May 1, 2024 • 32 mins
Centra Tech investors are getting nervous after the release of the explosive New York Times article. Is this the end for the crypto-company? Plus, the Centra Tech team finds themselves in another scam. But this time, they are the ones being duped.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I was at work and I got a targeted AD
from a law firm and it said, did you invest
in center Tech? We think that center Tech is a
fraud and if you have any information, please contact us.
And it was the perfect targeted ad because I was
the one who had all the information that they needed.
I called him up and they said, would you be
(00:22):
interested representing this case that we're bringing to court.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I'm Johnny be Good and this is creating a con
the story of Bitcom episode seven, Criminal Etiquette. By the
end of October twenty seventeen, centri Tech had collected more
than thirty million dollars from investors. The company had lofty
goals of creating a debit card to spend cryptocurrency in
(01:20):
the real world. In reality, they used smoking mirrors to
convince eager investors that they had an actual functioning product,
much less a functioning company. And then came that piece
about centri Tech in the New York Times. All of
their exaggerations, mistruths, and blatant lies had been exposed, and
(01:40):
now the vultures were circling and they planned to hit
CenTra where it hurt. The explosive article featured a picture
of Robert Farkas, Sam Sharma, and Ray taken in their
swanky downtown Miami offices.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
I was like, this is dopeer.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
In the New York Times, there was Ray standing in
between Sam Sharma and Robert Farkas, dressed in a fancy
dark blue suit.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
This suit that I'm wearing is three thousand dollars suit.
And Sharma looks like weird in this. Looks like he's
got fucking silk hair or something.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
For someone who claims he didn't like having his picture taken,
Ray enjoyed seeing himself in The New York Times, even
if he didn't have a tan.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
I mean I just look like for especially for someone
living in Miami. I look mad, pale, and just my
base is all bone. You can see like my jaw
so crazy in that. But I don't hate this.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Picture appearances aside. Right beneath that photo was the article
hal Floyd Mayweather helped two young guys from Miami get rich.
As soon as Ray got past looking at himself and
actually read through the article, his tone completely changed. Here's
some of the greatest hits from that article. CenTra as
(02:57):
a project that has ended up with more than a
few problems. Including a chief executive who does not appear
to have been a real person. After being contacted by
The Times, mister Mayweather deleted his Instagram and Facebook posts
endorsing CenTra. There was one problem with this plan. The
(03:19):
company had not been approved or had even applied to
run a centric card on the visa network. Assuming regulators
don't step in, mister Trapani and mister Sharma can keep
the money even if they don't build anything.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
That fucking whole thing was so fucked up because Robert
Farcas took the phone call from them and he was
all excited.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Ray chewed out Farcas, who, by my account, only spoke
with Nathaniel Popper for approximately four and a half minutes
before passing the phone onto Ray and Sam.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
He didn't question what they're writing about, Like typically that's
what you do. Like you're the owner of a company.
You don't want a New York Times article. It's gonna
be a bad article. You have to asked, Like, not
everybody's going to write a good thing about you.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Ray's mom also felt.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
That way when he told me that The New York
Times was coming to interview him. I said, right, it's
a New York times, don't do it. I'm telling you
right now. You don't know what they're going to say.
You know, you never know how they're going to sway things.
But this is the thing. He never listens to me.
Oh no, it's.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Food, it's food.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
The article man, plenty of new eyeballs were now focused
on centri Tech.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
I was like, what is this.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
This doesn't sound good.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
That's our friend, Maara.
Speaker 6 (04:34):
This is a national article. People are going to read this.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
What's going to happen here?
Speaker 3 (04:40):
That's when I really got nervous.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Up until that point, centri Tech had managed to dodge
a million bullets. But that article exposed the underbelly of
centri Tech, prodding at each embarrassing detail.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
They talked about Sam Sharma's drinking and driving incident, They
talk about a lot of the prior issues that they
had with Miami exotics.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
This was all news to investor Jacob Renzel. He remembers
finding the article online and seeing the responses from Centra's leadership.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Ray Mitripponi actually didn't know that that was a negative
article for the longest time. He actually says, all press
is good press. To me, that looked like the nail
on the coffin.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
The worst part about the article was definitely that it
drew extra eyes from authorities, but at the time we
didn't know that. Also, like the whole perjury thing had
happened weeks before this, so like things were just getting
hot and it was just not looking good.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Earlier that month, Ray and Sam were indicted for perjury
stemming from Sam's DWI case in Manhattan, the case where
Ray testified when he was caught in a lie that
Sam only had one drink that night. The New York
Times article included that detail, and it didn't paint a
pretty picture. CenTra investors acted accordingly.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
I was like, I need to sell now because this
is totally one hundred percent of scam, and it sent
me down a path to start collecting data on every
individual of this company.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
As Jacob and other investors tried to cash out, Ray
decided it was time for him to check out. But
Sam Sharma, who also goes by Sorby, wasn't ready to
jump ship yet.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
In sorb we have a conversation about stepping down and
making some new the CEO, someone that has an actual
clean image. What Sorbi would remain as the defacto owner
of the company.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Behind the scenes, Ray knew he couldn't cut ties completely.
He still needed something from Sam.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
I'm asking him to pay a debt that we built
together that's in my family's name, and he tries to
give me the run around on it.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
If Sam wasn't going to settle the outstanding Tripani debt,
Ray needed to maintain some type of control.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
We ended up putting my grandfather as the CEO.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
You heard that right. Seventy nine year old William Hagner,
better known as Pop, would be taking the reins of
a crypto tech firm, a man who made his living
inspecting elevators and allegedly racketeering.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
My grandfather is the perfect person because he's not obviously functionable.
But it makes it that I have somewhat ownership of
this company without having ownership of this company, and I'm
able to step away. We put out a press release
saying that we were stepping down. William Hagner was going
to be the CEO of the company.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
In that press release from Centritech, it said rayin Sam
would be stepping aside to support the continued growth of
the company. As for Ray's grandfather, there was one important detail.
They left out.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
My grandfather had just gotten cancer a second time. He
was on his way out, and he was basically like,
I don't give a fuck at this point and just
do whatever you want.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
I know it sounds crazy, but in some ways, this
was Pop's last hurrah, his last chance to go out
like a boss. In the press release, Sam defined his
own role as visionary manager moving forward. I'd love to
see that job description. More and more worried investors began
(08:11):
to chatter online about Centritech being one giant lie.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
But I was just generally embarrassed that I invested in
something that is scam.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
That's when investor Jacob Rensel started pressing Centru's team on
the slack channel.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Whenever I asked hard questions, they never got answered. My
message just started to disappear.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Jacob wanted answers, and the question seemed fair. What was
the deal with via en MasterCard? When was he going
to get his centri card? And who the fuck is
William Hagnet.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Little did I know at that time I was on
the wrong end of a band hammer that was coming
my way.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Suddenly, and without any warning, the moderator of Centrau slack
channel locked Jacob out.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
I believe Raymond Trepani actually banned made himself. I can't
confirm that, but the moment that that happened, I was
extremely upset. I was asking legitimate questions, just regular easy
questions that could have been answered if they were a
legitimate company. That set me off.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Whether it was Ray or someone else. Whoever banned Jacob
from the Slack channel picked the wrong guy to fuck with.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
I threw my phone on the floor. I was like,
fuck you guys. I was running around the room like,
oh my god, I invested how much money into this shit?
Just super pissed off.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
I never understood people who break their own shit out
of anger. But nevertheless, Jacob sought revenge and combed every
channel he could read it, YouTube, Twitter, even Facebook.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Just straight every day trying to find more information, looking
up articles, looking up anything that's tied with these individuals.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
The easiest way Jacob connected all these dots Ray's Facebook page.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Raymond Trepani was a fire hose of information. I figured
out every single family member that Raymond Trupani had. He
was all about flashing everything that he had. He just
let it all out there. So he was just a
data mine. I just started getting screen grabs of everything
that I was finding and then compiling it all. And
(10:19):
that's actually how I figured out who William Hagner was,
so I was like, oh, this is actually Raymond Trupani's grandfather,
Bill Hagner. I actually spent like a month and a
half compiling all of it, and then I asked myself,
what was I doing? Why am I spending all this
time on this.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Jacob found his answer one day when he came across
an ad from a law firm.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
And said, did you invest in Center Tech? We think
that Center Tech is a fraud and if you have
any information, please contact us.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
One phone call later and Jacob signed on as one
of the lead plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit being
filed against Center Tech. He turned over his mountain of documents, downloads,
and screen shots to the suits.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
We believe that they were committing fraud. So really, at
that time, it was more about proving that they committed fraud.
There was no funds to get back at that point
in time.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
At this point, CenTra hadn't been accused of anything.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Obviously, what they're doing is not what they're saying they're doing.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
So Jacob and the class pressed forward. The attorneys filed
suit against Centritech at the end of twenty seventeen. And
this wasn't just some manufacturer's warranty class action suit where
you get some pamphlet in the mail advertising the ten
dollars payout you get using a QR code. No, this
class action submitted claims totaling billions of dollars, anywhere from
(11:41):
thirteen to sixty one billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
The moment that we pushed that out, I sent a
copy of it to TMZ and leaked all the information.
I said, Hey, big scoop, we're suing these guys. Do
an article.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
TMZ ran a story about how a company endorsed by
Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled was being I.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Was, you know, taking Raymond Trepani's playbook, All press is
Good press, right.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Ray may have stepped away from centri Tech, but that
didn't absolve him of his past. By December of twenty seventeen,
centri Tech was sued by a group of investors in
a class action lawsuit. But there was more bad news.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
I was home one day and Sorbi calls me and
he's like, the SEC is doing an investigation and we
need to hire lawyers. It's like, bro, it's not even
a big deal, like you know, some bullshit the SEC.
And I was like, all right, whatever. I was more
worried about me going through the casino later that night
than what he was talking about on the phone. He's like, yo,
(12:45):
but you have to get like I'm going to hire
this attorney. I'm like, all right, whatever, just let me
know what I gotta do. It wasn't the FBI, right,
The SEC doesn't sound as like intimidating. They were just like, oh,
this is like some little shit that will have to
go through. And I was like, all right, fuck it.
Assume me for all the money. I've always been like that.
Just send me the bill. I'll put all my money
(13:08):
in cash, and I'll give you one hundred bucks a week.
I could care less.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Centritech founded the company right around the time the Security
and Exchange Commission was looking to define crypto as a security,
because the SEC could only step in if the company
was selling securities. Securities are stocks, bonds, any investment asset
that has an expectation to increase in value. In twenty seventeen,
the SEC was on a hunt to get a handle
(13:34):
in this emerging market. If they didn't step in now,
they saw they could have a massive problem on their hands.
Speaker 7 (13:41):
This was a time when a lot of younger people
with very limited or no financial services experience saw what
they thought was the next big thing and wanted to
be part of it.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Howard Fisher is a former prosecutor for the SEC.
Speaker 7 (13:55):
There were tons of icos at that point, all sorts
of crazy things. I remember a white paper for something
known as banana Coin, a banana based digital currency redeemable
for two pounds of Cambodian bananas if you went to
the plantation and Cambodia where they were being grown. So
it had really become a wild wild West.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
It wasn't bananas that had the SEC knocking on Centristor,
but a bunch of other things.
Speaker 7 (14:23):
This is an interesting case because on the one hand,
this was sort of your garden variety fraud. Makeup stuff
about your business prospects, makeup stuff about your business partners,
makeup stuff about your executive board, which admittedly is a
little bit out there. But what made this interesting was
that they were taking this and putting it into the
(14:43):
crypto space. And this is one of the first times
that celebrity endorsers were roped into digital asset promotion.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
By the end of November twenty seventeen, the SEC sent
a subpoena a center Tech.
Speaker 7 (14:58):
Typically, the first thing that what happens is that whoever
gets a subpoena panics.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
To Sam's credit, he didn't panic.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
He tells me like, oh yeah, it's nothing, bro guys.
Spoke with his attorney. He was great and he helped
me with everything.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Months earlier, Sam wanted to make sure center Tech wouldn't
have any problems with the SEC. A new case called
Sam's attention, so he texted the team about it.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Sorbe brought up a company called Recoin, which I got
in troubled by the SEC.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
In September of twenty seventeen, the SEC had announced an
enforcement action against Recoin for selling unregistered securities as part
of two separate initial coin offerings. The allegations and charges
were steep. Sam Sharma feared that the Security and Exchange
Commission could be a problem for centri Tech.
Speaker 7 (15:47):
One thing that people tend to misunderstand about the SEC
is that the SEC is an agency of limited jurisdiction.
It does not exist to protect people against business scams,
and it doesn't exist as a general regulator of the
world of business. It exists to protect people from being
defrauded in connection with a purchase or sale of securities.
(16:11):
And the SEC is only empowered to act if the
instrument at issue is defined as a security, and that
has been the key issue in the digital asset space.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
That was and still is a trillion dollar question. Were
these cryptocurrencies of security? Sorby needed to know his coin
was not in fact a security, or at least that
the SEC wouldn't consider it one.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
I guess like Sorbie just was trying to find clarification
on what was happening to other coins, just like that
of being nervous.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
So Sorby consulted with one of the partners of the
law firm, Pope and done. According to Pope and Donn's website,
their offices sat in downtown Manhattan, right around the corner
from Wall Street. Sorby was lucky enough to put Eric
Pope on retainer. Eric assured sorry that the SEC would
only go after Center Tech if it was considered a security,
(17:09):
like a stock, the very thing that got recoined in trouble.
According to their lawyer, mister Pope, Centri Tech was definitely
not a security. So when the SEC subpoena showed up
on November twenty ninth, twenty seventeen, Sorby wasn't worried.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Sorby just replied back in email form to the SEC
and was like, listen, I spoke to an attorney and
got clarification that it wasn't a security, and they were
probably like, what who is this guy?
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Damn that's pretty ballsy to reach out to the SEC
and tell them their definition of a security was wrong.
Here's Howard Fisher Again.
Speaker 7 (17:50):
We've seen the SEC aggressively argue that pretty much every
single digital asset would perhaps the exception of bitcoin, is
in fact a secure, and if it's a security, the
SEC could regulate it and it could step in to
stop scams involving them.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Sam Sowerby Sharma would rely on the details of his
attorney's opinion to fight the subpoena. But there was one
important detail that Sam did not know about his attorney.
Eric Pope, didn't exist, just like Centia CEO Michael Edwards,
he was completely made up.
Speaker 5 (18:27):
Eric Pope was meant to be a lawyer, educated at
the Warden school just like Donald Trump and then New
York University School of Law with a long track record
as a successful lawyer.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Ben Schreckinger is a political journalist who unmasked Eric Pope
to the world.
Speaker 5 (18:44):
Eric Pope was a persona invented by John Lambert.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
All right, so who the fuck is John Lambert.
Speaker 5 (18:52):
John Lambert was a college student who was engaging in
an elaborate fraud, creating a fake law for charging people
thousands of dollars for legal services and making it all up.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Essentially, So this is where things get interesting. John Lambert
was a college student who, along with one of his buddies,
created the fake law firm of Pope and Donn and
then advertise it on freelancing websites like upwork.
Speaker 5 (19:19):
As things got more elaborate, they created a website with
a stable of attorneys with very impressive biographies, and it
turned out that at least some of those biographies had
just been ripped from Pravath swanmon Moore, which is one
of the most prestigious law firms in the country.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Sound familiar, It's like John Lambert pulled the page straight
from Sam and Ray's playbook.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
He grew up in Eastern Tennessee. He liked to play
video games. He met friends online playing video games, and
he was obsessed with the movie The Wolf of Wall Street.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
Hi, I'm Jordan Belford.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
I'm the broker from child.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
From New York. Yes, yeah, have a seat.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
How are you This stuff regulated?
Speaker 7 (20:06):
Sort of Jesus Christ is spread on these is huge.
Speaker 5 (20:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
And that's the point, Jordan, what do you get on
blue Chip?
Speaker 7 (20:12):
Stop?
Speaker 2 (20:13):
I make one percent. I didn't make one pink sheets
it's fifty.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
You know.
Speaker 5 (20:19):
The story of Jordan belfour is a guy who makes
big money, is very flashy and is eventually exposed as fraud.
And that's a theme of the story of John Lambert
slash Eric Pope.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
If you look at Eric Pope's profile on upwork, which
as of twenty twenty four is still active, it says
at Pope and dun Law, we offer reliable and effective
legal services. Our seasoned professionals are led by Eric Pope,
a graduate of the New York University School of Law,
and Jonathan Dunn.
Speaker 5 (20:54):
Yeah. If you believe what you're reading on the internet,
you're getting a high powered man. Had an attorney with
an address in New York with New York city phone number.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
But here's the thing about John Lambert. He wasn't just
any ordinary college student.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
John Lambert was catapulted to unlikely prominence by co founding
the Students for Trump group, which became huge force on
social media during Trump's rise to power. One of the
things they became known for that got them a lot
of attention was posting photos of college aged women and
skimpy outfits, often with Trump campaign paraphernalia.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
So yeah, centri Tek was paying six hundred and fifty
dollars an hour to the co founders of Students for Trump,
who was also moonlighting as a fake high profile lawyer.
You can't make this shit up.
Speaker 5 (21:48):
According to the indictment, this money got sent to a
PayPal account.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
A law firm collecting legal bills through PayPal. Seems legit right,
Too bad they didn't accept bitcoin. Sam wasn't the only
one to fall for John Lambert's scam, but Sam's decision
to forward Eric Pope's name and legal opinion to the
SEC led to John Lambert's undoing.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
It's definitely crazy that, like, you know, some guy we
met off upwork that we used as an attorney ended
up being some big time scammer that was taken down
because Sam used his name. When it came to the
SEC investigation.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
John Lambert was eventually arrested, and his lawyer blamed the
TV show suits. He said the character Mike Ross, who
pretended to be a Harvard educated lawyer, led John to
believe that he too could practice being a lawyer.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
At no point did Sam ever tell me that this
was an attorney from upwork. But it doesn't surprise me
one bit that that's where he found the attorney.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
John Lambert's co conspirator flipped on him and cooperated with
the fed's investigation. In twenty nineteen, John Lambert pled guilty
to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and got thirteen months
in prison. In a way, if it weren't for centri Tech,
Eric Polpe may still be giving fraud and legal advice.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
I don't know. I think in war right, like you
just take it on the chin. I don't think Sam
would be like upset about it. I just think he'd
be like, wow, it got me, you know, like always
finagling and scamming things, you see how easily it's done.
So if I see like a good scamming'm like that
was pretty good. I mean that's how I always take things.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Ugh, this fucking guy with a class action lawsuit and
an SEC investigation looming over centri Tech, Ray had stepped
aside and was busy enjoying his retirement.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
I was just at the casino, just fucking hookers, gambling
up a storm, just fucking being a complete degenerate.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Ray just couldn't help himself, and now that he was
no longer a part of centri Tech, he went back
to screwing over Sam Sharma, just like he did in
high school. He'd continue his pump and dump scheme extracting
money from the company. It was another big fuck you
to Sam Sorbi Sharma. Each day Ray would pump up
the value of the center coin and then dump his
(24:13):
coins out of profit.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
I went from having a couple hundred thousand in my
bank from CenTra to having millions of dollars in my
bank account from CenTra. I was like, fuck it, I'm
undercutting Sorbi as much as possible.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
That money also helped to support raise many bad habits.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
My Xanax intake was insane. I would go get a
prescription for one hundred and twenty zanax is supposed to
last you a month. I'd finished that in four days.
But then There'd be times where I'd run out and
I'd have seizures. It was a point where there was
a shortage of xanax in Florida, and I kept running out.
I always wanted someone there, like if I was having
(24:50):
a seizure, to like, you know, bring me to the
hospital cold nine one one. Realistically, I was on a
path that died anyways.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
In twenty eighteen, it wasn't Ray, but the man Ray
looked up to who passed away. His grandfather, Bill Hagner,
lost his fight against cancer.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
You know, he was so sick for so long that
I don't think he wanted to really be around much longer.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Bill Hagner died in late March of twenty eighteen. Even today,
his LinkedIn profile lists him as the president of centri Tech.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
I'm not good with dealing with loss at all. I
don't know if it's like a sociopathic tendency, but I
never cry at wakes and whatnot. I don't really like
the whole thought process of being sad over death. I
don't know if that's just my way because I don't
know how to cry it might have been like the
first person I would cry for. But like a few
days later, I'm playing in this very high stakes poker
(25:45):
game like this one hundred thousand dollars by and I'm
in for probably like a quarter million, and I get
a jail call.
Speaker 8 (25:52):
This is a prepaid call from an inmate at the
County Correctional facility.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Ray was curious, so we answered. It was Sam calling
and he had some bad news.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
They had just picked up Farcas. They had just picked
up Sorbi. Like, what the fuck happened here?
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Ray could hear the fear in Sam's voice. He explained
how that day, April first, twenty eighteen, Robert Farcas was
at the Miami Airport. He was about to board a
flight to Singapore when the FBI swooped in and arrested
him at the gate. There was speculation from the FBI
that Robert was about to flee the country.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
I don't know what the fuck he was trying to do,
if you really would have fled or not.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
When looking deeper into Farcas's trip information, it suggested that
he was traveling with another Center Tech employee on company
business to South Korea, and records show Farcus book to
return flight home. Regardless, Sam and Farcas were in deep
shit and facing a handful of charges that had to
do with centri Tech.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
I'm talking to him and I'm like, why didn't they
arrest me? I should have never asked that over the phone.
And he should have never even called me from the jail.
You know, you're not supposed to call people that you
committed the crime with from the jail. It's a criminal etiquette.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
The two weren't just facing jail time. The SEC was
also coming after their money. Along with criminal charges, the
SEC filed civil charges.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
I leave the casino that night and I'm like looking
over my shoulder, thinking like they're coming for me for sure.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Ray hurried to his car. He looked around the parking garage. Nothing.
He got in his car and drove home the whole
time staring into his rear view mirror, expecting at any
moment to see flashing red and blue lights. But it
never happened. He made it home and ran inside. The
FBI didn't arrest Ray that day, or the next day,
(27:43):
or even that week.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
It was just like every day on super high alert,
thinking they're coming for me. But a couple of weeks past,
I'm like, are they ever even going to come for me?
Maybe they're just not arrested me.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Twenty anxiety ridden days went by until early on April twentieth,
twenty eighteen, Ray heard that dreaded pounding on his front door.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
About five thirty. I just hear loud banging on the door.
I surrendered to the FBI.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
There.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
They allowed me to put on my clothes and take
me downstairs. It was super embarrassing too, because I lived
in a complex, so like you know, everybody I know
is like in the hallways watching me get it taken out,
and I see these people every day.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
All Ray could think about was how glad he was
that his grandfather wasn't around to see him standing there
with cuffs on.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
He was proud of me the day he died. Him
seeing me get arrested probably would have killed them anyways.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Much like Sam and Robert Farcas. They charged Ray with wirefraud,
security fraud and conspiracy to commit both charges. All of
them were facing up to sixty five years in prison.
Speaker 8 (28:53):
It was hard for me to tell who did what here,
who was responsible for what? And I'm sure that they
had different levels of responsibility.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Credit Nathaniel Popper of The New York Times and his
article about Centritech for helping to put these three founders
on the fed's radar.
Speaker 8 (29:10):
The SEC sued them six months after my story, which
kind of suggests that the story may have piqued their
interest or had them take a look at this. I mean,
this was just so egregious and it was just hard
to ignore.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
At the time. The case was among the first in
a wave of litigation by the SEC.
Speaker 8 (29:36):
Oftentimes, the way regulators and law enforcement decide the cases
they bring is the case that will set the precedent
that they want to set, that will make it clear
you can't do this. This was the clearest crystallization of
all of these issues where you can say you can't
do all of these different things that these people did,
and don't think that you can't.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
By the end of April, CenTra Tech's three founders were
sitting in jail. Their fates would rest in the hands
of justice.
Speaker 6 (30:07):
Your honor. When I started Centertech, I had a vision
of prosperity, happiness, and good fortune for everyone involvement for
the hardship any of them suffered, I'm truly sorry and
I pray for a day where there is solitude in
everyone's life affected by this.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Next time, on Creating a Con.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
You can only fake it to You make it for
so long before somebody finds.
Speaker 8 (30:28):
Out that your Harvard degree is not so Crimson.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
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 coen at gmail dot com.
We appreciate your support. One way to support our show
(30:56):
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 at Glass Podcasts.
The show is hosted and produced by me Johnny B. Good,
(31:16):
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
(31:37):
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
(31:59):
a the story of bitcom. Continue binging the rest of
the series one hundred percent add free, and stay tuned
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visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
I was at work and I got a targeted AD
from a law firm and it said, did you invest
in center Tech? We think that center Tech is a
fraud and if you have any information, please contact us.
And it was the perfect targeted ad because I was
the one who had all the information that they needed.
I called him up and they said, would you be
(00:22):
interested representing this case that we're bringing to court.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I'm Johnny be Good and this is creating a con
the story of Bitcom episode seven, Criminal Etiquette. By the
end of October twenty seventeen, centri Tech had collected more
than thirty million dollars from investors. The company had lofty
goals of creating a debit card to spend cryptocurrency in
(01:20):
the real world. In reality, they used smoking mirrors to
convince eager investors that they had an actual functioning product,
much less a functioning company. And then came that piece
about centri Tech in the New York Times. All of
their exaggerations, mistruths, and blatant lies had been exposed, and
(01:40):
now the vultures were circling and they planned to hit
CenTra where it hurt. The explosive article featured a picture
of Robert Farkas, Sam Sharma, and Ray taken in their
swanky downtown Miami offices.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
I was like, this is dopeer.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
In the New York Times, there was Ray standing in
between Sam Sharma and Robert Farkas, dressed in a fancy
dark blue suit.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
This suit that I'm wearing is three thousand dollars suit.
And Sharma looks like weird in this. Looks like he's
got fucking silk hair or something.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
For someone who claims he didn't like having his picture taken,
Ray enjoyed seeing himself in The New York Times, even
if he didn't have a tan.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
I mean I just look like for especially for someone
living in Miami. I look mad, pale, and just my
base is all bone. You can see like my jaw
so crazy in that. But I don't hate this.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Picture appearances aside. Right beneath that photo was the article
hal Floyd Mayweather helped two young guys from Miami get rich.
As soon as Ray got past looking at himself and
actually read through the article, his tone completely changed. Here's
some of the greatest hits from that article. CenTra as
(02:57):
a project that has ended up with more than a
few problems. Including a chief executive who does not appear
to have been a real person. After being contacted by
The Times, mister Mayweather deleted his Instagram and Facebook posts
endorsing CenTra. There was one problem with this plan. The
(03:19):
company had not been approved or had even applied to
run a centric card on the visa network. Assuming regulators
don't step in, mister Trapani and mister Sharma can keep
the money even if they don't build anything.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
That fucking whole thing was so fucked up because Robert
Farcas took the phone call from them and he was
all excited.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Ray chewed out Farcas, who, by my account, only spoke
with Nathaniel Popper for approximately four and a half minutes
before passing the phone onto Ray and Sam.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
He didn't question what they're writing about, Like typically that's
what you do. Like you're the owner of a company.
You don't want a New York Times article. It's gonna
be a bad article. You have to asked, Like, not
everybody's going to write a good thing about you.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Ray's mom also felt.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
That way when he told me that The New York
Times was coming to interview him. I said, right, it's
a New York times, don't do it. I'm telling you
right now. You don't know what they're going to say.
You know, you never know how they're going to sway things.
But this is the thing. He never listens to me.
Oh no, it's.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Food, it's food.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
The article man, plenty of new eyeballs were now focused
on centri Tech.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
I was like, what is this.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
This doesn't sound good.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
That's our friend, Maara.
Speaker 6 (04:34):
This is a national article. People are going to read this.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
What's going to happen here?
Speaker 3 (04:40):
That's when I really got nervous.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Up until that point, centri Tech had managed to dodge
a million bullets. But that article exposed the underbelly of
centri Tech, prodding at each embarrassing detail.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
They talked about Sam Sharma's drinking and driving incident, They
talk about a lot of the prior issues that they
had with Miami exotics.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
This was all news to investor Jacob Renzel. He remembers
finding the article online and seeing the responses from Centra's leadership.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Ray Mitripponi actually didn't know that that was a negative
article for the longest time. He actually says, all press
is good press. To me, that looked like the nail
on the coffin.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
The worst part about the article was definitely that it
drew extra eyes from authorities, but at the time we
didn't know that. Also, like the whole perjury thing had
happened weeks before this, so like things were just getting
hot and it was just not looking good.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Earlier that month, Ray and Sam were indicted for perjury
stemming from Sam's DWI case in Manhattan, the case where
Ray testified when he was caught in a lie that
Sam only had one drink that night. The New York
Times article included that detail, and it didn't paint a
pretty picture. CenTra investors acted accordingly.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
I was like, I need to sell now because this
is totally one hundred percent of scam, and it sent
me down a path to start collecting data on every
individual of this company.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
As Jacob and other investors tried to cash out, Ray
decided it was time for him to check out. But
Sam Sharma, who also goes by Sorby, wasn't ready to
jump ship yet.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
In sorb we have a conversation about stepping down and
making some new the CEO, someone that has an actual
clean image. What Sorbi would remain as the defacto owner
of the company.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Behind the scenes, Ray knew he couldn't cut ties completely.
He still needed something from Sam.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
I'm asking him to pay a debt that we built
together that's in my family's name, and he tries to
give me the run around on it.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
If Sam wasn't going to settle the outstanding Tripani debt,
Ray needed to maintain some type of control.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
We ended up putting my grandfather as the CEO.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
You heard that right. Seventy nine year old William Hagner,
better known as Pop, would be taking the reins of
a crypto tech firm, a man who made his living
inspecting elevators and allegedly racketeering.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
My grandfather is the perfect person because he's not obviously functionable.
But it makes it that I have somewhat ownership of
this company without having ownership of this company, and I'm
able to step away. We put out a press release
saying that we were stepping down. William Hagner was going
to be the CEO of the company.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
In that press release from Centritech, it said rayin Sam
would be stepping aside to support the continued growth of
the company. As for Ray's grandfather, there was one important detail.
They left out.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
My grandfather had just gotten cancer a second time. He
was on his way out, and he was basically like,
I don't give a fuck at this point and just
do whatever you want.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
I know it sounds crazy, but in some ways, this
was Pop's last hurrah, his last chance to go out
like a boss. In the press release, Sam defined his
own role as visionary manager moving forward. I'd love to
see that job description. More and more worried investors began
(08:11):
to chatter online about Centritech being one giant lie.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
But I was just generally embarrassed that I invested in
something that is scam.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
That's when investor Jacob Rensel started pressing Centru's team on
the slack channel.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Whenever I asked hard questions, they never got answered. My
message just started to disappear.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Jacob wanted answers, and the question seemed fair. What was
the deal with via en MasterCard? When was he going
to get his centri card? And who the fuck is
William Hagnet.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Little did I know at that time I was on
the wrong end of a band hammer that was coming
my way.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Suddenly, and without any warning, the moderator of Centrau slack
channel locked Jacob out.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
I believe Raymond Trepani actually banned made himself. I can't
confirm that, but the moment that that happened, I was
extremely upset. I was asking legitimate questions, just regular easy
questions that could have been answered if they were a
legitimate company. That set me off.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Whether it was Ray or someone else. Whoever banned Jacob
from the Slack channel picked the wrong guy to fuck with.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
I threw my phone on the floor. I was like,
fuck you guys. I was running around the room like,
oh my god, I invested how much money into this shit?
Just super pissed off.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
I never understood people who break their own shit out
of anger. But nevertheless, Jacob sought revenge and combed every
channel he could read it, YouTube, Twitter, even Facebook.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Just straight every day trying to find more information, looking
up articles, looking up anything that's tied with these individuals.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
The easiest way Jacob connected all these dots Ray's Facebook page.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Raymond Trepani was a fire hose of information. I figured
out every single family member that Raymond Trupani had. He
was all about flashing everything that he had. He just
let it all out there. So he was just a
data mine. I just started getting screen grabs of everything
that I was finding and then compiling it all. And
(10:19):
that's actually how I figured out who William Hagner was,
so I was like, oh, this is actually Raymond Trupani's grandfather,
Bill Hagner. I actually spent like a month and a
half compiling all of it, and then I asked myself,
what was I doing? Why am I spending all this
time on this.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Jacob found his answer one day when he came across
an ad from a law firm.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
And said, did you invest in Center Tech? We think
that Center Tech is a fraud and if you have
any information, please contact us.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
One phone call later and Jacob signed on as one
of the lead plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit being
filed against Center Tech. He turned over his mountain of documents, downloads,
and screen shots to the suits.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
We believe that they were committing fraud. So really, at
that time, it was more about proving that they committed fraud.
There was no funds to get back at that point
in time.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
At this point, CenTra hadn't been accused of anything.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Obviously, what they're doing is not what they're saying they're doing.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
So Jacob and the class pressed forward. The attorneys filed
suit against Centritech at the end of twenty seventeen. And
this wasn't just some manufacturer's warranty class action suit where
you get some pamphlet in the mail advertising the ten
dollars payout you get using a QR code. No, this
class action submitted claims totaling billions of dollars, anywhere from
(11:41):
thirteen to sixty one billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
The moment that we pushed that out, I sent a
copy of it to TMZ and leaked all the information.
I said, Hey, big scoop, we're suing these guys. Do
an article.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
TMZ ran a story about how a company endorsed by
Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled was being I.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Was, you know, taking Raymond Trepani's playbook, All press is
Good press, right.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Ray may have stepped away from centri Tech, but that
didn't absolve him of his past. By December of twenty seventeen,
centri Tech was sued by a group of investors in
a class action lawsuit. But there was more bad news.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
I was home one day and Sorbi calls me and
he's like, the SEC is doing an investigation and we
need to hire lawyers. It's like, bro, it's not even
a big deal, like you know, some bullshit the SEC.
And I was like, all right, whatever. I was more
worried about me going through the casino later that night
than what he was talking about on the phone. He's like, yo,
(12:45):
but you have to get like I'm going to hire
this attorney. I'm like, all right, whatever, just let me
know what I gotta do. It wasn't the FBI, right,
The SEC doesn't sound as like intimidating. They were just like, oh,
this is like some little shit that will have to
go through. And I was like, all right, fuck it.
Assume me for all the money. I've always been like that.
Just send me the bill. I'll put all my money
(13:08):
in cash, and I'll give you one hundred bucks a week.
I could care less.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Centritech founded the company right around the time the Security
and Exchange Commission was looking to define crypto as a security,
because the SEC could only step in if the company
was selling securities. Securities are stocks, bonds, any investment asset
that has an expectation to increase in value. In twenty seventeen,
the SEC was on a hunt to get a handle
(13:34):
in this emerging market. If they didn't step in now,
they saw they could have a massive problem on their hands.
Speaker 7 (13:41):
This was a time when a lot of younger people
with very limited or no financial services experience saw what
they thought was the next big thing and wanted to
be part of it.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Howard Fisher is a former prosecutor for the SEC.
Speaker 7 (13:55):
There were tons of icos at that point, all sorts
of crazy things. I remember a white paper for something
known as banana Coin, a banana based digital currency redeemable
for two pounds of Cambodian bananas if you went to
the plantation and Cambodia where they were being grown. So
it had really become a wild wild West.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
It wasn't bananas that had the SEC knocking on Centristor,
but a bunch of other things.
Speaker 7 (14:23):
This is an interesting case because on the one hand,
this was sort of your garden variety fraud. Makeup stuff
about your business prospects, makeup stuff about your business partners,
makeup stuff about your executive board, which admittedly is a
little bit out there. But what made this interesting was
that they were taking this and putting it into the
(14:43):
crypto space. And this is one of the first times
that celebrity endorsers were roped into digital asset promotion.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
By the end of November twenty seventeen, the SEC sent
a subpoena a center Tech.
Speaker 7 (14:58):
Typically, the first thing that what happens is that whoever
gets a subpoena panics.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
To Sam's credit, he didn't panic.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
He tells me like, oh yeah, it's nothing, bro guys.
Spoke with his attorney. He was great and he helped
me with everything.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Months earlier, Sam wanted to make sure center Tech wouldn't
have any problems with the SEC. A new case called
Sam's attention, so he texted the team about it.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Sorbe brought up a company called Recoin, which I got
in troubled by the SEC.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
In September of twenty seventeen, the SEC had announced an
enforcement action against Recoin for selling unregistered securities as part
of two separate initial coin offerings. The allegations and charges
were steep. Sam Sharma feared that the Security and Exchange
Commission could be a problem for centri Tech.
Speaker 7 (15:47):
One thing that people tend to misunderstand about the SEC
is that the SEC is an agency of limited jurisdiction.
It does not exist to protect people against business scams,
and it doesn't exist as a general regulator of the
world of business. It exists to protect people from being
defrauded in connection with a purchase or sale of securities.
(16:11):
And the SEC is only empowered to act if the
instrument at issue is defined as a security, and that
has been the key issue in the digital asset space.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
That was and still is a trillion dollar question. Were
these cryptocurrencies of security? Sorby needed to know his coin
was not in fact a security, or at least that
the SEC wouldn't consider it one.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
I guess like Sorbie just was trying to find clarification
on what was happening to other coins, just like that
of being nervous.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
So Sorby consulted with one of the partners of the
law firm, Pope and done. According to Pope and Donn's website,
their offices sat in downtown Manhattan, right around the corner
from Wall Street. Sorby was lucky enough to put Eric
Pope on retainer. Eric assured sorry that the SEC would
only go after Center Tech if it was considered a security,
(17:09):
like a stock, the very thing that got recoined in trouble.
According to their lawyer, mister Pope, Centri Tech was definitely
not a security. So when the SEC subpoena showed up
on November twenty ninth, twenty seventeen, Sorby wasn't worried.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Sorby just replied back in email form to the SEC
and was like, listen, I spoke to an attorney and
got clarification that it wasn't a security, and they were
probably like, what who is this guy?
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Damn that's pretty ballsy to reach out to the SEC
and tell them their definition of a security was wrong.
Here's Howard Fisher Again.
Speaker 7 (17:50):
We've seen the SEC aggressively argue that pretty much every
single digital asset would perhaps the exception of bitcoin, is
in fact a secure, and if it's a security, the
SEC could regulate it and it could step in to
stop scams involving them.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Sam Sowerby Sharma would rely on the details of his
attorney's opinion to fight the subpoena. But there was one
important detail that Sam did not know about his attorney.
Eric Pope, didn't exist, just like Centia CEO Michael Edwards,
he was completely made up.
Speaker 5 (18:27):
Eric Pope was meant to be a lawyer, educated at
the Warden school just like Donald Trump and then New
York University School of Law with a long track record
as a successful lawyer.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Ben Schreckinger is a political journalist who unmasked Eric Pope
to the world.
Speaker 5 (18:44):
Eric Pope was a persona invented by John Lambert.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
All right, so who the fuck is John Lambert.
Speaker 5 (18:52):
John Lambert was a college student who was engaging in
an elaborate fraud, creating a fake law for charging people
thousands of dollars for legal services and making it all up.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Essentially, So this is where things get interesting. John Lambert
was a college student who, along with one of his buddies,
created the fake law firm of Pope and Donn and
then advertise it on freelancing websites like upwork.
Speaker 5 (19:19):
As things got more elaborate, they created a website with
a stable of attorneys with very impressive biographies, and it
turned out that at least some of those biographies had
just been ripped from Pravath swanmon Moore, which is one
of the most prestigious law firms in the country.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Sound familiar, It's like John Lambert pulled the page straight
from Sam and Ray's playbook.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
He grew up in Eastern Tennessee. He liked to play
video games. He met friends online playing video games, and
he was obsessed with the movie The Wolf of Wall Street.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
Hi, I'm Jordan Belford.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
I'm the broker from child.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
From New York. Yes, yeah, have a seat.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
How are you This stuff regulated?
Speaker 7 (20:06):
Sort of Jesus Christ is spread on these is huge.
Speaker 5 (20:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
And that's the point, Jordan, what do you get on
blue Chip?
Speaker 7 (20:12):
Stop?
Speaker 2 (20:13):
I make one percent. I didn't make one pink sheets
it's fifty.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
You know.
Speaker 5 (20:19):
The story of Jordan belfour is a guy who makes
big money, is very flashy and is eventually exposed as fraud.
And that's a theme of the story of John Lambert
slash Eric Pope.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
If you look at Eric Pope's profile on upwork, which
as of twenty twenty four is still active, it says
at Pope and dun Law, we offer reliable and effective
legal services. Our seasoned professionals are led by Eric Pope,
a graduate of the New York University School of Law,
and Jonathan Dunn.
Speaker 5 (20:54):
Yeah. If you believe what you're reading on the internet,
you're getting a high powered man. Had an attorney with
an address in New York with New York city phone number.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
But here's the thing about John Lambert. He wasn't just
any ordinary college student.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
John Lambert was catapulted to unlikely prominence by co founding
the Students for Trump group, which became huge force on
social media during Trump's rise to power. One of the
things they became known for that got them a lot
of attention was posting photos of college aged women and
skimpy outfits, often with Trump campaign paraphernalia.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
So yeah, centri Tek was paying six hundred and fifty
dollars an hour to the co founders of Students for Trump,
who was also moonlighting as a fake high profile lawyer.
You can't make this shit up.
Speaker 5 (21:48):
According to the indictment, this money got sent to a
PayPal account.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
A law firm collecting legal bills through PayPal. Seems legit right,
Too bad they didn't accept bitcoin. Sam wasn't the only
one to fall for John Lambert's scam, but Sam's decision
to forward Eric Pope's name and legal opinion to the
SEC led to John Lambert's undoing.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
It's definitely crazy that, like, you know, some guy we
met off upwork that we used as an attorney ended
up being some big time scammer that was taken down
because Sam used his name. When it came to the
SEC investigation.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
John Lambert was eventually arrested, and his lawyer blamed the
TV show suits. He said the character Mike Ross, who
pretended to be a Harvard educated lawyer, led John to
believe that he too could practice being a lawyer.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
At no point did Sam ever tell me that this
was an attorney from upwork. But it doesn't surprise me
one bit that that's where he found the attorney.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
John Lambert's co conspirator flipped on him and cooperated with
the fed's investigation. In twenty nineteen, John Lambert pled guilty
to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and got thirteen months
in prison. In a way, if it weren't for centri Tech,
Eric Polpe may still be giving fraud and legal advice.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
I don't know. I think in war right, like you
just take it on the chin. I don't think Sam
would be like upset about it. I just think he'd
be like, wow, it got me, you know, like always
finagling and scamming things, you see how easily it's done.
So if I see like a good scamming'm like that
was pretty good. I mean that's how I always take things.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Ugh, this fucking guy with a class action lawsuit and
an SEC investigation looming over centri Tech, Ray had stepped
aside and was busy enjoying his retirement.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
I was just at the casino, just fucking hookers, gambling
up a storm, just fucking being a complete degenerate.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Ray just couldn't help himself, and now that he was
no longer a part of centri Tech, he went back
to screwing over Sam Sharma, just like he did in
high school. He'd continue his pump and dump scheme extracting
money from the company. It was another big fuck you
to Sam Sorbi Sharma. Each day Ray would pump up
the value of the center coin and then dump his
(24:13):
coins out of profit.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
I went from having a couple hundred thousand in my
bank from CenTra to having millions of dollars in my
bank account from CenTra. I was like, fuck it, I'm
undercutting Sorbi as much as possible.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
That money also helped to support raise many bad habits.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
My Xanax intake was insane. I would go get a
prescription for one hundred and twenty zanax is supposed to
last you a month. I'd finished that in four days.
But then There'd be times where I'd run out and
I'd have seizures. It was a point where there was
a shortage of xanax in Florida, and I kept running out.
I always wanted someone there, like if I was having
(24:50):
a seizure, to like, you know, bring me to the
hospital cold nine one one. Realistically, I was on a
path that died anyways.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
In twenty eighteen, it wasn't Ray, but the man Ray
looked up to who passed away. His grandfather, Bill Hagner,
lost his fight against cancer.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
You know, he was so sick for so long that
I don't think he wanted to really be around much longer.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Bill Hagner died in late March of twenty eighteen. Even today,
his LinkedIn profile lists him as the president of centri Tech.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
I'm not good with dealing with loss at all. I
don't know if it's like a sociopathic tendency, but I
never cry at wakes and whatnot. I don't really like
the whole thought process of being sad over death. I
don't know if that's just my way because I don't
know how to cry it might have been like the
first person I would cry for. But like a few
days later, I'm playing in this very high stakes poker
(25:45):
game like this one hundred thousand dollars by and I'm
in for probably like a quarter million, and I get
a jail call.
Speaker 8 (25:52):
This is a prepaid call from an inmate at the
County Correctional facility.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Ray was curious, so we answered. It was Sam calling
and he had some bad news.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
They had just picked up Farcas. They had just picked
up Sorbi. Like, what the fuck happened here?
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Ray could hear the fear in Sam's voice. He explained
how that day, April first, twenty eighteen, Robert Farcas was
at the Miami Airport. He was about to board a
flight to Singapore when the FBI swooped in and arrested
him at the gate. There was speculation from the FBI
that Robert was about to flee the country.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
I don't know what the fuck he was trying to do,
if you really would have fled or not.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
When looking deeper into Farcas's trip information, it suggested that
he was traveling with another Center Tech employee on company
business to South Korea, and records show Farcus book to
return flight home. Regardless, Sam and Farcas were in deep
shit and facing a handful of charges that had to
do with centri Tech.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
I'm talking to him and I'm like, why didn't they
arrest me? I should have never asked that over the phone.
And he should have never even called me from the jail.
You know, you're not supposed to call people that you
committed the crime with from the jail. It's a criminal etiquette.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
The two weren't just facing jail time. The SEC was
also coming after their money. Along with criminal charges, the
SEC filed civil charges.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
I leave the casino that night and I'm like looking
over my shoulder, thinking like they're coming for me for sure.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Ray hurried to his car. He looked around the parking garage. Nothing.
He got in his car and drove home the whole
time staring into his rear view mirror, expecting at any
moment to see flashing red and blue lights. But it
never happened. He made it home and ran inside. The
FBI didn't arrest Ray that day, or the next day,
(27:43):
or even that week.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
It was just like every day on super high alert,
thinking they're coming for me. But a couple of weeks past,
I'm like, are they ever even going to come for me?
Maybe they're just not arrested me.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Twenty anxiety ridden days went by until early on April twentieth,
twenty eighteen, Ray heard that dreaded pounding on his front door.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
About five thirty. I just hear loud banging on the door.
I surrendered to the FBI.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
There.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
They allowed me to put on my clothes and take
me downstairs. It was super embarrassing too, because I lived
in a complex, so like you know, everybody I know
is like in the hallways watching me get it taken out,
and I see these people every day.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
All Ray could think about was how glad he was
that his grandfather wasn't around to see him standing there
with cuffs on.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
He was proud of me the day he died. Him
seeing me get arrested probably would have killed them anyways.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Much like Sam and Robert Farcas. They charged Ray with wirefraud,
security fraud and conspiracy to commit both charges. All of
them were facing up to sixty five years in prison.
Speaker 8 (28:53):
It was hard for me to tell who did what here,
who was responsible for what? And I'm sure that they
had different levels of responsibility.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Credit Nathaniel Popper of The New York Times and his
article about Centritech for helping to put these three founders
on the fed's radar.
Speaker 8 (29:10):
The SEC sued them six months after my story, which
kind of suggests that the story may have piqued their
interest or had them take a look at this. I mean,
this was just so egregious and it was just hard
to ignore.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
At the time. The case was among the first in
a wave of litigation by the SEC.
Speaker 8 (29:36):
Oftentimes, the way regulators and law enforcement decide the cases
they bring is the case that will set the precedent
that they want to set, that will make it clear
you can't do this. This was the clearest crystallization of
all of these issues where you can say you can't
do all of these different things that these people did,
and don't think that you can't.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
By the end of April, CenTra Tech's three founders were
sitting in jail. Their fates would rest in the hands
of justice.
Speaker 6 (30:07):
Your honor. When I started Centertech, I had a vision
of prosperity, happiness, and good fortune for everyone involvement for
the hardship any of them suffered, I'm truly sorry and
I pray for a day where there is solitude in
everyone's life affected by this.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Next time, on Creating a Con.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
You can only fake it to You make it for
so long before somebody finds.
Speaker 8 (30:28):
Out that your Harvard degree is not so Crimson.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
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 coen at gmail dot com.
We appreciate your support. One way to support our show
(30:56):
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 at Glass Podcasts.
The show is hosted and produced by me Johnny B. Good,
(31:16):
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
(31:37):
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
(31:59):
a the story of bitcom. Continue binging the rest of
the series one hundred percent add free, and stay tuned
for early access to bonus episodes and additional content exclusively
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visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Host
Jonny B. Good
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