April 24, 2024 • 29 mins
Raising $30 million-dollars, playing poker with celebrities, and jet-setting on private planes; it seemed like Ray and the Centra Tech team were on top of the world. Until they weren’t. The pressure from the New York Times article is coming down hard. Has Ray and Centra Tech's luck finally run out?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Did I ever tell the gun story of Sorby on
this Ah, that's a good story. That's fucking hilarious.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Whenever i'd sit down with Ray, even after I thought
I knew every detail from his time in Miami with
his partner Sam Sorbi Sharma, he dropped little gems like this.
I wasn't surprised.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Me and Sorbi I got our gun licenses together. After
we got our licenses, I went and bought a gun
basically the same gun that the cops use, a glock,
very standard gun. I learned how to take part. I
was very safe for my gun, but it definitely made
me feel safe when I was walking around with large
amounts of money. And one day Sorbi calls me and
he's like, yo, I got a gun, Like I'm gonna
(00:42):
come show you mad excited, and I'm like, I don't
really care, Like this isn't like a show off contest
of who got the sickest gun, but that's who he was.
He always wanted to try to one up me. And
he shows up and his pants are like sagging because
this gun is so big. I'm like, what did this
kid buy? And he pulls out this gun and the
gun is basically a musket three feet long, a pistol
(01:07):
like from nineteen eighty two. I was like, what the
fuck are you serious? This is really the gun you got.
Why would you get a golden engraved gun? What is
wrong with you? Like? How are you even gonna carry
that thing? I was like, Bro, that's the fucking dumbest
gun I've ever seen in my life. Who do you
think you are? El Chapo? After I made fun of him,
(01:29):
I had never seen that gun again because he was
so self conscious and.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
That's who he was.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Like, it's so hard to understand Soorbe's brain, like how
he operates. You can't come in here with no confidence thing.
You're gonna show me up And I'm just gonna be like, Oh,
that's sick gun, dude.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
I'm Johnny be Good And this is creating a con
The story of bitcomed episode six, Big Little Eyes. In
the fall of twenty seventeen, Center Tech had just completed
its ico or initial coin offering and had raised more
(02:34):
than thirty million dollars. Ray and Sam were making money
in their sleep, and more customers were coming in, meaning
more cash in the door.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
This is my most memorable point of Florida censer was
raising tens of millions of dollars. I had so much
money at my disposal. I had hundreds of thousands of
jewelry on you know, six Cardier bracelets, fucking Rolex, just
acting mad ignorant. I loved being ignorant. I still do
(03:04):
love being ignorant.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Ray took full advantage of his situation, using investors' money
to pay for his lavish lifestyle in Miami, in the casino,
the strip club, or whatever lavish party was being thrown.
Miami was his playground, his sandbox, and that box was
full of cocaine, the cars, the girls, the cash, the gambling,
(03:26):
the drugs. Ray was floating through the city faster and
higher than ever, burning cash at an unimaginable rate. But
none of that mattered because they'd be making it back
without lifting a finger. It was everything Ray had dreamed
of out of a career.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
The casino was my sanctuary I was born. Just about
every night I would wake up, I'd have a bloody Mary,
eat like a little flapper at pizza, take some xanax.
The casino at that time had gave me twenty four
hour black car service, so I wo'd get in their
limit or truck, and I would go to the mall
(04:02):
buy whatever alpha it was for the day, A new
pair of shoes, go back to the casino, shower up,
get dressed, put my new outfit on, go gamble a
little bit.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
All of Ray's time was spent around the poker table
rather than the boardroom table.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
I was playing eight poker games that were one hundred
thousand minimum buy ins, which are insane games. Some of
those games I would be in for a couple hundred thousand.
I've had nights where I've won five hundred thousand in poker,
which is a huge win for anybody.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Okay, so if you're like me, you may be wondering
where is Ray getting all this money? Again, I was.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Able to sell a million dollars worth of Centric coins.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Ray was doing what was called a pump and dump. No,
he wasn't donating his sperm. He was artificially driving up
the price of center coin and then selling.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Once the price got to a point where I felt comfortable,
I just dumped a ton of centric coins on the market,
which was like a couple million dollar.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
And he did this over and over and over.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
We were allowed to catch out fifty thousand at a time,
so basically every day I would just have fifty thousand
come into my account. Ended up being about sixty days
where I was just getting fifty thousand dollars a day straight.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
That's no small deposit. Ray found himself with nearly three
million dollars after this sixty day spree.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
That first feeling of seeing a million dollars in your
bank account, you see that extra comment, I was like,
oh my god, this is crazy.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
And those funds it afforded the lifestyle he always strived for.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
I was like, always my dream to be in these
circles with these professional guys that played every day. And
I wasn't the best guy, but it was just amazing
to be a part of. And the day I met Derulo,
I was in the high Limit room playing backarat and
I always had my own private table in the casino by.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
De Rulo, Yes, he means Jason Derulot multi talented, chart topping,
seven times platinum recording artist Jason Deula.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
I see him walk in, I act like I don't
know who it is. He goes and sits down. He's
with his girlfriend. They sit down at a table. It's
like filled with people. I'm like, why is Jason Drula
sitting at like a regular table? And I'm like, yo,
if you want you can play at this table. I'm
playing it cool like it was nothing whatever. I was like, yeah,
you know, you can sit here, and then we go
on like a crazy run playing back right. I was
(06:25):
up probably like four hundred thousand, he's up like one
hundred thousand. At that point, they're running out of the chips,
so they want to color up. So usually like for
all your thousand chips, they'll give you ten thousand dollars
chips so that you don't you know, they can restock
the chip things. And I'm like, no, I don't want
to color up. I want all these stacks of chips
on the table. So it looks ridiculous. So like we
had stacks a couple feet high of just all these
(06:46):
smaller chips. It just looked amazing, like if you can
imagine an image of just two players at the table
by these giant stacks. Every single hand we were winning
and it was a sick night. And he's like, yeah,
I'm going back to Cali orrow if you want to
come back with me. I'm like, all right, fuck it. Whatever,
you know, how am I going to turn down this opportunity.
We'd go on a plane, we'd fly back to Cali.
(07:08):
I stayed at his place. I went to the World's Royce,
and I just left. I was like, I don't want
to just act like I have nothing to do while
I'm here. I'm act like I'm busy. I just balanced
and fucking went to drove around with a casino and
Cali and just did my own thing for a while there.
And then like a couple days later, we both flew
back to Miami.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Call it a bromance.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
He knew that when we would go out, I'd be
able to split everything. It wasn't like everybody else that
he'd have around him, no one was able to split anything.
So we'd go out to strip clubs, you know, split
ten thousand in singles and just go crazy. We got like,
you know, a private room in that strip club, throw
(07:48):
ten thousand in singles, which you know, you can't even
throw that many singles. I don't know how people do
it unless you're just throwing bricks of singles at people.
It was sick, Like those moments were amazing. I just
got close with his family, so we would hang out.
You know, I would either fly to Cali or when
he was in Florida, he would always call me.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Drulo had a front row seat to what Ray was
building at centri Tech.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
You know, he's like, oh, you know, tell me about CenTra,
Like what's going on? Like, you know, how do I
get tokens? Like he wasn't even that interested in what
the company was or what it was. He was trying
to just support me, but I just kept him away.
I was like, nah, he should just probably buy bitcoin,
Like if you're going to get into crypto, like try
to learn it and buy bitcoin, and you know, once
you learn it, then I'll put you on type of thing.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
While Ray was living it up in Miami, a dark
cloud was forming in the North. New York Times journalist
Nathaniel Popper's investigation into center Tech was in full swing.
When Nathaniel started digging further into the company, he noticed
the vital banking relationships CenTra had been touting disappeared. This
(08:51):
only reinforced Nathaniel's belief that he was covering something big.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
That's exciting as a journalist when you have an opportunity
to dig into something and find something interesting, real crazy.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
What began as a story about celebrity endorsements and cryptocurrency
just became a cover story with a big hook.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
When you take Visa off your website, you acknowledged that
you didn't really have a deal with Visa, And when
you take MasterCard up your website, that's your way of
acknowledging that you don't really have a deal with MasterCard.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Without these relationships, CenTra had a big problem.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Every time that they respond by scrubbing something, they're acknowledging
that whatever they've scrubbed as a problem.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Here's CenTra investor Jacob Renzel. That was a huge red flag.
That was one of the reasons why I invested is
because they had that partnership. Another thing Popper was trying
to uncover was the whereabouts of their CEO, Michael Edwards,
their Harvard trained leader, vanished from Centra's website and his
LinkedIn profile disappeared after it was discovered that Michael's picture
(10:02):
was actually a Canadian professor. So Nathaniel called Sam Beck
for an explanation. Here's the recorded call that took place
in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Looks like the first picture you use was this professor
in Canada, and then the LinkedIn profile he had looked
like it was totally made up.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
I don't know why they originally even put him up
at the CEO on the website, because if the picture
was not correct, it was a stock photo online and
people really just took that and ran with him. They're
still trying to run with you, which I've shut that
down many times.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Sam doubled down and blame their freelance web developers. He
said they were the ones who fucked up.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
I've said the people whatever was on the website at
the time, we used freelancer to put it on the website.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
As a reporter, you can't assume somebody's line until you
have established it without a doubt. You have to stay
open to that possibility. I'm just trying to understand if
this person actually exists.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
Yeah, I mean listening thousand like a U copy of
the license that need be.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
He said, all proved you that he's real, I'll send
you his driver's license, and I thought, okay, if you're
willing to do that, semi his driver's license.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Behind the scenes, Sam was scrambling.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Too many people asking questions about who the fuck Michael
Edwards is, and that's where we came out with the
mess to plan to basically say that Jessic Robinson and
Michael Edwards had died in a car accident together.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Jessica Robinson was supposedly the CFO of Center Tech.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
But there are certain points at which you realize there's
no coming back from this.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
We put out like a press release, you know, making
an obituary, and they're dead. Now.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
We obtained a copy of the obituary. I'll let Ray read.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
It to you. Michael Edwards suddenly left this world with
his longtime partner Jessica Robinson, who's fifty four years old.
He leaves behind his French Bulloak Stanley an accomplished career
as an investor in VP for banks like Wells, Fargo
and Chase. He graduated with the NBA from Harvard University,
which prepared him for his most recent venture as co
(12:13):
founder and chief executive officer of Center Tech in Miami Beach, Florida.
Michael split his time at his homes between Vermont and
Florida at his family's request. No service will be held.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah, Obviously, every character reaches a point at which you
can no longer sustain their storyline. So what else are
you going to do with them? I had gone into
this thinking this is a pretty wacky caper, but that
took this to a whole different level.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Nathaniel had the confirmation he needed. There was no doubt left.
The founders of central lied about the existence of their CEO.
It was time for Nathaniel Popper and his team to
dig deeper into centri Tech. With the heat building up
(13:05):
around Centra's lack of leadership, Ray and Sam pushed out
a story they thought would finally put their CEO problems
to rest, but all that did was raise more suspicion.
So Nathaniel Popper had his team at The New York
Times to a deep dive into the backgrounds of centri
Tech's leadership, if nothing else, to make sure they actually existed.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
They have all these tools. They can search all the
court records, all of the public records on marriage, divorce,
real estate, arrest, traffic, citation, what they own and I
just went down the list. What are their social media
accounts that can tell me about their paths, where they
come from, who they claimed to be on LinkedIn, on Instagram?
(13:50):
And do those stories line up? Do they tell a
coherent story? Usually it comes back, and it's like, you know,
they live here, this is their parents. There's not really
much out.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
There, but I think we all know where this is going.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
It was like this criminal dossier of arrests and lawsuits
and citations and leans and just you know, everything that
you could have done wrong. By the time you're twenty three,
they had managed to pack a lot into the first
two and a half decades of their lives.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
All those skeletons from Sam and Ray's closets came pouring out.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
There were just red flags everywhere.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Nathaniel found Sam's old court case, where he was accused
of trying to fraudulently sell or leank cars he didn't own.
Sam had also been evicted twice.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
The moment where I realized the sort of harm these
guys were doing came when I talked to Sam's old landlord.
It was just this older couple in Florida who had
rented out their apartment to Sam, and they said he
paid the first few months, but then he stopped pain
(14:59):
and he said he was going to get it to us,
and we believed him, and we figured, you know, he
was just having a hard time, and he kept saying
he was going to get it to us, and they said,
in the end we realized how conscious he had been
of frauding us. It wasn't just you know, he couldn't
pay the rent. He knew he wasn't paying the rent,
(15:22):
and he knew he was going to take it as
far as he could.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Up until now, Nathaniel had kept his questions to Sam
solely on centritech. But things are about to get a
lot more personal. Here's more from Nathaniel's phone call with
Sam Sharman in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
I'm just trying to sort through what you guys have
put out there versus what I'm finding. And you know,
I think one of the things that doesn't seem to
be out there is that you have quite a past
with legal issues. Business deal has gone wrong, you know, evictions,
stuff like this.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
But you're playing aft up when I was twenty four
to three.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
But these cases are two years ago, three years ago.
These are pretty recent cases, and you seem to have
been just a few years developed quite a track record
of not paying people, not living up the contracts and
stuff like that that's reflected in these complaints against you.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
I mean, I don't know what you want, what do
you want me to get You know, at this point,
you know, you looked like I had a keew rids
kind of leading too.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
I mean, this wasn't out there when people were sending
you millions of dollars and I'm just trying to.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
They weren't anyv defending the company.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Part of the difference of Center Deeck was that they
did all these things but still managed to raise thirty
million dollars. Like a lot of the companies I looked into.
They said they raised twenty million dollars, but that was
part of the lie of the company. They hadn't actually
raised the money. The Center Deck guys, one thing they
hadn't lied about was making thirty million dollars. They had
actually collected thirty million dollars from unwitting members of the public.
(16:55):
Despite all of these.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Issues, something else became abundantly to Nathaniel when reviewing their records.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Ray and Sam had clearly been partners in crime for
some time. Their Instagram showed them hanging around with lots
of one hundred dollars bills around expensive cars. You know,
this was not their first rodeo. When it came to
cooking up a business.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
He also uncovered that these business partners had vouched for
one another around some illegal activity in their past.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Together, they had been indicted for perjury for line about
Sam Sharma's drunk driving incident. I still remember the moment
when I was asking Sam about this indictment for perjury.
I mean, you were arrested pretty recently, right, don't want.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
This obviously on the web.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
It's not positive stuff. But I had a DUI in
New York and I didn't I failed to go back
for one of the court hearings. I guess, yeah, and
they put they put a warn out for my rash
warning recently. A few days ago, I got out of
my house and there was an office chat out of
the house, and you know, he obviously arrested me for that,
and I had to go back to New York and
(18:09):
finish up that DUI that I had.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
He doesn't view any of this as a problem because
he thinks he has an explanation for it.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
I ended up telling them like, hey, let's fully guilty
to this case. All right, I did drink and drive.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
I learned my lesson. Now they're trying to combine that
to say, oh, Okay, you just put guilty too vi high,
but you said on the stand you only had a
one drink and you weren't drunk. So now they're trying
to do like perjury against me.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
But ok being indicted for perjury is a big deal.
And the fact that he thought he could talk his
way out of that made it clear that there was
nothing that was going to stick with this guy. There
was nothing that was going to make him think, you
know what I did go too far. He could just
talk his way out of anything. But in doing so,
(18:53):
he seemed to convince himself.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
I mean, listen, anything public is usually information when it
comes down to arrest. So I'm obviously not comfortable with
that situation. But it's not something like where, you know,
I did something so intensely crazy that he would have
to have investors worry. I drank and drove two years ago,
and this is all tied up to that same case,
and it's nothing I could really do. You know, I
(19:18):
was young, I had a nice car, I was driving around,
I had a girl with being I got pulled over.
I got arrested for it, you know, for drinking and driving,
and I learned my lesson. I haven't had a drink
and drove, and since then, that was the last time
I had a drink, even a little drink and drove.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
That perjury charge. It was a big deal, a much
bigger deal than either of them realized at the time.
Ray was in the middle of it too.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Serby's had like five d w wis in his life.
He doesn't really drink like on a regular basis, but
he has no respect for the law. If he drinks,
he's driving, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Sarby decided to fight it, and the case went to court.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
He was going to have someone testify for him that
was there that night, saying he only had one drink
because he didn't blow in the breath thing.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
But Ray knew that friend and knew he wasn't going
to show up in court.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
He was like this rich kid from New York, never
been in trouble. I knew the whole time that this
kid was never gonna actually do that for me.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
So Ray steps up.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
So I'm like, whatever, I got you, no problem. That's
you know, we have this company together. You're my boy.
At this point, I'm gonna go do this with you,
no problem. I fly to New York with them.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
They go back to the crime scene, retrace sorby steps
from years past, and get raised story straight. After boarding
a flight in Miami and landing back home in New York,
Ray and Sam Serby Sharma get right to business. They
(20:48):
need to prep for the dwik Sam it had been avoiding.
First things. First, they need to go to the scene
of the crime.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
We go to the restaurant scoping out so I can
kind of have like an understand of what I'm going
to be able to say on the stand, Like if
they asked me certain questions. I know what it looks like.
I know the exit, the entrance where he sat. We
sat in the same seat in the restaurant. We'd go
to the court and I go up on the stand
and I'm telling the whole story. I'm like, he only
had one drink, one Pino grisio. That's all he had
(21:18):
the whole night.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Things were looking good. Ray's performance was just what they
needed for an acquittal. You could almost see Sam's lawyer
giving him a thumbs up and a wink with every
story point Ray hit.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Then as I'm on the stand, they have the camera
footage was actually from that night, and everything I said
was clearly shown to be a lie.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Not only did they have the footage, the bill was
entered into evidence, it was a CVS receipts worth the drinks.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
I was like, I don't even know what to say here.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
You could hear a pin drop in that courtroom. Ray
looked to Sorbie and his attorney for a lifeline. It
wouldn't come.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
They arrest me right then and there, right up the stand.
They arrest store. We both charge with perjury. I knew
that I'd get bailed out in a second. I had
money at this point, but they wouldn't give me my
phones back, which was super weird. I had two phones,
which I always have two phones. I've been arrested a
million times. They never hold your phones. They always release
them back to you when you're getting out. Something was
(22:22):
up and they're like, the only way we'll give you
your phones back if you sign a release that we
can copy all the data off your phones.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
This was problematic. Ray had everything on his phones, his emails,
his texts, contacts, But most valuable.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Of all, I had all my logins to my crypto,
my Google authenticators on that phone, and without that I
would lose all my access to all the exchanges that
I use. This is like millions of dollars that they
have that I can't get back unless I give them
records of everything on my phone. Like this is so fucked,
Like what do I do here? You know how it
is like when you lose your phone, you don't even
(22:58):
have money on your phone. Imagine having millions of dollars
on his phone, plus all your text mess all your
business contact, everything on his phone.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Ray felt like he had no choice.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
I ended up saying, fuck it, I need my money,
So I'm gonna sign this thing and give them everything
on his phones, and they copied everything off both of
my phones. The next morning I was able to pick up.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
My phones, Ray could breathe again. He resecured his money.
Put at what cost?
Speaker 1 (23:24):
At first, they were trying to give me like a
misdemeanor and a year jail time. I was like, no way,
I'm taking that. And then they ended up offering me
a felony charge, which was my first felony charge that
actually was going to stay on my record and no
jail time, no probation. So I took the felony charge
and was finished with it.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
So Ray thinks he's in the clear. He's out of jail,
on a flight back to Miami, and he has his phones.
He could put this one behind him, And so he thought,
shortly after returning from New York, Ray and Sam Sorby
Sharma get Win that this New York Times article was
coming out.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
I didn't expect for them to be such willing participants
in their own undoing. And while they had not convinced me,
they had convinced themselves that they were for real, and
they were loving this attention, and they were loving the
fact that The New York Times was going to tell
(24:21):
their story.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Then like a week later, that article comes down. We're like,
what the fuck was the worst article possible? Like how
two kids from Miami got rich? Or whatever the fuck
they put out.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
It read a little different than that, how.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Floyd Mayweather helped two young guys from Miami get rich.
On October twenty seventh, that's the day that the New
York Times article appeared, and that's the day when it
became clear that this was not a real business.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
And typical Ray, he put the blame on his other
Center Tech partner, Robert Farcas.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
That fucking whole thing was so fucked up. Because Robert
Farcas took the phone call and he was all excited.
So it's just like, how do you fuck up something
that major and not do any research on who's writing
this article and what they're going to write it about.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Yeah, it was Farcus who answered Nathaniel Popper's first call,
but after that it was Ray and Sam who did
most of the talking. That didn't matter at array.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
I asked him, like, you didn't do any due diligence
on the New York Times. You didn't ask him any
questions about what they're writing about. And he's just like no,
Like they just told me they were doing an article.
They didn't say it was going to be a bad thing,
And me and Sobey were so pissed off.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
After the article came out, Floyd Mayweather distanced himself from
centri Tech. His PR person took it a step further
and said Floyd was never a partner in the business.
He had simply been paid cash to promote center Tech
on social media. Floyd even deleted his Facebook and Instagram
posts where he endorsed center Tech. Kalent's team did the same.
(25:51):
One of our producers reached out to both Floyd and
dj Khaled's PR team for comment. I'll let you know
if we hear back.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
You know, anything hits New York Times, it's got some
attention and you know, hire people up or talking about it.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
I remember when that article came out. I hate to
say it, but I wasn't surprised. To me, it just
felt like Ray used up yet another one of his
many lives. At the time, the SEC was taking a
hard look at crypto startups. They were an unruly beast which,
in the eyes of the FEDS, were not safe for
the public. Crypto needed to be tamed or put down.
(26:30):
Startups like Centritech were dead in their crosshairs.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
I mean, look, I felt bad for them. 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 2 (26:49):
More bad press wasn't about to stop Sam, but Ray well,
he had had enough and he would make a drastic
decision about his future that would forever change his In
Sam's life.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
I really don't even want anything to do with this
company's point.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
With the FEDS breathing down their necks, the tables were
about to be turned and this time it's a doozy.
Speaker 5 (27:10):
It's incredibly ironic that a group of people using the
Internet to scam people ended up falling themselves for an
Internet scam.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
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 coeon at gmail dot com.
We appreciate your support. One way to support our show
(27:46):
is by subscribing to our podcasts 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 inta at Glass Podcasts.
The show is hosted and produced by me Johnny B. Good,
(28:06):
with executive producers Nancy Glass, Ben Fetterman, and Andrea Gunning.
Written and produced by Ben Fetterman and Todd Gans, additional
writing by Matt Delvecchio, Operations and production support by Christin Melchiori.
Additional production support Trey Morgan. Our iHeart team is Ali
(28:26):
Perry and Jessica Crincheck. Sound editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio,
Consulting producer Nathaniel Popper. Creating a CON's theme composed by
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(28:49):
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Did I ever tell the gun story of Sorby on
this Ah, that's a good story. That's fucking hilarious.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Whenever i'd sit down with Ray, even after I thought
I knew every detail from his time in Miami with
his partner Sam Sorbi Sharma, he dropped little gems like this.
I wasn't surprised.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Me and Sorbi I got our gun licenses together. After
we got our licenses, I went and bought a gun
basically the same gun that the cops use, a glock,
very standard gun. I learned how to take part. I
was very safe for my gun, but it definitely made
me feel safe when I was walking around with large
amounts of money. And one day Sorbi calls me and
he's like, yo, I got a gun, Like I'm gonna
(00:42):
come show you mad excited, and I'm like, I don't
really care, Like this isn't like a show off contest
of who got the sickest gun, but that's who he was.
He always wanted to try to one up me. And
he shows up and his pants are like sagging because
this gun is so big. I'm like, what did this
kid buy? And he pulls out this gun and the
gun is basically a musket three feet long, a pistol
(01:07):
like from nineteen eighty two. I was like, what the
fuck are you serious? This is really the gun you got.
Why would you get a golden engraved gun? What is
wrong with you? Like? How are you even gonna carry
that thing? I was like, Bro, that's the fucking dumbest
gun I've ever seen in my life. Who do you
think you are? El Chapo? After I made fun of him,
(01:29):
I had never seen that gun again because he was
so self conscious and.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
That's who he was.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Like, it's so hard to understand Soorbe's brain, like how
he operates. You can't come in here with no confidence thing.
You're gonna show me up And I'm just gonna be like, Oh,
that's sick gun, dude.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
I'm Johnny be Good And this is creating a con
The story of bitcomed episode six, Big Little Eyes. In
the fall of twenty seventeen, Center Tech had just completed
its ico or initial coin offering and had raised more
(02:34):
than thirty million dollars. Ray and Sam were making money
in their sleep, and more customers were coming in, meaning
more cash in the door.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
This is my most memorable point of Florida censer was
raising tens of millions of dollars. I had so much
money at my disposal. I had hundreds of thousands of
jewelry on you know, six Cardier bracelets, fucking Rolex, just
acting mad ignorant. I loved being ignorant. I still do
(03:04):
love being ignorant.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Ray took full advantage of his situation, using investors' money
to pay for his lavish lifestyle in Miami, in the casino,
the strip club, or whatever lavish party was being thrown.
Miami was his playground, his sandbox, and that box was
full of cocaine, the cars, the girls, the cash, the gambling,
(03:26):
the drugs. Ray was floating through the city faster and
higher than ever, burning cash at an unimaginable rate. But
none of that mattered because they'd be making it back
without lifting a finger. It was everything Ray had dreamed
of out of a career.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
The casino was my sanctuary I was born. Just about
every night I would wake up, I'd have a bloody Mary,
eat like a little flapper at pizza, take some xanax.
The casino at that time had gave me twenty four
hour black car service, so I wo'd get in their
limit or truck, and I would go to the mall
(04:02):
buy whatever alpha it was for the day, A new
pair of shoes, go back to the casino, shower up,
get dressed, put my new outfit on, go gamble a
little bit.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
All of Ray's time was spent around the poker table
rather than the boardroom table.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
I was playing eight poker games that were one hundred
thousand minimum buy ins, which are insane games. Some of
those games I would be in for a couple hundred thousand.
I've had nights where I've won five hundred thousand in poker,
which is a huge win for anybody.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Okay, so if you're like me, you may be wondering
where is Ray getting all this money? Again, I was.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Able to sell a million dollars worth of Centric coins.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Ray was doing what was called a pump and dump. No,
he wasn't donating his sperm. He was artificially driving up
the price of center coin and then selling.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Once the price got to a point where I felt comfortable,
I just dumped a ton of centric coins on the market,
which was like a couple million dollar.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
And he did this over and over and over.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
We were allowed to catch out fifty thousand at a time,
so basically every day I would just have fifty thousand
come into my account. Ended up being about sixty days
where I was just getting fifty thousand dollars a day straight.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
That's no small deposit. Ray found himself with nearly three
million dollars after this sixty day spree.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
That first feeling of seeing a million dollars in your
bank account, you see that extra comment, I was like,
oh my god, this is crazy.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
And those funds it afforded the lifestyle he always strived for.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
I was like, always my dream to be in these
circles with these professional guys that played every day. And
I wasn't the best guy, but it was just amazing
to be a part of. And the day I met Derulo,
I was in the high Limit room playing backarat and
I always had my own private table in the casino by.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
De Rulo, Yes, he means Jason Derulot multi talented, chart topping,
seven times platinum recording artist Jason Deula.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
I see him walk in, I act like I don't
know who it is. He goes and sits down. He's
with his girlfriend. They sit down at a table. It's
like filled with people. I'm like, why is Jason Drula
sitting at like a regular table? And I'm like, yo,
if you want you can play at this table. I'm
playing it cool like it was nothing whatever. I was like, yeah,
you know, you can sit here, and then we go
on like a crazy run playing back right. I was
(06:25):
up probably like four hundred thousand, he's up like one
hundred thousand. At that point, they're running out of the chips,
so they want to color up. So usually like for
all your thousand chips, they'll give you ten thousand dollars
chips so that you don't you know, they can restock
the chip things. And I'm like, no, I don't want
to color up. I want all these stacks of chips
on the table. So it looks ridiculous. So like we
had stacks a couple feet high of just all these
(06:46):
smaller chips. It just looked amazing, like if you can
imagine an image of just two players at the table
by these giant stacks. Every single hand we were winning
and it was a sick night. And he's like, yeah,
I'm going back to Cali orrow if you want to
come back with me. I'm like, all right, fuck it. Whatever,
you know, how am I going to turn down this opportunity.
We'd go on a plane, we'd fly back to Cali.
(07:08):
I stayed at his place. I went to the World's Royce,
and I just left. I was like, I don't want
to just act like I have nothing to do while
I'm here. I'm act like I'm busy. I just balanced
and fucking went to drove around with a casino and
Cali and just did my own thing for a while there.
And then like a couple days later, we both flew
back to Miami.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Call it a bromance.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
He knew that when we would go out, I'd be
able to split everything. It wasn't like everybody else that
he'd have around him, no one was able to split anything.
So we'd go out to strip clubs, you know, split
ten thousand in singles and just go crazy. We got like,
you know, a private room in that strip club, throw
(07:48):
ten thousand in singles, which you know, you can't even
throw that many singles. I don't know how people do
it unless you're just throwing bricks of singles at people.
It was sick, Like those moments were amazing. I just
got close with his family, so we would hang out.
You know, I would either fly to Cali or when
he was in Florida, he would always call me.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Drulo had a front row seat to what Ray was
building at centri Tech.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
You know, he's like, oh, you know, tell me about CenTra,
Like what's going on? Like, you know, how do I
get tokens? Like he wasn't even that interested in what
the company was or what it was. He was trying
to just support me, but I just kept him away.
I was like, nah, he should just probably buy bitcoin,
Like if you're going to get into crypto, like try
to learn it and buy bitcoin, and you know, once
you learn it, then I'll put you on type of thing.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
While Ray was living it up in Miami, a dark
cloud was forming in the North. New York Times journalist
Nathaniel Popper's investigation into center Tech was in full swing.
When Nathaniel started digging further into the company, he noticed
the vital banking relationships CenTra had been touting disappeared. This
(08:51):
only reinforced Nathaniel's belief that he was covering something big.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
That's exciting as a journalist when you have an opportunity
to dig into something and find something interesting, real crazy.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
What began as a story about celebrity endorsements and cryptocurrency
just became a cover story with a big hook.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
When you take Visa off your website, you acknowledged that
you didn't really have a deal with Visa, And when
you take MasterCard up your website, that's your way of
acknowledging that you don't really have a deal with MasterCard.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Without these relationships, CenTra had a big problem.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Every time that they respond by scrubbing something, they're acknowledging
that whatever they've scrubbed as a problem.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Here's CenTra investor Jacob Renzel. That was a huge red flag.
That was one of the reasons why I invested is
because they had that partnership. Another thing Popper was trying
to uncover was the whereabouts of their CEO, Michael Edwards,
their Harvard trained leader, vanished from Centra's website and his
LinkedIn profile disappeared after it was discovered that Michael's picture
(10:02):
was actually a Canadian professor. So Nathaniel called Sam Beck
for an explanation. Here's the recorded call that took place
in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Looks like the first picture you use was this professor
in Canada, and then the LinkedIn profile he had looked
like it was totally made up.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
I don't know why they originally even put him up
at the CEO on the website, because if the picture
was not correct, it was a stock photo online and
people really just took that and ran with him. They're
still trying to run with you, which I've shut that
down many times.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Sam doubled down and blame their freelance web developers. He
said they were the ones who fucked up.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
I've said the people whatever was on the website at
the time, we used freelancer to put it on the website.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
As a reporter, you can't assume somebody's line until you
have established it without a doubt. You have to stay
open to that possibility. I'm just trying to understand if
this person actually exists.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
Yeah, I mean listening thousand like a U copy of
the license that need be.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
He said, all proved you that he's real, I'll send
you his driver's license, and I thought, okay, if you're
willing to do that, semi his driver's license.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Behind the scenes, Sam was scrambling.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Too many people asking questions about who the fuck Michael
Edwards is, and that's where we came out with the
mess to plan to basically say that Jessic Robinson and
Michael Edwards had died in a car accident together.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Jessica Robinson was supposedly the CFO of Center Tech.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
But there are certain points at which you realize there's
no coming back from this.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
We put out like a press release, you know, making
an obituary, and they're dead. Now.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
We obtained a copy of the obituary. I'll let Ray read.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
It to you. Michael Edwards suddenly left this world with
his longtime partner Jessica Robinson, who's fifty four years old.
He leaves behind his French Bulloak Stanley an accomplished career
as an investor in VP for banks like Wells, Fargo
and Chase. He graduated with the NBA from Harvard University,
which prepared him for his most recent venture as co
(12:13):
founder and chief executive officer of Center Tech in Miami Beach, Florida.
Michael split his time at his homes between Vermont and
Florida at his family's request. No service will be held.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah, Obviously, every character reaches a point at which you
can no longer sustain their storyline. So what else are
you going to do with them? I had gone into
this thinking this is a pretty wacky caper, but that
took this to a whole different level.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Nathaniel had the confirmation he needed. There was no doubt left.
The founders of central lied about the existence of their CEO.
It was time for Nathaniel Popper and his team to
dig deeper into centri Tech. With the heat building up
(13:05):
around Centra's lack of leadership, Ray and Sam pushed out
a story they thought would finally put their CEO problems
to rest, but all that did was raise more suspicion.
So Nathaniel Popper had his team at The New York
Times to a deep dive into the backgrounds of centri
Tech's leadership, if nothing else, to make sure they actually existed.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
They have all these tools. They can search all the
court records, all of the public records on marriage, divorce,
real estate, arrest, traffic, citation, what they own and I
just went down the list. What are their social media
accounts that can tell me about their paths, where they
come from, who they claimed to be on LinkedIn, on Instagram?
(13:50):
And do those stories line up? Do they tell a
coherent story? Usually it comes back, and it's like, you know,
they live here, this is their parents. There's not really
much out.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
There, but I think we all know where this is going.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
It was like this criminal dossier of arrests and lawsuits
and citations and leans and just you know, everything that
you could have done wrong. By the time you're twenty three,
they had managed to pack a lot into the first
two and a half decades of their lives.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
All those skeletons from Sam and Ray's closets came pouring out.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
There were just red flags everywhere.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Nathaniel found Sam's old court case, where he was accused
of trying to fraudulently sell or leank cars he didn't own.
Sam had also been evicted twice.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
The moment where I realized the sort of harm these
guys were doing came when I talked to Sam's old landlord.
It was just this older couple in Florida who had
rented out their apartment to Sam, and they said he
paid the first few months, but then he stopped pain
(14:59):
and he said he was going to get it to us,
and we believed him, and we figured, you know, he
was just having a hard time, and he kept saying
he was going to get it to us, and they said,
in the end we realized how conscious he had been
of frauding us. It wasn't just you know, he couldn't
pay the rent. He knew he wasn't paying the rent,
(15:22):
and he knew he was going to take it as
far as he could.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Up until now, Nathaniel had kept his questions to Sam
solely on centritech. But things are about to get a
lot more personal. Here's more from Nathaniel's phone call with
Sam Sharman in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
I'm just trying to sort through what you guys have
put out there versus what I'm finding. And you know,
I think one of the things that doesn't seem to
be out there is that you have quite a past
with legal issues. Business deal has gone wrong, you know, evictions,
stuff like this.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
But you're playing aft up when I was twenty four
to three.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
But these cases are two years ago, three years ago.
These are pretty recent cases, and you seem to have
been just a few years developed quite a track record
of not paying people, not living up the contracts and
stuff like that that's reflected in these complaints against you.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
I mean, I don't know what you want, what do
you want me to get You know, at this point,
you know, you looked like I had a keew rids
kind of leading too.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
I mean, this wasn't out there when people were sending
you millions of dollars and I'm just trying to.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
They weren't anyv defending the company.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Part of the difference of Center Deeck was that they
did all these things but still managed to raise thirty
million dollars. Like a lot of the companies I looked into.
They said they raised twenty million dollars, but that was
part of the lie of the company. They hadn't actually
raised the money. The Center Deck guys, one thing they
hadn't lied about was making thirty million dollars. They had
actually collected thirty million dollars from unwitting members of the public.
(16:55):
Despite all of these.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Issues, something else became abundantly to Nathaniel when reviewing their records.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Ray and Sam had clearly been partners in crime for
some time. Their Instagram showed them hanging around with lots
of one hundred dollars bills around expensive cars. You know,
this was not their first rodeo. When it came to
cooking up a business.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
He also uncovered that these business partners had vouched for
one another around some illegal activity in their past.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Together, they had been indicted for perjury for line about
Sam Sharma's drunk driving incident. I still remember the moment
when I was asking Sam about this indictment for perjury.
I mean, you were arrested pretty recently, right, don't want.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
This obviously on the web.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
It's not positive stuff. But I had a DUI in
New York and I didn't I failed to go back
for one of the court hearings. I guess, yeah, and
they put they put a warn out for my rash
warning recently. A few days ago, I got out of
my house and there was an office chat out of
the house, and you know, he obviously arrested me for that,
and I had to go back to New York and
(18:09):
finish up that DUI that I had.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
He doesn't view any of this as a problem because
he thinks he has an explanation for it.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
I ended up telling them like, hey, let's fully guilty
to this case. All right, I did drink and drive.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
I learned my lesson. Now they're trying to combine that
to say, oh, Okay, you just put guilty too vi high,
but you said on the stand you only had a
one drink and you weren't drunk. So now they're trying
to do like perjury against me.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
But ok being indicted for perjury is a big deal.
And the fact that he thought he could talk his
way out of that made it clear that there was
nothing that was going to stick with this guy. There
was nothing that was going to make him think, you
know what I did go too far. He could just
talk his way out of anything. But in doing so,
(18:53):
he seemed to convince himself.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
I mean, listen, anything public is usually information when it
comes down to arrest. So I'm obviously not comfortable with
that situation. But it's not something like where, you know,
I did something so intensely crazy that he would have
to have investors worry. I drank and drove two years ago,
and this is all tied up to that same case,
and it's nothing I could really do. You know, I
(19:18):
was young, I had a nice car, I was driving around,
I had a girl with being I got pulled over.
I got arrested for it, you know, for drinking and driving,
and I learned my lesson. I haven't had a drink
and drove, and since then, that was the last time
I had a drink, even a little drink and drove.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
That perjury charge. It was a big deal, a much
bigger deal than either of them realized at the time.
Ray was in the middle of it too.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Serby's had like five d w wis in his life.
He doesn't really drink like on a regular basis, but
he has no respect for the law. If he drinks,
he's driving, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Sarby decided to fight it, and the case went to court.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
He was going to have someone testify for him that
was there that night, saying he only had one drink
because he didn't blow in the breath thing.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
But Ray knew that friend and knew he wasn't going
to show up in court.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
He was like this rich kid from New York, never
been in trouble. I knew the whole time that this
kid was never gonna actually do that for me.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
So Ray steps up.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
So I'm like, whatever, I got you, no problem. That's
you know, we have this company together. You're my boy.
At this point, I'm gonna go do this with you,
no problem. I fly to New York with them.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
They go back to the crime scene, retrace sorby steps
from years past, and get raised story straight. After boarding
a flight in Miami and landing back home in New York,
Ray and Sam Serby Sharma get right to business. They
(20:48):
need to prep for the dwik Sam it had been avoiding.
First things. First, they need to go to the scene
of the crime.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
We go to the restaurant scoping out so I can
kind of have like an understand of what I'm going
to be able to say on the stand, Like if
they asked me certain questions. I know what it looks like.
I know the exit, the entrance where he sat. We
sat in the same seat in the restaurant. We'd go
to the court and I go up on the stand
and I'm telling the whole story. I'm like, he only
had one drink, one Pino grisio. That's all he had
(21:18):
the whole night.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Things were looking good. Ray's performance was just what they
needed for an acquittal. You could almost see Sam's lawyer
giving him a thumbs up and a wink with every
story point Ray hit.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Then as I'm on the stand, they have the camera
footage was actually from that night, and everything I said
was clearly shown to be a lie.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Not only did they have the footage, the bill was
entered into evidence, it was a CVS receipts worth the drinks.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
I was like, I don't even know what to say here.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
You could hear a pin drop in that courtroom. Ray
looked to Sorbie and his attorney for a lifeline. It
wouldn't come.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
They arrest me right then and there, right up the stand.
They arrest store. We both charge with perjury. I knew
that I'd get bailed out in a second. I had
money at this point, but they wouldn't give me my
phones back, which was super weird. I had two phones,
which I always have two phones. I've been arrested a
million times. They never hold your phones. They always release
them back to you when you're getting out. Something was
(22:22):
up and they're like, the only way we'll give you
your phones back if you sign a release that we
can copy all the data off your phones.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
This was problematic. Ray had everything on his phones, his emails,
his texts, contacts, But most valuable.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Of all, I had all my logins to my crypto,
my Google authenticators on that phone, and without that I
would lose all my access to all the exchanges that
I use. This is like millions of dollars that they
have that I can't get back unless I give them
records of everything on my phone. Like this is so fucked,
Like what do I do here? You know how it
is like when you lose your phone, you don't even
(22:58):
have money on your phone. Imagine having millions of dollars
on his phone, plus all your text mess all your
business contact, everything on his phone.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Ray felt like he had no choice.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
I ended up saying, fuck it, I need my money,
So I'm gonna sign this thing and give them everything
on his phones, and they copied everything off both of
my phones. The next morning I was able to pick up.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
My phones, Ray could breathe again. He resecured his money.
Put at what cost?
Speaker 1 (23:24):
At first, they were trying to give me like a
misdemeanor and a year jail time. I was like, no way,
I'm taking that. And then they ended up offering me
a felony charge, which was my first felony charge that
actually was going to stay on my record and no
jail time, no probation. So I took the felony charge
and was finished with it.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
So Ray thinks he's in the clear. He's out of jail,
on a flight back to Miami, and he has his phones.
He could put this one behind him, And so he thought,
shortly after returning from New York, Ray and Sam Sorby
Sharma get Win that this New York Times article was
coming out.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
I didn't expect for them to be such willing participants
in their own undoing. And while they had not convinced me,
they had convinced themselves that they were for real, and
they were loving this attention, and they were loving the
fact that The New York Times was going to tell
(24:21):
their story.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Then like a week later, that article comes down. We're like,
what the fuck was the worst article possible? Like how
two kids from Miami got rich? Or whatever the fuck
they put out.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
It read a little different than that, how.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Floyd Mayweather helped two young guys from Miami get rich.
On October twenty seventh, that's the day that the New
York Times article appeared, and that's the day when it
became clear that this was not a real business.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
And typical Ray, he put the blame on his other
Center Tech partner, Robert Farcas.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
That fucking whole thing was so fucked up. Because Robert
Farcas took the phone call and he was all excited.
So it's just like, how do you fuck up something
that major and not do any research on who's writing
this article and what they're going to write it about.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Yeah, it was Farcus who answered Nathaniel Popper's first call,
but after that it was Ray and Sam who did
most of the talking. That didn't matter at array.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
I asked him, like, you didn't do any due diligence
on the New York Times. You didn't ask him any
questions about what they're writing about. And he's just like no,
Like they just told me they were doing an article.
They didn't say it was going to be a bad thing,
And me and Sobey were so pissed off.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
After the article came out, Floyd Mayweather distanced himself from
centri Tech. His PR person took it a step further
and said Floyd was never a partner in the business.
He had simply been paid cash to promote center Tech
on social media. Floyd even deleted his Facebook and Instagram
posts where he endorsed center Tech. Kalent's team did the same.
(25:51):
One of our producers reached out to both Floyd and
dj Khaled's PR team for comment. I'll let you know
if we hear back.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
You know, anything hits New York Times, it's got some
attention and you know, hire people up or talking about it.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
I remember when that article came out. I hate to
say it, but I wasn't surprised. To me, it just
felt like Ray used up yet another one of his
many lives. At the time, the SEC was taking a
hard look at crypto startups. They were an unruly beast which,
in the eyes of the FEDS, were not safe for
the public. Crypto needed to be tamed or put down.
(26:30):
Startups like Centritech were dead in their crosshairs.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
I mean, look, I felt bad for them. 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 2 (26:49):
More bad press wasn't about to stop Sam, but Ray well,
he had had enough and he would make a drastic
decision about his future that would forever change his In
Sam's life.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
I really don't even want anything to do with this
company's point.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
With the FEDS breathing down their necks, the tables were
about to be turned and this time it's a doozy.
Speaker 5 (27:10):
It's incredibly ironic that a group of people using the
Internet to scam people ended up falling themselves for an
Internet scam.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
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 coeon at gmail dot com.
We appreciate your support. One way to support our show
(27:46):
is by subscribing to our podcasts 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 inta at Glass Podcasts.
The show is hosted and produced by me Johnny B. Good,
(28:06):
with executive producers Nancy Glass, Ben Fetterman, and Andrea Gunning.
Written and produced by Ben Fetterman and Todd Gans, additional
writing by Matt Delvecchio, Operations and production support by Christin Melchiori.
Additional production support Trey Morgan. Our iHeart team is Ali
(28:26):
Perry and Jessica Crincheck. Sound editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio,
Consulting producer Nathaniel Popper. Creating a CON's theme composed by
Oliver Baines. Music library provided by MiB Music. Thank you
for subscribing to iHeart True Crime Plus exclusively on Apple.
We hope you enjoyed this ad free presentation of Creating
(28:49):
a Con the story of bigcom Continue binging the rest
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Host
Jonny B. Good
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