to reality. Yeah. There's nothing they could do about it. Darn, darn, darn. Like I said, I know what's wrong. I know what's bad. I shouldn't be happy when these knuckleheads lose money, but you know what, how many lawyers do you know that is stealing from people. They probably got what they deserved. They probably got what they deserved.

So it brings, it just brings me to the point of so many scams out there right now. And there's so many people that are ripe for the taking. And it's not just the common person anymore. It's not grandma that lives by herself. It's not the working family. That's getting hustled on an email. It is the white color community.

When you go online. And when you see these headlines about internet scams or crypto scams, it's usually not the small person that's getting scanned anymore. It's at a level that It's at the level where a Nigerian individual with no education can hustle a Ivy league graduate.

Like, think about that in a way there's a poetic justice, a beauty to it. Here's a person at a law firm. They're probably walks around like, look how great of a lawyer. I am getting hustled by a Nigerian scammer. And I know I probably shouldn't bring me joy. No one likes to lose, but I think we can all find a little solace in this. There's a couple of lessons here. Number one, don't open emails that you don't know who they're from. Don't do it. Number two, if you are a person who Number two, I think is our entire system is based on fraud.

And if you look at any great intergenerational wealth, I think you could make the argument that that wealth was accumulated by taking something that didn't belong to them. And all you need do is look at the country you live in. I live in the USA. So let's talk about intergenerational wealth. And let's talk about taking things that don't belong to us. What happened to the Indians? Hey, thanks for the Buffalo.

Thanks for your land. We're going to buy it from you. Remember that? There's a great book called black elk speaks. And in that book, they, the character is narrating. The, the biographies named black hill. And he talks about a time and I'm paraphrasing here, but he says something to the effect of when the white man came and told us they wanted to buy the land. We laughed at him, said you can't buy the land. The land belongs to everybody, but they did buy it.

And black elk says no one was laughing when they slaughtered all the Buffalo, no one was laughing. When they Coran team does to small pieces of land that was reserved for us and told us we can no longer roam when we were imprisoned on reservations. No one laughed then. And that makes me think about today. We were all laughing.

When you said, oh, you can buy the air. No you can't. You can buy the carbon dioxide. No, you can't. You could buy the water. No you can't. But look in California, this whole drought who owns the water rights Nestle owns the water rights. I wouldn't be surprised to see that we find out lake Mead is being drained for the water. Just think about it. Like watch some of the videos that are happening in there and look at some of these giant spickets that are sucking the water.

These giant reverse spickets that are sucking the water out of where's that water going? Is it all going to fountains in Vegas? Is it all going to California households? I doubt it. I doubt it. Do some digging on the research about water rights in California, do some digging on water rights at lake Michigan. And you'll see that shit's being sucked out and stored somewhere. The next step I think is probably carbon dioxide. Like look at this idea of, they want to charge you for breathing.

Like that's the ultimate scam, man. That's better than the Nigerian prince. The most abundant thing on this planet is carbon dioxide. And there's a large group of people who are trying to figure out how to tax it. Every breath you take, it gives a whole nother meaning. That should be, you know what? That should be the climate change theme song. Every breath you take, every breath you take, I'll be charging.

You that's should be the fucking theme song. Okay. Where was I? These Nigerian scammers America. Okay. So our entire intergenerational wealth is built on long term theft of resources that don't belong to them. American foreign policy. We've already covered the Indians. We've already covered mineral rights. We've covered air. That's where the monetization of resources that don't belong to you is how you create long lasting wealth and become a Carnegie melon or Morgan.

And then you become celebrated. It's pretty fucking sad if you think about it. And when you think about it on that level, it makes me want there to be a revolution. It makes me think that this world that we live in has become so monetized and tied up with razor wires of finance, that we must rebel.

And that if we are unable to be freed from the financial slavery, we find ourselves in. And I mean, young kids who have been given loans or not being able to get a student debt. I I've heard both arguments. Oh,

Speaker 2 (18m 29s): Got themselves in there. You know, these kids went there and they decided that they should take underwater basket, weaving and pay a hundred thousand dollars. And I didn't do it so I shouldn't have to pay for it.

Speaker 0 (18m 41s): Well, what people don't understand is you're going to pay for it one way or the other. You're going to pay for it in society. By saddling these kids with debt forever. I don't have student debt, but I don't think these kids should have to pay it. I don't think they should pay interest on it. And I don't understand people who do like you can't even file bankruptcy on it. Fuck the banks, man. I'm you know what? It's it's scams like that. It's the banking industry stealing from our youth by giving these loans out that make me proud of Nigerian scammers.

Good. The Nigerian scammers did to the citizen bank and the white shoe law firms with the white shoe law firms, the banking Institute and the insurance companies are doing to people all over the world has a little taste of your medicine there. You guys like that, you liked that. Good. I hope there's more of it. I hope Nigerian scammers, unionize and go after all the baking institutes. That's what I hope. That'd be awesome. In fact, we should, we should get the Teamsters. Hey, if you're a teamster, get on it.

You should be unionized in the Nigerian scammers. It'd be a great idea. That's what I got for today. Ladies and gentlemen forgot how I got here. I'm going to link to the, to the article. I'm going to link to the book of Evan Ratliff. And I hope you check this thing out. And you think about the world in which you live. That might be the title. What do you guys think about the title? The title should be unionizing Nigerian scammers. I love it. Let's get out of today guys. It's Friday. Let's get up and get out them.

I'm not even going to edit this. It's just a rough shot coming at ya. I love you Aloha.