April 17, 2024 • 33 mins
In Episode 5 - A Date with the Grey Lady, as the Centra Tech team prepare for an impending New York Times exposé, the partners see their control of the company slip away. Meanwhile, we’ll hear from the “CEO” of Centra Tech on how he got roped in to the crypto startup and how it changed his life.
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To get an inside look into Ray Trapani, Centra Tech, and all the characters in the podcast, check out Bitconned, exclusively on Netflix… available to stream now.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
My name is Andrew Hilaiko. I'm a professor of physiology
and pathophysiology at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada,
and my relationship with Center Tech is not by choice.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I came into my office, opened my email and noticed
one sent to me and the subject heading was FBI request.
I opened it and I read the following, Good day,
doctor Jileko, I've been tasked to interview you regarding this
company called center Tech. My initial thought was disbelief that
(00:40):
what are you talking about?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
A professor north of the border found himself involved in
Center Tech for reasons he never expected.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I don't know exactly what I thought was happening, but
there was just this little uneasiness, you know, my part
of something I don't really understand.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Is this bigger than I realized.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
I'm Johnny be Good and this is creating a con
The Story of Bitcoin, Episode five, A Date with the
Gray Lady. In the fall of twenty seventeen, Bitcoin was
an exciting word, a way for people to get rich quick,
or so they thought. People believed they were making money
(01:51):
from this unregulated currency. New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper
wanted to know more.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
In seventeen, there were hundreds of these companies popping up.
It was so complicated and so hard for ordinary people
to understand.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Over one thousand miles up ninety five north at the
New York Times, Nathaniel Popper sat at his desk thinking
of his next big story. He wanted to publish an
expose on the crypto industry, specifically the growing influence and
endorsements of celebrities in the market. He was trying to
get to the bottom of what was causing this frenzy. I.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
As a reporter covering this, was trying to figure out,
how do I get my hands around this, How do
I take a look at one element of this that
will help people understand what's going on here. And a
lot of that was to do with these celebrity endorsements.
The celebrity endorsements were often the project that went up
(02:52):
the fastest, that got the most money. And as I
dug into this and was looking into each project and
what they had promised and how much they'd raised, I
kept coming back to this one project called CenTra, which
had already managed to raise thirty million dollars, and it
had so many of the elements that plagued this industry
(03:15):
at that moment, all in one project.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Nathaniel had something tangible here, an actual company that had
successfully raised real capital. This was something Nathaniel's readers and
editors could wrap their heads around. As he started digging,
he met others on Reddit, Discord, and Central Slack channels.
He realized there were a number of posts raising issues
about centri Tech. So Nathaniel picked up the phone and
(03:42):
called the Miami based company.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
I just want to hear them talk about the business
in their own voices.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Hello.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
As it happened, the first person who got on the
phone was Rob Farcas, who referred to himself as the
chief marketing officer. Hey, Robert Daniel Popper, n Daniel, how's
it going.
Speaker 5 (04:02):
Did you have a second to talk?
Speaker 6 (04:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Yeah, okay, great.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
What you're listening to is the first interview between Nathaniel
Popper and the Central founders.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
He seemed to not have as much of a history.
He didn't seem to be quite as much at the
forefront of this company as Ray and Sam were.
Speaker 7 (04:23):
You know what, Sam and my COO? Yeah, would probably
be better to answer your questions.
Speaker 8 (04:29):
You want to speak to my CEO.
Speaker 7 (04:31):
He's right here?
Speaker 5 (04:31):
Is that Ray? Yeah, okay, sure.
Speaker 9 (04:36):
I'm in my office and Farcas comes in and he's
like all excited talking about the New York Times had
reached out that they're trying to do an article on us,
and I was like, oh, that's great, Hi, hey.
Speaker 7 (04:47):
You doing good good?
Speaker 9 (04:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
So I was just asking I'd emailed Robert asking.
Speaker 7 (04:54):
About I heard your company from the.
Speaker 5 (04:56):
New York Times.
Speaker 7 (04:58):
Okay, New York Times. Great, So within endorsements, what are
you looking to exactly? Like, what do you what are
you interested?
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Was asking, here is this sort of brash guy who
is not talking and measured terms about what they're doing.
Speaker 7 (05:17):
Floyd, once we had met with him, he was you know, uh,
you know seen our vision and he also you know,
he wants future business, uh you know, ventures with us,
but he's a partner in a business. You know, we
gave him percentage.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
He's talking about Bloyd Mayweather as if he's like you know,
some pal goes all the way back.
Speaker 7 (05:37):
Now. You know, he'll do anything we add. You know,
he's a little shopping around, you know, Beverly Hills. We
asked him to do it, you know with this car.
Speaker 9 (05:46):
You know, he'll do anything.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
We ask a normal business person is not going to
brag about their relationship with Floyd Mayweather and how he'll
do what they want, because chances are Bloyd Mayweather isn't
going to do whatever they want. That takes the balls
to be willing to do that. It also takes a
certain obvious level of inexperience and naivete about how all
(06:12):
these things work. And it was pretty clear that you know,
this was not somebody who had a lot of experience
in the business world.
Speaker 7 (06:21):
Was full business, you know what I mean. We had
a multimillion dollar cornthically. You know, Miami's out to be
rented and sold cars. You know that you was saying
that that wasn't our cars and that that's all eyes.
But that's besides the point to them. When we were
able to put this idea together and able to get
the funding for it right off to that, we know
we can take this to the top.
Speaker 5 (06:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
While Ray may have sounded like an amateur, what about
their Harvard educated CEO, Michael Edwards?
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Okay, and Michael Edwards, I mean the see somebody I
can speak to just so I can understand sort of
his role and what his view of this is.
Speaker 7 (06:56):
He's the money guy. That's why they all, you know,
once in a while, and you know, I can probably
put that together.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
Well, why don't you do that?
Speaker 7 (07:05):
And then you're here? What an author for the New
York Times.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
Yeah, I'm a reporter for the New York Times.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
All right, sounds good, All right, thank you.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
But everything was hitting at once. I'm talking in a
matter of days. The Cliff High interview the New York Times,
sniffing around the legitimacy of their CEO, not to mention
they're in the process of completing one of the largest
initial coin offerings in history. This whirlwind is building up
so fast they can barely keep up. These days had
(07:35):
to be chaotic, but this was just the beginning. A
big opportunity was about to hit from the least likely
of sources. Ray Trepanni and Sam Sorby Sharma were making
headlines with their crypto companies Centritech. Even The New York
Times had reached out to vet the founders for a
potential article. As much as they were weathering some bad
(07:59):
press and reputation issues, things were looking up for the
two young founders as they were about to complete their
thirty million dollar initial coin offering. Center Tech received an
unexpected inquiry from a company in Korea. A firm called
Bitset emailed them about the progress of centri Tech's well
their tech.
Speaker 9 (08:18):
They were like super interested in our company.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Bit Set was an international firm. This could be the
new partnership to solve their legitimacy issues.
Speaker 9 (08:26):
They're like, we're going to invest five million now and
then another fifteen when you guys come down to Korea
right away. Sorbe was like, fucking on a book of
flight and go down there.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
But there was a catch. Sam didn't have anything tangible
to pitch. Centri Tech didn't have an app or a
product to present.
Speaker 9 (08:43):
Yet, and we're like, oh shit, you know what do
we do here? We already had hired people to build
a regular app, and from there we just stopped our
whole staff from creating the real app and made them
make a fake app.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
The plan was simple. Sam would fly to South Korea,
meet with their executive board and prove that center TeX's
technology was legit using this fake app. What could go wrong?
Speaker 9 (09:12):
So he's flying to Korea to show him a test
transaction in front of them on camera with the whole company,
and we're supposed to be pressing a button as he
does that transaction. You know that.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Awkward moment when you try and show your friend a
YouTube video and it just doesn't load.
Speaker 9 (09:28):
We pressed the button, but because he was in Korea,
it didn't work correctly and it fucked up.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Back in Miami, Ray and Farcas are coming to terms
that this failed presentation just cost them fifteen million dollars,
But soon they started to realize the stakes were higher
than they thought.
Speaker 9 (09:50):
We don't hear from Sorbie for like three hours, and
we're like, what happened to him? Like he's in a
foreign country with this random, shady company that wants to
invest twenty million dollars. It's here, right? Is he dead?
You know, we were super worried about it.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Ray and his team are imagining the worst radio silence phone,
going to voicemail, text after text with no response until he.
Speaker 9 (10:14):
Text us about three hours later and he goes, they're
still going to invest. I don't know where they're funded from.
How this company had all this money, and I don't
know how he spun it to get them to like
fully invest, but they invested twenty million dollars.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
With that type of investment. Bissett wanted front and center placement.
Speaker 9 (10:38):
The company that big that's investing. They're going to be
listed on our website as a partner. They're trying to
show that they were fully willing to like do whatever
it took to make sure that the company was going
to continue to ride.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
It was a win win for CenTra, a huge influx
of cash and a big investor to slap on their website.
But Bissett had some leverage. Executives saw a firsthand that
CenTra wasn't honest with the claims they were making. There
was no app, the tech didn't work. Bit set new
if Sam wasn't forthcoming about the app, there would be
(11:11):
other parts of the company that needed to be straightened out.
Speaker 9 (11:15):
Sorbi had also told them where we actually were, and
this is you know where we're gonna get like We
told them that everything was going to be legit in time.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Coming out of the investor meeting with Bissett, Ray and
Sam announced a global partnership with the South Korean investment firm,
a huge announcement for CenTra. Back in Miami, Ray had
to get his house in order. They needed to start
delivering on the promises and deadlines they made on their
white paper.
Speaker 9 (11:39):
Our original white paper states the dates of the first
cards and when we were going to do our beta
program with the app and whatnot, but we had never
got to that point.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
They were on a clock with Bisset, a real deadline accountability.
If they didn't act now that he would get turned
up higher than it already was. Before Bisset, the responsibility
to hit deadlines was fluid.
Speaker 9 (12:02):
It's pretty easy to push back a date. You say, oh,
you know this happened, and now the timeline is this.
That was Serbi's way of doing things. It was always
just put up this front and worst case scenario, just
backtrack and talk through it. We didn't know we would
have to do it on such a massive scale.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
All the bullshit, the shifting deadlines, the false narratives, that
wouldn't cut it anymore.
Speaker 9 (12:24):
We find an office in Miami. It was a couple
of blocks from the water and the windows are all
glass on the outside. We obviously had the front receptionist
desk where I hired the prettiest girl to work there,
and then you had this big glass conference room, very
Miami esque type of office where you can see like
the palm trees outside all the windows, and it was beautiful.
We buy all the nicest mac pecs. We stocked the
(12:46):
whole office make it look as professional as possible. I'm
hiring people one after the other, and I'm paying everybody
top dollar, trying to fill about thirty positions within a week.
I hired a few secretaries. A girl named Yuma was
the first one. She was a great secretary. This girl Katrina,
we hired and I kind of needed them to help
(13:07):
me hire more people. The customer service was like the
first thing I wanted to hire because I needed them
in the chat rooms, in the slack and all that
type of stuff. We have Steve Sykes who helped us
build Miami Exotics website. Steve Sykes worked for I believe
Johnson and Johnson or some company like that. And then
I needed tech guys. Tech guys is the hardest thing
to hire, like to find good developers that are in
(13:29):
your area. This one kid comes in and I thought
there was something wrong with him. He couldn't talk well.
He was very like stuttery. I'm like, this guy sucks,
like there's no way and I don't know shit about technology.
So I sent everybody through his second interview Steve, and
Steve's like, Yo, this guy's a genius. He knows everything.
He's probably like the best developer we've had. If it
(13:50):
was just up to me. He had never even been hired.
And then we hired the lawyer Alan Shutt, who was
our chief compliance officer. Anything that we had incorrect, he
took it off the website. We were fully legitimate at
this point. You know, all our misrepresentations from the beginning
were all, you know, not there anymore.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
I got a hand it to him. Ray actually put
together a solid team. I would have loved to be
a fly on the wall during those interviews.
Speaker 9 (14:16):
I was not sleeping, smoking all day, doing drugs all day.
Soerbys text me, Oh, we need to picture you for
the team pictures. I'm probably like one hundred and thirty
pounds and I'm like on so many drugs and I'm
super self conscious, and I didn't like how I looked.
It's like, yo, use this picture. It's my brother. And
then they put up a picture of my brother Frank,
(14:37):
and that's like the first the original team pictures is
picture of my brother Frank. It's not even a picture
of me. So now, like my day to day is
in the morning, I would take about five zan x,
smoke a blunt, put my eye drops in, take a shower,
and put my suit on, and then drive down to
the offices, pull up in my ass and I'll get
there probably like six o'clock every day and just put
(14:59):
on some music over the speakers, kind of vibe out.
Always play some wacky ass music, Like I would play
like my rap music typically when I first got there,
but like when I knew the employees would start showing up,
I'd put on, you know, some fergie or something just
to fuck with them, like kind of make them think
I'm like some maniac. You know, I just love torturing people.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
He's like a bizarro Steve Jobs.
Speaker 9 (15:21):
I was the guy that was in the office first
setting everything up, getting the customers, and that's why I
was considered the COO of the operation, the chief operating
officer of our company, because I managed the employees. That's
what I did on a day to day basis was
make sure everybody was doing what they were supposed to
do and plan for the day.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
But it wasn't like Ray knew what to tell his
employees to do. He's High as a kite, and he
has no idea how crypto works, so what is he
telling them to do each day? One thing Ray did
understand was marketing. He honed those skills from successful business
ventures like his Venmo scheme and exotic car business. So
(16:00):
so what was his plan to market CenTra. They had
the celebrity endorsements and the unexpected splash from crypto guru
Cliff High, but it wasn't about investors anymore. Now. It
was about finding ways to attract new customers.
Speaker 9 (16:14):
Marketing for CenTra is way different than marketing for miamixotics. Like,
not many people are on Google searching for cryptocurrencies to
invest in. It's all social media. We had a weekly AMA.
You'd be soorby sitting there talking and going through curated questions.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
CenTra would attract all kinds of people to these amas,
also known as Ask Me Anything, Investors, naysayers, believers, and haters.
Ray saw any audience as a victory, a new mark.
Speaker 9 (16:44):
Realistically, we looked at it like it was a good
thing because we just had more attention as far as
people coming into our chat room trying to talk. And
then those people like even if they're coming in as
a person that's opposed to your company, you can possibly
flip them into being a customer of your company.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
But Ray didn't stop it just gaining coustomers. He was
amassing an army of shills people to push Centra's narrative,
like a double agent, appearing as a trusted community member
but on Centra's payroll, spreading their propaganda.
Speaker 9 (17:13):
There was a lot of people that knew shit was
not all kosher with this company, and we would basically
just reach out to them. We'd be like, all right,
we'll give you one hundred thousand Centric coins and you
can be pushing the narrative that Center already created. It
so like it was worth it for them to try
to pump CenTra and help other customers invest in the
company because then the price goes up up Center and
(17:34):
that was like their job. People were quitting their jobs
to work for CenTra, and they were like fuck it,
like i just got this chance to pump CenTra and
I'm going to make a million dollars, when realistically, to us,
we printed this money would just like why not give
it to these people?
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Kind of like a pyramid scheme. People would tout the
product to get more people to buy the product. As
more people buy in, the more valuable it becomes for
the people higher up on the pyramid. In Centric's case,
the people higher up on the pyramid are the people
with the most Centric coins. So the army of shills
Ray amassed. They led the charge.
Speaker 9 (18:11):
People will be like, oh, we got cards when they
weren't even getting cards yet, or we'd send them like
a fake card that just with the Center card but
didn't do anything, and they post a video of them
opening the card and showing it off, like oh, I
got my Centric card.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Remember, Centric cards were the big selling point. They were
going to be the way to spend your cryptocurrencies in
the real world.
Speaker 9 (18:31):
So all these new people will come in like fuck CenTra,
this is a big scam, and they would end up
being like, oh, maybe this is a good company and
let me join it. And once somebody tells a lie
enough they believe that lie.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
I thought Ray said they were fully legit. At this point,
Sam was busy pushing this narrative to being the face
of the company and taking interviews on shows and podcasts
to talent Center's latest offerings.
Speaker 6 (18:58):
We currently have our license with MasterCard Service. International clients domestically,
we do have the Visa partnership, so we're able to
issue Visa cards domestically and MasterCards internationally.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
What Rain and Sam didn't know was that the New
York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper was looking into Center Tech's relationships,
specifically with Visa and MasterCard.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
I called Visa and I said, do you know about this?
I actually thought that if they had an agreement with Visa,
what Visa might have come back and said is, you know,
we can't talk to you about companies we're in business with,
but when they don't have a relationship, then they are
free to talk about the fact that they don't have
(19:40):
a relationship because there's no confidentiality there. And Visa was
very clear they knew nothing about this. So this was
illegitimate and those cards should not be on their website. Now,
let me go talk to MasterCard, and of course MasterCard
told me the exact same thing.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Center Tech's deals with the Visa and Massacard didn't exist.
So Nathaniel placed another call to Center Tech.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
Sam not can to help you, Hey, Sam, It's Nathaniel Popper.
Sam was a good salesman and that he knew that
you had to acknowledge that everything wasn't perfect. You know,
when you're selling a used car, you got to acknowledge
the dent on the fender because it's there.
Speaker 5 (20:33):
Visa has said, not only do you not have a
direct relationship, but nobody who issues cards for Visa is
allowed to issue cards on behalf of CenTra.
Speaker 8 (20:43):
The car don't comes from the issuing bank. That was
the original conversation we had with Dent in order to
get the sub Now, our current issuer, who is a
company in Canada, you just placed an order with fifty
thousand cards that's going to be on not to Visa network,
it's going to be in the NASA card network. And
that's already in place and being implemented right now.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
They said, you know what, this Visa thing has been
a problem that was going through an issuing bank. You know,
the Visa didn't deal with us, They dealt with.
Speaker 9 (21:15):
The issuing bank.
Speaker 4 (21:15):
But the issuing bank seems to have done something wrong here.
Now we're just going to go through mastercart and so
I think Sam smartly kind of acknowledged these problems. The
problem was, you know, he had an explanation that Austen
didn't line up with reality.
Speaker 7 (21:36):
The I guess the whole few day issues that we've piratefy,
I don't see any other really, Like, even if I
go back, I don't really see anything that we haven't think.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
I think i'd asked Ray about Michael Edwards.
Speaker 9 (21:49):
Is he still around?
Speaker 4 (21:51):
I mean, is he somebody I can connect with?
Speaker 6 (21:54):
He's a he's a silent investor.
Speaker 8 (21:56):
I don't know why they originally even put him up
at the CEO on the website.
Speaker 6 (22:00):
He's one that funded the project originally we get it.
Speaker 9 (22:02):
Off the ground.
Speaker 6 (22:03):
He's not involved in our didity operations.
Speaker 8 (22:05):
That ones out in the car are at the office
every single day.
Speaker 4 (22:08):
I figured they want to prove this is real. Why
not ask them if phil take a picture, you know,
we'll send a photographer there and take a picture of
their offices.
Speaker 8 (22:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's fine, you can.
Speaker 4 (22:19):
I don't think I was that surprised that they were
willing to let that photographer him, because it was sort
of in line with everything else they were doing, and
they were loving this attention, and they were loving the
fact that The New York Times was going to tell
their story in.
Speaker 8 (22:34):
Miami Beach round the corner, big building.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Can't they see Okay, well, I'll let you know if
there's anything else, but thanks for talking this through with me.
Speaker 8 (22:43):
No worries.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
See, Nathaniel wouldn't be able to make the photo shoot,
but he gave his photographer specific instructions, get in, take pictures,
and get out.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Essentially, I asked the photographer to check out as many
of these things that we hadn't been able to yet verify,
like Michael Edwards, find Michael Edwards. You know, I just
wanted to know as much as we could from that
visit to the office what was real and what wasn't real.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
As Nathaniel prepared his trojan horse, another foe breached Cenchra's walls,
one that would threaten centri Tech and jeopardize everything Ray
and Sam Sharma had built so far. Just as Ray
and Sam Sharma were preparing for a visit from The
New York Times, CenTra Tech would face a major thread,
(23:37):
one that would put the company's reputation and investors' money
at risk.
Speaker 9 (23:42):
One day, all our phones just go down, can't log
into anything.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Cliffy is warning to Sam Sharman months prior.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Who's the fellow that is going to protect your ass
and is in charge of security for your system.
Speaker 6 (23:55):
We're going to hire action independent company to do that
with the funds that we raised.
Speaker 9 (23:58):
You're fucked.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
He was spot on. The scammers got hacked.
Speaker 9 (24:05):
They did what's called the simswap. They called all our
service providers and got our phone numbers transferred to their phones,
so they were able to bypass two step of verification,
got into all our accounts. They just kind of took
over everything. They were able to get into every aspect
of our whole website.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Shit started to hit the fan this little hack. It
spelled disaster for CenTra. With complete control over their website,
the hackers could cause a lot of damage.
Speaker 9 (24:34):
Our smart contract address was on our front page, and
they just changed that address to one of their addresses.
So everybody that's trying to invest that whole day was
sending it to this other person's address.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
In other words, if you went to invest in Centritech,
your money wasn't going to them. It was going into
the pockets of these hackers, and there was nothing anyone
could do about it.
Speaker 7 (24:58):
Tho saying has been at hacked since early.
Speaker 9 (25:02):
This morning, and so we went live on Instagram to
try to talk to investors and tell them not to
invest ere they made a couple hundred thousand in a day.
And that day was such a rough day because, like
you know, I remember I was just sitting there and
I was so fucking burnt out. I was there for
like twenty five hours straight. It's so hard because when
(25:25):
you have staff that's not the ownership. They have families,
they have whatever it is in their life, and they're
not really hurting from this, but you need these tech
guys to stay. Actually, we had everybody here until about
three am in the morning, actually later than like five am,
as we hear the same talking about everybody's you know, screaming,
(25:46):
yelling like I'm fucking cursing at people. I was so
dead that day.
Speaker 6 (25:51):
We are working diligen right now to get every day
back into.
Speaker 9 (25:58):
Your work at the mon and like you can see
in the background, like guns on the table and a
big stack of money. They just looked so terrible. Finally,
by the end of the day, I go home, we sleep,
come back, and you know, I'm like, fuck these people,
like this is so fucked up. The next day after
we had everything shut down, they're not making any more money.
(26:21):
One of them like direct message me, you know, I
did a lot of fucked up shits, so like I
was just like kind of like respected what they did,
and I was giving him his props in a way,
and he kind of was like, yeah, like your security
is so flawed.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Ray found a mutually beneficial solution.
Speaker 9 (26:37):
We hired those hackers to help rebuild our security systems,
tell us what service to use, and every little flaw
that we had in our company. We let them keep
the two hundred thousand, plus we paid them extra to
help them continuously work and get our thing perfect, so
that our security system was, you know, untouchable, no one.
You're gonna make tens of millions more. I can eat
(26:57):
two hundred thousand to have a perfectly secure websit.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
With that fire now extinguished, Ray and Sam had to
turn their attention back to the New York Times.
Speaker 9 (27:08):
This guy was doing some sort of investigating journalism type
of thing and sent the camera guy and means sort
of just like, oh, New York Times, no problem, and
we just took the picture.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Dressed in their designer suits, Ray, Sam and Robert Farcus
posed in their New Miami office as the New York
Times photographer snapped photo after photo, But something stood out
to that photographer. Here's New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper again.
Speaker 4 (27:32):
He basically said, it was a bizarre office that felt
as though it had been cooked up for the purpose
of being an office for a photo shoot. There were
people sitting at computers, but there isn't anything on the computers,
and they're sort of weird stock art on the walls,
(27:53):
and the little old bile cabinets at the next everybody's
desks are empty. The whole thing seemed to have been
cooked up day before the photographer got there.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
The most disappointing news for Nathaniel, Michael Edwards was nowhere
to be found, so he did some more digging.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
There had been this post one of the bloggers named
Harry Denley who sort of started digging into this and
did image recognition checks on the pictures that were on
the Central website and discovered that the image of their CEO,
this guy, Michael Edwards, was in fact a picture of
a professor at a Canadian university who had absolutely nothing
(28:34):
to do with Center Tech, absolutely nothing to do with cryptocurrencies.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
My name is Andrew Hiley COO.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
I learned that my image was used on a website
and indicated that my face was that of the person who.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Was CEO of Center Tech, which is not the case.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
It clearly just had taken a picture from a university
website and turned it into the picture of their president
on LinkedIn and on their website.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Andrew Haileko a professor of physiology and pathophysiology. He was
the silent investor, the money dude, the CEO of Centritech.
He was a fucking college professor from Winnipeg.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
And so I looked up Michael Edwards and found that
there was nobody who lived in the Miami area or
the Florida area who had any of the attributes of
the Michael Edwards that they were talking about.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
My understanding is he's a fictitious character.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Ray his lad about many things, but this, this was
a new low.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
If I were going to cook up a person who
I wanted to look like a figure of authority in
the financial world, what attributes would I give them? You know,
you'd have them work at the largest bank and go
to the most prestigious university. And Michael Edwards had all
of that, he would have been a great CEO.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
For Andrew Jileko. This fictitious character Michael Edwards may have
shared his appearance, but Andrew had no idea who stole
his identity.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
I did have a clear amasure what these guys looked like.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
I have to hang on to the reassurance from FBI
that these aren't violent people. I mean, it's not settling,
it's invasive that you feel vulnerable.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
This lie wasn't easy for Andrew to process. It would
take time for him to recover, But for Nathaniel Popper,
it was the detail he needed to pitch this expose
to his bosses of The New York Times.
Speaker 4 (30:36):
I think the first thing I realized is there's a
story here. If they're willing to lie about who their
CEO is and the credit cards, what else are they
lying about. There's a lot more than meets the eye,
even when what meets the eye is so obviously questionable.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
With the full force of The New York Times behind him,
Nathaniel Popper began investigating Centertech even deeper. Armed with all
his research and data, nothing could have prepared him for
what he would discover on next week's episode of Creating
a Con Like.
Speaker 9 (31:21):
A week later, that article comes down, We're like, what
the fuck I mean?
Speaker 4 (31:24):
Look I felt bad for them. I mean, I realized
this was not going to end well for them, and
they didn't seem to understand that. They didn't seem to
understand the situation they were in.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Creating a Con is a production of Glass Podcasts, a
division of Glass Entertainment Group, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.
If you would like to reach out to the Creating
a Con team, email us at Creating a Con at
gmail dot com. That's Creating a CeON at gmail dot com.
We appreciate your support. One way to support our show
(32:05):
is by subscribing to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, and
don't forget to rate and review Creating a Con. Five
star reviews go a long way. A big thank you
to those who are listening. Also be sure to check
us out and follow us on Instagram.
Speaker 9 (32:19):
At Glass Podcasts.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
The show is hosted and produced by me Johnny B. Good,
with executive producers and Nancy Glass, Ben Fetterman, and Andrea Gunning.
Written and produced by Ben Fetterman and Todd Ganz, additional
writing by Matt Delvecchio. Operations and production support by Kristin Melchiori.
Additional production support Trey Morgan Our iHeart team is Ali
(32:46):
Perry and Jessica Crincheck. Sound editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio,
Consulting producer Nathaniel Popper. Creating a CON's theme composed by
Oliver Bains. Music library provided by my Music. Thank you
for subscribing to iHeart True Crime Plus exclusively on Apple.
We hope you enjoyed this ad free presentation of Creating
(33:08):
a con the story of bitcom. Continue binging the rest
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you get your podcasts.
My name is Andrew Hilaiko. I'm a professor of physiology
and pathophysiology at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada,
and my relationship with Center Tech is not by choice.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I came into my office, opened my email and noticed
one sent to me and the subject heading was FBI request.
I opened it and I read the following, Good day,
doctor Jileko, I've been tasked to interview you regarding this
company called center Tech. My initial thought was disbelief that
(00:40):
what are you talking about?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
A professor north of the border found himself involved in
Center Tech for reasons he never expected.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I don't know exactly what I thought was happening, but
there was just this little uneasiness, you know, my part
of something I don't really understand.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Is this bigger than I realized.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
I'm Johnny be Good and this is creating a con
The Story of Bitcoin, Episode five, A Date with the
Gray Lady. In the fall of twenty seventeen, Bitcoin was
an exciting word, a way for people to get rich quick,
or so they thought. People believed they were making money
(01:51):
from this unregulated currency. New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper
wanted to know more.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
In seventeen, there were hundreds of these companies popping up.
It was so complicated and so hard for ordinary people
to understand.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Over one thousand miles up ninety five north at the
New York Times, Nathaniel Popper sat at his desk thinking
of his next big story. He wanted to publish an
expose on the crypto industry, specifically the growing influence and
endorsements of celebrities in the market. He was trying to
get to the bottom of what was causing this frenzy. I.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
As a reporter covering this, was trying to figure out,
how do I get my hands around this, How do
I take a look at one element of this that
will help people understand what's going on here. And a
lot of that was to do with these celebrity endorsements.
The celebrity endorsements were often the project that went up
(02:52):
the fastest, that got the most money. And as I
dug into this and was looking into each project and
what they had promised and how much they'd raised, I
kept coming back to this one project called CenTra, which
had already managed to raise thirty million dollars, and it
had so many of the elements that plagued this industry
(03:15):
at that moment, all in one project.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Nathaniel had something tangible here, an actual company that had
successfully raised real capital. This was something Nathaniel's readers and
editors could wrap their heads around. As he started digging,
he met others on Reddit, Discord, and Central Slack channels.
He realized there were a number of posts raising issues
about centri Tech. So Nathaniel picked up the phone and
(03:42):
called the Miami based company.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
I just want to hear them talk about the business
in their own voices.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Hello.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
As it happened, the first person who got on the
phone was Rob Farcas, who referred to himself as the
chief marketing officer. Hey, Robert Daniel Popper, n Daniel, how's
it going.
Speaker 5 (04:02):
Did you have a second to talk?
Speaker 6 (04:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Yeah, okay, great.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
What you're listening to is the first interview between Nathaniel
Popper and the Central founders.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
He seemed to not have as much of a history.
He didn't seem to be quite as much at the
forefront of this company as Ray and Sam were.
Speaker 7 (04:23):
You know what, Sam and my COO? Yeah, would probably
be better to answer your questions.
Speaker 8 (04:29):
You want to speak to my CEO.
Speaker 7 (04:31):
He's right here?
Speaker 5 (04:31):
Is that Ray? Yeah, okay, sure.
Speaker 9 (04:36):
I'm in my office and Farcas comes in and he's
like all excited talking about the New York Times had
reached out that they're trying to do an article on us,
and I was like, oh, that's great, Hi, hey.
Speaker 7 (04:47):
You doing good good?
Speaker 9 (04:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
So I was just asking I'd emailed Robert asking.
Speaker 7 (04:54):
About I heard your company from the.
Speaker 5 (04:56):
New York Times.
Speaker 7 (04:58):
Okay, New York Times. Great, So within endorsements, what are
you looking to exactly? Like, what do you what are
you interested?
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Was asking, here is this sort of brash guy who
is not talking and measured terms about what they're doing.
Speaker 7 (05:17):
Floyd, once we had met with him, he was you know, uh,
you know seen our vision and he also you know,
he wants future business, uh you know, ventures with us,
but he's a partner in a business. You know, we
gave him percentage.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
He's talking about Bloyd Mayweather as if he's like you know,
some pal goes all the way back.
Speaker 7 (05:37):
Now. You know, he'll do anything we add. You know,
he's a little shopping around, you know, Beverly Hills. We
asked him to do it, you know with this car.
Speaker 9 (05:46):
You know, he'll do anything.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
We ask a normal business person is not going to
brag about their relationship with Floyd Mayweather and how he'll
do what they want, because chances are Bloyd Mayweather isn't
going to do whatever they want. That takes the balls
to be willing to do that. It also takes a
certain obvious level of inexperience and naivete about how all
(06:12):
these things work. And it was pretty clear that you know,
this was not somebody who had a lot of experience
in the business world.
Speaker 7 (06:21):
Was full business, you know what I mean. We had
a multimillion dollar cornthically. You know, Miami's out to be
rented and sold cars. You know that you was saying
that that wasn't our cars and that that's all eyes.
But that's besides the point to them. When we were
able to put this idea together and able to get
the funding for it right off to that, we know
we can take this to the top.
Speaker 5 (06:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
While Ray may have sounded like an amateur, what about
their Harvard educated CEO, Michael Edwards?
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Okay, and Michael Edwards, I mean the see somebody I
can speak to just so I can understand sort of
his role and what his view of this is.
Speaker 7 (06:56):
He's the money guy. That's why they all, you know,
once in a while, and you know, I can probably
put that together.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
Well, why don't you do that?
Speaker 7 (07:05):
And then you're here? What an author for the New
York Times.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
Yeah, I'm a reporter for the New York Times.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
All right, sounds good, All right, thank you.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
But everything was hitting at once. I'm talking in a
matter of days. The Cliff High interview the New York Times,
sniffing around the legitimacy of their CEO, not to mention
they're in the process of completing one of the largest
initial coin offerings in history. This whirlwind is building up
so fast they can barely keep up. These days had
(07:35):
to be chaotic, but this was just the beginning. A
big opportunity was about to hit from the least likely
of sources. Ray Trepanni and Sam Sorby Sharma were making
headlines with their crypto companies Centritech. Even The New York
Times had reached out to vet the founders for a
potential article. As much as they were weathering some bad
(07:59):
press and reputation issues, things were looking up for the
two young founders as they were about to complete their
thirty million dollar initial coin offering. Center Tech received an
unexpected inquiry from a company in Korea. A firm called
Bitset emailed them about the progress of centri Tech's well
their tech.
Speaker 9 (08:18):
They were like super interested in our company.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Bit Set was an international firm. This could be the
new partnership to solve their legitimacy issues.
Speaker 9 (08:26):
They're like, we're going to invest five million now and
then another fifteen when you guys come down to Korea
right away. Sorbe was like, fucking on a book of
flight and go down there.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
But there was a catch. Sam didn't have anything tangible
to pitch. Centri Tech didn't have an app or a
product to present.
Speaker 9 (08:43):
Yet, and we're like, oh shit, you know what do
we do here? We already had hired people to build
a regular app, and from there we just stopped our
whole staff from creating the real app and made them
make a fake app.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
The plan was simple. Sam would fly to South Korea,
meet with their executive board and prove that center TeX's
technology was legit using this fake app. What could go wrong?
Speaker 9 (09:12):
So he's flying to Korea to show him a test
transaction in front of them on camera with the whole company,
and we're supposed to be pressing a button as he
does that transaction. You know that.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Awkward moment when you try and show your friend a
YouTube video and it just doesn't load.
Speaker 9 (09:28):
We pressed the button, but because he was in Korea,
it didn't work correctly and it fucked up.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Back in Miami, Ray and Farcas are coming to terms
that this failed presentation just cost them fifteen million dollars,
But soon they started to realize the stakes were higher
than they thought.
Speaker 9 (09:50):
We don't hear from Sorbie for like three hours, and
we're like, what happened to him? Like he's in a
foreign country with this random, shady company that wants to
invest twenty million dollars. It's here, right? Is he dead?
You know, we were super worried about it.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Ray and his team are imagining the worst radio silence phone,
going to voicemail, text after text with no response until he.
Speaker 9 (10:14):
Text us about three hours later and he goes, they're
still going to invest. I don't know where they're funded from.
How this company had all this money, and I don't
know how he spun it to get them to like
fully invest, but they invested twenty million dollars.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
With that type of investment. Bissett wanted front and center placement.
Speaker 9 (10:38):
The company that big that's investing. They're going to be
listed on our website as a partner. They're trying to
show that they were fully willing to like do whatever
it took to make sure that the company was going
to continue to ride.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
It was a win win for CenTra, a huge influx
of cash and a big investor to slap on their website.
But Bissett had some leverage. Executives saw a firsthand that
CenTra wasn't honest with the claims they were making. There
was no app, the tech didn't work. Bit set new
if Sam wasn't forthcoming about the app, there would be
(11:11):
other parts of the company that needed to be straightened out.
Speaker 9 (11:15):
Sorbi had also told them where we actually were, and
this is you know where we're gonna get like We
told them that everything was going to be legit in time.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Coming out of the investor meeting with Bissett, Ray and
Sam announced a global partnership with the South Korean investment firm,
a huge announcement for CenTra. Back in Miami, Ray had
to get his house in order. They needed to start
delivering on the promises and deadlines they made on their
white paper.
Speaker 9 (11:39):
Our original white paper states the dates of the first
cards and when we were going to do our beta
program with the app and whatnot, but we had never
got to that point.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
They were on a clock with Bisset, a real deadline accountability.
If they didn't act now that he would get turned
up higher than it already was. Before Bisset, the responsibility
to hit deadlines was fluid.
Speaker 9 (12:02):
It's pretty easy to push back a date. You say, oh,
you know this happened, and now the timeline is this.
That was Serbi's way of doing things. It was always
just put up this front and worst case scenario, just
backtrack and talk through it. We didn't know we would
have to do it on such a massive scale.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
All the bullshit, the shifting deadlines, the false narratives, that
wouldn't cut it anymore.
Speaker 9 (12:24):
We find an office in Miami. It was a couple
of blocks from the water and the windows are all
glass on the outside. We obviously had the front receptionist
desk where I hired the prettiest girl to work there,
and then you had this big glass conference room, very
Miami esque type of office where you can see like
the palm trees outside all the windows, and it was beautiful.
We buy all the nicest mac pecs. We stocked the
(12:46):
whole office make it look as professional as possible. I'm
hiring people one after the other, and I'm paying everybody
top dollar, trying to fill about thirty positions within a week.
I hired a few secretaries. A girl named Yuma was
the first one. She was a great secretary. This girl Katrina,
we hired and I kind of needed them to help
(13:07):
me hire more people. The customer service was like the
first thing I wanted to hire because I needed them
in the chat rooms, in the slack and all that
type of stuff. We have Steve Sykes who helped us
build Miami Exotics website. Steve Sykes worked for I believe
Johnson and Johnson or some company like that. And then
I needed tech guys. Tech guys is the hardest thing
to hire, like to find good developers that are in
(13:29):
your area. This one kid comes in and I thought
there was something wrong with him. He couldn't talk well.
He was very like stuttery. I'm like, this guy sucks,
like there's no way and I don't know shit about technology.
So I sent everybody through his second interview Steve, and
Steve's like, Yo, this guy's a genius. He knows everything.
He's probably like the best developer we've had. If it
(13:50):
was just up to me. He had never even been hired.
And then we hired the lawyer Alan Shutt, who was
our chief compliance officer. Anything that we had incorrect, he
took it off the website. We were fully legitimate at
this point. You know, all our misrepresentations from the beginning
were all, you know, not there anymore.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
I got a hand it to him. Ray actually put
together a solid team. I would have loved to be
a fly on the wall during those interviews.
Speaker 9 (14:16):
I was not sleeping, smoking all day, doing drugs all day.
Soerbys text me, Oh, we need to picture you for
the team pictures. I'm probably like one hundred and thirty
pounds and I'm like on so many drugs and I'm
super self conscious, and I didn't like how I looked.
It's like, yo, use this picture. It's my brother. And
then they put up a picture of my brother Frank,
(14:37):
and that's like the first the original team pictures is
picture of my brother Frank. It's not even a picture
of me. So now, like my day to day is
in the morning, I would take about five zan x,
smoke a blunt, put my eye drops in, take a shower,
and put my suit on, and then drive down to
the offices, pull up in my ass and I'll get
there probably like six o'clock every day and just put
(14:59):
on some music over the speakers, kind of vibe out.
Always play some wacky ass music, Like I would play
like my rap music typically when I first got there,
but like when I knew the employees would start showing up,
I'd put on, you know, some fergie or something just
to fuck with them, like kind of make them think
I'm like some maniac. You know, I just love torturing people.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
He's like a bizarro Steve Jobs.
Speaker 9 (15:21):
I was the guy that was in the office first
setting everything up, getting the customers, and that's why I
was considered the COO of the operation, the chief operating
officer of our company, because I managed the employees. That's
what I did on a day to day basis was
make sure everybody was doing what they were supposed to
do and plan for the day.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
But it wasn't like Ray knew what to tell his
employees to do. He's High as a kite, and he
has no idea how crypto works, so what is he
telling them to do each day? One thing Ray did
understand was marketing. He honed those skills from successful business
ventures like his Venmo scheme and exotic car business. So
(16:00):
so what was his plan to market CenTra. They had
the celebrity endorsements and the unexpected splash from crypto guru
Cliff High, but it wasn't about investors anymore. Now. It
was about finding ways to attract new customers.
Speaker 9 (16:14):
Marketing for CenTra is way different than marketing for miamixotics. Like,
not many people are on Google searching for cryptocurrencies to
invest in. It's all social media. We had a weekly AMA.
You'd be soorby sitting there talking and going through curated questions.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
CenTra would attract all kinds of people to these amas,
also known as Ask Me Anything, Investors, naysayers, believers, and haters.
Ray saw any audience as a victory, a new mark.
Speaker 9 (16:44):
Realistically, we looked at it like it was a good
thing because we just had more attention as far as
people coming into our chat room trying to talk. And
then those people like even if they're coming in as
a person that's opposed to your company, you can possibly
flip them into being a customer of your company.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
But Ray didn't stop it just gaining coustomers. He was
amassing an army of shills people to push Centra's narrative,
like a double agent, appearing as a trusted community member
but on Centra's payroll, spreading their propaganda.
Speaker 9 (17:13):
There was a lot of people that knew shit was
not all kosher with this company, and we would basically
just reach out to them. We'd be like, all right,
we'll give you one hundred thousand Centric coins and you
can be pushing the narrative that Center already created. It
so like it was worth it for them to try
to pump CenTra and help other customers invest in the
company because then the price goes up up Center and
(17:34):
that was like their job. People were quitting their jobs
to work for CenTra, and they were like fuck it,
like i just got this chance to pump CenTra and
I'm going to make a million dollars, when realistically, to us,
we printed this money would just like why not give
it to these people?
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Kind of like a pyramid scheme. People would tout the
product to get more people to buy the product. As
more people buy in, the more valuable it becomes for
the people higher up on the pyramid. In Centric's case,
the people higher up on the pyramid are the people
with the most Centric coins. So the army of shills
Ray amassed. They led the charge.
Speaker 9 (18:11):
People will be like, oh, we got cards when they
weren't even getting cards yet, or we'd send them like
a fake card that just with the Center card but
didn't do anything, and they post a video of them
opening the card and showing it off, like oh, I
got my Centric card.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Remember, Centric cards were the big selling point. They were
going to be the way to spend your cryptocurrencies in
the real world.
Speaker 9 (18:31):
So all these new people will come in like fuck CenTra,
this is a big scam, and they would end up
being like, oh, maybe this is a good company and
let me join it. And once somebody tells a lie
enough they believe that lie.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
I thought Ray said they were fully legit. At this point,
Sam was busy pushing this narrative to being the face
of the company and taking interviews on shows and podcasts
to talent Center's latest offerings.
Speaker 6 (18:58):
We currently have our license with MasterCard Service. International clients domestically,
we do have the Visa partnership, so we're able to
issue Visa cards domestically and MasterCards internationally.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
What Rain and Sam didn't know was that the New
York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper was looking into Center Tech's relationships,
specifically with Visa and MasterCard.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
I called Visa and I said, do you know about this?
I actually thought that if they had an agreement with Visa,
what Visa might have come back and said is, you know,
we can't talk to you about companies we're in business with,
but when they don't have a relationship, then they are
free to talk about the fact that they don't have
(19:40):
a relationship because there's no confidentiality there. And Visa was
very clear they knew nothing about this. So this was
illegitimate and those cards should not be on their website. Now,
let me go talk to MasterCard, and of course MasterCard
told me the exact same thing.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Center Tech's deals with the Visa and Massacard didn't exist.
So Nathaniel placed another call to Center Tech.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
Sam not can to help you, Hey, Sam, It's Nathaniel Popper.
Sam was a good salesman and that he knew that
you had to acknowledge that everything wasn't perfect. You know,
when you're selling a used car, you got to acknowledge
the dent on the fender because it's there.
Speaker 5 (20:33):
Visa has said, not only do you not have a
direct relationship, but nobody who issues cards for Visa is
allowed to issue cards on behalf of CenTra.
Speaker 8 (20:43):
The car don't comes from the issuing bank. That was
the original conversation we had with Dent in order to
get the sub Now, our current issuer, who is a
company in Canada, you just placed an order with fifty
thousand cards that's going to be on not to Visa network,
it's going to be in the NASA card network. And
that's already in place and being implemented right now.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
They said, you know what, this Visa thing has been
a problem that was going through an issuing bank. You know,
the Visa didn't deal with us, They dealt with.
Speaker 9 (21:15):
The issuing bank.
Speaker 4 (21:15):
But the issuing bank seems to have done something wrong here.
Now we're just going to go through mastercart and so
I think Sam smartly kind of acknowledged these problems. The
problem was, you know, he had an explanation that Austen
didn't line up with reality.
Speaker 7 (21:36):
The I guess the whole few day issues that we've piratefy,
I don't see any other really, Like, even if I
go back, I don't really see anything that we haven't think.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
I think i'd asked Ray about Michael Edwards.
Speaker 9 (21:49):
Is he still around?
Speaker 4 (21:51):
I mean, is he somebody I can connect with?
Speaker 6 (21:54):
He's a he's a silent investor.
Speaker 8 (21:56):
I don't know why they originally even put him up
at the CEO on the website.
Speaker 6 (22:00):
He's one that funded the project originally we get it.
Speaker 9 (22:02):
Off the ground.
Speaker 6 (22:03):
He's not involved in our didity operations.
Speaker 8 (22:05):
That ones out in the car are at the office
every single day.
Speaker 4 (22:08):
I figured they want to prove this is real. Why
not ask them if phil take a picture, you know,
we'll send a photographer there and take a picture of
their offices.
Speaker 8 (22:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's fine, you can.
Speaker 4 (22:19):
I don't think I was that surprised that they were
willing to let that photographer him, because it was sort
of in line with everything else they were doing, and
they were loving this attention, and they were loving the
fact that The New York Times was going to tell
their story in.
Speaker 8 (22:34):
Miami Beach round the corner, big building.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Can't they see Okay, well, I'll let you know if
there's anything else, but thanks for talking this through with me.
Speaker 8 (22:43):
No worries.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
See, Nathaniel wouldn't be able to make the photo shoot,
but he gave his photographer specific instructions, get in, take pictures,
and get out.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Essentially, I asked the photographer to check out as many
of these things that we hadn't been able to yet verify,
like Michael Edwards, find Michael Edwards. You know, I just
wanted to know as much as we could from that
visit to the office what was real and what wasn't real.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
As Nathaniel prepared his trojan horse, another foe breached Cenchra's walls,
one that would threaten centri Tech and jeopardize everything Ray
and Sam Sharma had built so far. Just as Ray
and Sam Sharma were preparing for a visit from The
New York Times, CenTra Tech would face a major thread,
(23:37):
one that would put the company's reputation and investors' money
at risk.
Speaker 9 (23:42):
One day, all our phones just go down, can't log
into anything.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Cliffy is warning to Sam Sharman months prior.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Who's the fellow that is going to protect your ass
and is in charge of security for your system.
Speaker 6 (23:55):
We're going to hire action independent company to do that
with the funds that we raised.
Speaker 9 (23:58):
You're fucked.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
He was spot on. The scammers got hacked.
Speaker 9 (24:05):
They did what's called the simswap. They called all our
service providers and got our phone numbers transferred to their phones,
so they were able to bypass two step of verification,
got into all our accounts. They just kind of took
over everything. They were able to get into every aspect
of our whole website.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Shit started to hit the fan this little hack. It
spelled disaster for CenTra. With complete control over their website,
the hackers could cause a lot of damage.
Speaker 9 (24:34):
Our smart contract address was on our front page, and
they just changed that address to one of their addresses.
So everybody that's trying to invest that whole day was
sending it to this other person's address.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
In other words, if you went to invest in Centritech,
your money wasn't going to them. It was going into
the pockets of these hackers, and there was nothing anyone
could do about it.
Speaker 7 (24:58):
Tho saying has been at hacked since early.
Speaker 9 (25:02):
This morning, and so we went live on Instagram to
try to talk to investors and tell them not to
invest ere they made a couple hundred thousand in a day.
And that day was such a rough day because, like
you know, I remember I was just sitting there and
I was so fucking burnt out. I was there for
like twenty five hours straight. It's so hard because when
(25:25):
you have staff that's not the ownership. They have families,
they have whatever it is in their life, and they're
not really hurting from this, but you need these tech
guys to stay. Actually, we had everybody here until about
three am in the morning, actually later than like five am,
as we hear the same talking about everybody's you know, screaming,
(25:46):
yelling like I'm fucking cursing at people. I was so
dead that day.
Speaker 6 (25:51):
We are working diligen right now to get every day
back into.
Speaker 9 (25:58):
Your work at the mon and like you can see
in the background, like guns on the table and a
big stack of money. They just looked so terrible. Finally,
by the end of the day, I go home, we sleep,
come back, and you know, I'm like, fuck these people,
like this is so fucked up. The next day after
we had everything shut down, they're not making any more money.
(26:21):
One of them like direct message me, you know, I
did a lot of fucked up shits, so like I
was just like kind of like respected what they did,
and I was giving him his props in a way,
and he kind of was like, yeah, like your security
is so flawed.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Ray found a mutually beneficial solution.
Speaker 9 (26:37):
We hired those hackers to help rebuild our security systems,
tell us what service to use, and every little flaw
that we had in our company. We let them keep
the two hundred thousand, plus we paid them extra to
help them continuously work and get our thing perfect, so
that our security system was, you know, untouchable, no one.
You're gonna make tens of millions more. I can eat
(26:57):
two hundred thousand to have a perfectly secure websit.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
With that fire now extinguished, Ray and Sam had to
turn their attention back to the New York Times.
Speaker 9 (27:08):
This guy was doing some sort of investigating journalism type
of thing and sent the camera guy and means sort
of just like, oh, New York Times, no problem, and
we just took the picture.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Dressed in their designer suits, Ray, Sam and Robert Farcus
posed in their New Miami office as the New York
Times photographer snapped photo after photo, But something stood out
to that photographer. Here's New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper again.
Speaker 4 (27:32):
He basically said, it was a bizarre office that felt
as though it had been cooked up for the purpose
of being an office for a photo shoot. There were
people sitting at computers, but there isn't anything on the computers,
and they're sort of weird stock art on the walls,
(27:53):
and the little old bile cabinets at the next everybody's
desks are empty. The whole thing seemed to have been
cooked up day before the photographer got there.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
The most disappointing news for Nathaniel, Michael Edwards was nowhere
to be found, so he did some more digging.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
There had been this post one of the bloggers named
Harry Denley who sort of started digging into this and
did image recognition checks on the pictures that were on
the Central website and discovered that the image of their CEO,
this guy, Michael Edwards, was in fact a picture of
a professor at a Canadian university who had absolutely nothing
(28:34):
to do with Center Tech, absolutely nothing to do with cryptocurrencies.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
My name is Andrew Hiley COO.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
I learned that my image was used on a website
and indicated that my face was that of the person who.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Was CEO of Center Tech, which is not the case.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
It clearly just had taken a picture from a university
website and turned it into the picture of their president
on LinkedIn and on their website.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Andrew Haileko a professor of physiology and pathophysiology. He was
the silent investor, the money dude, the CEO of Centritech.
He was a fucking college professor from Winnipeg.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
And so I looked up Michael Edwards and found that
there was nobody who lived in the Miami area or
the Florida area who had any of the attributes of
the Michael Edwards that they were talking about.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
My understanding is he's a fictitious character.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Ray his lad about many things, but this, this was
a new low.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
If I were going to cook up a person who
I wanted to look like a figure of authority in
the financial world, what attributes would I give them? You know,
you'd have them work at the largest bank and go
to the most prestigious university. And Michael Edwards had all
of that, he would have been a great CEO.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
For Andrew Jileko. This fictitious character Michael Edwards may have
shared his appearance, but Andrew had no idea who stole
his identity.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
I did have a clear amasure what these guys looked like.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
I have to hang on to the reassurance from FBI
that these aren't violent people. I mean, it's not settling,
it's invasive that you feel vulnerable.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
This lie wasn't easy for Andrew to process. It would
take time for him to recover, But for Nathaniel Popper,
it was the detail he needed to pitch this expose
to his bosses of The New York Times.
Speaker 4 (30:36):
I think the first thing I realized is there's a
story here. If they're willing to lie about who their
CEO is and the credit cards, what else are they
lying about. There's a lot more than meets the eye,
even when what meets the eye is so obviously questionable.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
With the full force of The New York Times behind him,
Nathaniel Popper began investigating Centertech even deeper. Armed with all
his research and data, nothing could have prepared him for
what he would discover on next week's episode of Creating
a Con Like.
Speaker 9 (31:21):
A week later, that article comes down, We're like, what
the fuck I mean?
Speaker 4 (31:24):
Look I felt bad for them. I mean, I realized
this was not going to end well for them, and
they didn't seem to understand that. They didn't seem to
understand the situation they were in.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Creating a Con is a production of Glass Podcasts, a
division of Glass Entertainment Group, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.
If you would like to reach out to the Creating
a Con team, email us at Creating a Con at
gmail dot com. That's Creating a CeON at gmail dot com.
We appreciate your support. One way to support our show
(32:05):
is by subscribing to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, and
don't forget to rate and review Creating a Con. Five
star reviews go a long way. A big thank you
to those who are listening. Also be sure to check
us out and follow us on Instagram.
Speaker 9 (32:19):
At Glass Podcasts.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
The show is hosted and produced by me Johnny B. Good,
with executive producers and Nancy Glass, Ben Fetterman, and Andrea Gunning.
Written and produced by Ben Fetterman and Todd Ganz, additional
writing by Matt Delvecchio. Operations and production support by Kristin Melchiori.
Additional production support Trey Morgan Our iHeart team is Ali
(32:46):
Perry and Jessica Crincheck. Sound editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio,
Consulting producer Nathaniel Popper. Creating a CON's theme composed by
Oliver Bains. Music library provided by my Music. Thank you
for subscribing to iHeart True Crime Plus exclusively on Apple.
We hope you enjoyed this ad free presentation of Creating
(33:08):
a con the story of bitcom. Continue binging the rest
of the series one hundred percent ad free, and stay
tuned for early access to bonus episodes and additional content
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Host
Jonny B. Good
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