February 19, 2025 • 26 mins
Caroline and her business partners arrive in Austin, excited to have their first meeting with Whole Foods CEO A.C. Gallo the very next morning. Caroline’s already talked to him during a phone call set up by David, and she’s giddy with anticipation. But suddenly, the meeting gets pushed. And then it gets pushed again. And again. And again. Five days later, Caroline makes a shocking discovery about David and the man she met on the phone.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Previously on Once upon a.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Con Several times Caroline would say to me in tears
that I thought this was my chance to be lucky.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
I thought this was my chance for someone to save me.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
I wanted the pot of gold at the end of
the rainbow. And I'm not ashamed to say it.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
That was the start of the cancer that David Blum
kind of planted.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I empty my bank account of all the cash I
have and get my loved ones and business partners to
fork over a combined thirty five thousand dollars to David
Bloom for that Soho house IPO.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
I remember I venmoed you, Yeah, venmo to nowhere.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
And shortly after that, David offers to invest two million
dollars of his own money in my company.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
He was the center of everything.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
It was bizarre who pinned everybody against each other. But
suddenly none of that matters because David gets the CEO
of Whole Foods AC Gallo interest did in selling my
Pizza Girl pasta sauce in every one of their five
hundred stores.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
Ac it's David. I'm gonna put you on a speak
your phone an interest you to Caroline.
Speaker 6 (01:10):
Right, Hi, how are you little did I know this
was the beginning of a nightmare that changed my life forever.
Speaker 7 (01:28):
Ship is what you?
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I'm Caroline de Morey and this is Once Upon a
con Episode three, dangling that Carrot.
Speaker 5 (01:56):
Ac and Ron go back over the deal of selling
the Wild Too Whole Food and who is part of Amazon?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Right It's July fourteenth, twenty twenty one. I'm standing now
in David Bloom's immaculate apartment at the Villa Carlotta that
he's paying eight grand a month for. He's prepping me
for the call he's about to make to Whole Food
CEO Ac Gallo, a man he knows through his close
friendship with billionaire Ron Berkele, and Sarana is now one of.
Speaker 5 (02:28):
The four artist shareholders of Amazon because of the Whole
Foods stock.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
I told David Bloom I wanted to record all of
this on my voice memos app so that I could
make notes later to share with my business partners. He
didn't object. I mean, he's dropping a lot of knowledge
on me right now, and I just want to make
sure I catch it all.
Speaker 5 (02:47):
And then the Whole Food's converted into Amazon's stock, got it?
No one knows? I mean, you know. Wow, I just
know that thisse we're friends.
Speaker 8 (02:55):
That's crazy.
Speaker 5 (02:55):
He's a big wig at Amazon, Ron, Wow, but he
knows ac of them multi.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Oh my god, this is literally a dream come true
for me. I'm pinching myself. I am so happy. David
calls up Whole Food CEO Ac Gallo, and I'm right
there beside him for freaking out.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
Ac sitting here with Caroline, the founder of CEO of
Pizza Girl, Thank you so much for taking time to
chat with me.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yes, Ron Berkele, the billionaires supermarket mogul I told you
about in the last episode, who David says he's good
friends with. That's how A. C. Gallo found out about
me and Pizza.
Speaker 9 (03:42):
Girl, about yourself.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
So this is my moment to pitch A C. Gallo.
I'm excited and I'm terrify, but I'm ready. Pizza Girl
pasta sauce belongs in every single Whole Food store in
the country, and I'm going to explain to their CEO
in no uncertain terms why.
Speaker 10 (04:12):
Okay, So my family owns a tiny, little hole in
the wall pizza restaurants called The Mare's Pizza. So I
grew up you know, in these pizza restaurants, and everybody
called me the pizza girl, and I hated it.
Speaker 5 (04:24):
I would walk down the street and they'd be like, Oh,
what's up, where's the pizza pizza girl?
Speaker 11 (04:28):
And I hated it for so long, and then you know,
I grew up and I.
Speaker 10 (04:31):
Was like, fine, you guys gonna call me the pizza girl,
that I'm going to be the pizza girl. And so
I found that there was really nothing special in the
organic sauce world, nothing by a millennial mom and just
something that was organic and ticked all the box. It
is no headed sugar and just like spoke to a
more now generation. It's all either very old world manly
(04:53):
like areos or like a Newman's and there was nothing
that really spoke to me. And I wanted to be
able to feed my daughter something healthy and organic right
out of the jar. So I use my grandmother's recipes
and I kind of brought this vision into today.
Speaker 11 (05:07):
And I'm finding a lot of supermarkets are really excited
about it, and I find that when people try it,
they buy it. It's definitely the best yard sauce that
you can find.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
FYI, David is motioning for me to speed things up
the entire time I'm talking, and it really throws me.
Speaker 11 (05:25):
A lot of celebrities talking about it, like Katty Hilton
just said it's her favorite sauce. Christy Cavalier just said
it's her favorite sauce. Like all these people are being
very verbal and nocal about this being the best tasting
and you know, their family's favorite sauce, which has been
really awesome. So I've just been getting a ton of
love on it and on just this very small startup level.
Speaker 9 (05:47):
So this sounds great if we're actually looking for products
like you were, just that.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
Align with our values, right.
Speaker 9 (05:55):
And products get Promotorily is a grand company.
Speaker 10 (06:01):
I don't know if you're familiar with the program we have
mobile producer program.
Speaker 5 (06:06):
I don't know about the loan program. No, the pp earns.
Speaker 9 (06:11):
Money small scale emergent businesses, local businesses helping investing communities.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
But in order to discuss this, like to have you
and your team come, what's it wants to next month?
Speaker 9 (06:25):
Okay, that we can set that up here with David
to help with that thinking into August.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
Perhaps, does that sounds like something you could do?
Speaker 7 (06:36):
Absolutely?
Speaker 5 (06:36):
I'm a partner. We got away for three weeks, right.
Speaker 10 (06:39):
Uh, they are going away, yes, but regardless, I'll make
it happen.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
I'll go mountains to make this happen.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
So I also said, a see your deck also has
your deck.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yes, it's lovely.
Speaker 5 (06:54):
This is a small part of what we want to
discuss with you.
Speaker 11 (06:56):
So is the next step meeting in Austin or for okay.
Speaker 5 (07:02):
What's your team?
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Okay?
Speaker 5 (07:05):
Yeah, with his team and can talk about the program,
which is sort of like the gateway to how will
you scale up to? Do you know? You know, a
national global deal.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
With the awesome all Right, the headquarters of Whole Foods
is in Austin, Texas, and their CEO, A. C. Gallo,
wants us all me, my business partners Rebecca Naron and
David to fly out there and meet with him a
S A P with the goal of getting Pizza Girl
(07:38):
pasta sauce on the shelves of every Whole food supermarket
in the country. Is this really happening? I had already
spoken to the president.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
Of Whole Foods.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
This is legit as far as I'm concerned, you know.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
To be.
Speaker 12 (07:55):
In the headquarters of Whole Foods and he would just
come for the first.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Bit, right, that's my business partner Beck.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
We did question why it was coming.
Speaker 12 (08:04):
Aaron and I were like, why does David need to
come to open the door and say, here's these guys.
So that was we were like, I kind of would
rather go.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Just us regardless. In late August of twenty twenty one,
nearly five months after first meeting David Bloom at the
Villa Carlata, my business partners Beck and Aaron and I
board a Delta flight to Austin, Texas, a city of
about a million people. Smack dab in the middle of
the lone star estate, there's slogan is and I kid
(08:33):
you not keep Austin weird. Definitely sounds like my kind
of place, and it's really beautiful here. We check into
our hotel and we wait.
Speaker 12 (08:44):
So we left on a Wednesday. We were having the
meeting on the Thursday, yes.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
And as we're sitting in Texas, we were kay on cash,
spending money for hotel rooms, flights. Plus David knew that
this is a baby startup and that we can't be
spending money that we you know, shouldn't be spending. We're
sitting in Texas and all of a sudden it's the
next day and David wasn't there.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
He said, you were delaying text He said.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
He was at he had to go to a meeting
at the head of Netflix's house. He was very good
friends at the head of Netflix. David used to talk
about Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos a lot. I knew they
were close, so his excuse made sense to me. By
the way, he was also dangling that carrot with Ryan right.
Ryan was my boyfriend at the time. Ryan had dabbled
(09:32):
in acting, and he had said that he was going
to help him get some sort of job in a
show on Netflix. And even though David's telling us he's
been texting with the Whole food CEO Ac Gallo the
past couple days about our upcoming meeting, we were getting
frustrated because we couldn't get a clear picture of what
Whole Foods was expecting from us in that meeting.
Speaker 12 (09:55):
And we kept asking David what will they want? What
do we need to prepare? And he was not giving
any answers.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
I've never been to a meeting in my whole career
of walking in completely blind from or by.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
The person who set it up.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Is zero background other than Whole Foods are going to
give us money.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
My question is why.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Then, all of a sudden, our auspicious Whole Foods meeting
gets pushed.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
He would say that I've had a COVID issue in
the office. No meetings today. I'm going to fly in tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Yep, COVID strikes again. It was actually a very common
thing back in twenty twenty one for sudden outbreaks of
COVID to snarl meetings and public events, So it made
sense to us. I actually got the vaccine for this meeting.
I did the Johnson Johnson and I was so sick
from it. And then shockingly that vaccination eventually becomes a
(10:59):
nun other reason for Whole Foods to delay the meeting
yet again. I whn't got vaccinated, but because I didn't
do it in time, a certain amount of days before
they could meet with me in person, I'm like, can't
we just do a zoom meeting at this point, you know,
with COVID and with all this stuff. So since we
got to Austin on Wednesday, our Thursday meeting with Whole
(11:22):
Foods that got delayed to Friday because of a COVID
outbreak in their offices is now being delayed till Monday,
because by then it would have been fourteen days since
my vaccination. Yeah, so it looks like we're spending the
weekend in our hotel rooms in Austin, and David has
yet to even fly out here to meet us. He's
(11:43):
still in Los Angeles.
Speaker 12 (11:45):
And on the Friday he rang you and he accidentally
did not hang up his phone. I don't remember where
he said he was, but I said, you know, don't
hang it up.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
I want to hear where he got to go.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
I'm in a meeting.
Speaker 12 (11:58):
And then you could hear him shuffling around and walking
into someone.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Wasn't he buying stamps or something? He's in the post office.
He's in the.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Post office, like I can hear him talking to people.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Eventually, David hung up his phone, and I remember I
called David and I was really upset. I was like David, like,
you know, I'm a mom, Like I have to get
home to my daughter. There was things that were really
starting to build up, like how can I sit here?
And he would say things to me like Caroline, when
I was broke, I you know, I spent my last dollar,
my last dime. You need to fight for what you
(12:32):
want in life. You need to stay in Texas and wait.
It doesn't matter if it takes a month, you wait
for that big meeting that's going to change your life.
So it's Sunday now, and our Whole Foods meeting is
scheduled for early Monday morning, and David's still not in
Austin yet. So I call him and he tells me
he's on his way to the airport. But I want
(12:54):
to make sure. So I called my friend Sylvie who's
at the car Lotta, and I said, just checking, like,
is David like, because he's supposed to be on his
way to the airport. She goes, he's by the pool
doing a barbecue for all these other people right now.
He's barbecuing at the when we're waiting for him to
land for this meeting, and he's like literally barbecuing at
(13:16):
the Villa Carlotta. I am stunned. Why is David lying
to me about heading to the airport. And if he's
lying to me about that, what else is he lying about?
So beck Aarin and I go for a walk to
clear our heads and figure out what we should do next.
And as we're making our way across a giant bridge
(13:39):
near downtown Austin, with the setting sun reflecting off the
tall buildings behind us, casting a bright haze on everything,
and with cars whizzing by, Beck suddenly stops in her
tracks on that bridge. She looks like she's seen a ghost.
She's scrolling through her phone now in shock, so aarin
(14:00):
he starts recording video of her on his phone.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
Can you just tell us what's just sad?
Speaker 12 (14:06):
He just found this article on quite just googling David
Bloom's scammer.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
We're just standing on the bridge after five days in
Austin waiting for this mysterious meeting to happen.
Speaker 12 (14:18):
After his arrest, mister Bloom pleaded guilty to federal mail
fraud and securities violations, and he traded in his lavish
apartment for the allen Wood Correctional Center.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
He seemed contrite.
Speaker 12 (14:27):
He really seemed like he thought he was a stupid, jerky,
ridiculous thing to do. When mister Bloom was released in
nineteen ninety four, he went home to his parents. He
started appearing at his old haunts, trying to make new friends.
He popped up at Nello and Elaine's and began hitting
the rounds of the charity galas and birthday parties of
the Upper east Side young investment bankers.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
He showed up to a gala the Second Chances as
a charity.
Speaker 12 (14:50):
He wore a pretty compelling story, said a woman who
met him shortly after his relations.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
At this point, while Beck's reading an old news article
about David blue UM's criminal past. I'm standing about twenty
feet behind her talking to a friend on the phone.
But I can see them freaking out about something. So
I walk up and Aaron says to me, a.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Really messive Oh no, what he's a scanner has been
in Chile a few times.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Beck has just found something.
Speaker 12 (15:22):
He has IPRs for people waitresses given twenty pound Beck.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Just found it by googling David Blooms. My heart is pounding.
I gotta go.
Speaker 13 (15:30):
I'm pulling back.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
I'm in utter shock and disbelief. Apparently David Bloom has
a long history of scamming a lot of people. I mean,
we found news reports about his cons that go all
the way back to the nineteen eighties. It feels like
my world just got ripped out from under me. All
those times that we were googling just David Bloom and
(15:56):
hundreds of other David Blooms would show up in the searchers.
No one ever tried googling David Bloom and the word
scammer until just now. It's a lot to take in.
We get back to the hotel and I just lose
it in the elevator.
Speaker 5 (16:16):
I all just try the.
Speaker 8 (16:17):
Hope of like being successful, and like he dangled the
carrot of like to hard working people that work really fucking.
Speaker 7 (16:25):
Hard and just wanted to like achieve something. We didn't
want to gift it to us. We wanted to work.
Speaker 13 (16:32):
We booked for I mean, all the decks and everything
that we put together for this fucking meeting, all the
all the pre planning, everything that we did is just insane.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Walking back to my hotel room, I can barely keep
it together.
Speaker 7 (16:48):
Just feel like closing up. I just feel like I'm
living a panic topic.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
The weight of everything is just crashing down around me
now because I'm beginning to realize that nothing David Bloom
told me was true. Nothing. I don't even think we
ever really had a meeting set up with the CEO
of Whole Foods, and I don't think there's an IPO
(17:15):
he invested our thirty five thousand dollars in and not
only are we out all that money, but we've spent
thousands of dollars on this Austin trip. We've been here
for five days now for nothing, and I feel like
it's all my faults. I roped everyone into this, my
(17:37):
business partners, my boyfriend, my boyfriend's family. It's just too much.
I'm standing in the hotel hallway now, just drowning in
my own grief and regret for literally hours. I'm talking
(18:00):
to Beck and Aaron. They're in their room and I'm
in mine, and we're on FaceTime, and I'm vacillating back
and forth between coherence and bawling, and I had this
bad feeling. I know we need to plan anyway, but
this whole thing is just really fucked with me.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
That's cool.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
Now, A bits trying too, crying for her.
Speaker 8 (18:28):
No, no, no, I'm fucking stupid, and I'm just like
a drug and glies along and I'm just run run's money,
like his family's money.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Ryan was my boyfriend at the time. He borrowed ten
thousand dollars from his family to invest with David Bloom,
and the fallout from all of this is actually one
of the reasons why we broke up. Eventually, though, my
tears turned to anger.
Speaker 7 (19:00):
Fine nights in Austin, five.
Speaker 10 (19:03):
Nights we've been sitting here in Austin because it's our
fucking life.
Speaker 7 (19:07):
We're gonna change.
Speaker 5 (19:08):
Oh my god, Oh my fucking god.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
I'm so angry. But what's really throwing me right now
about this whole entire situation is that I actually talked
to Whole food CEO A. C. Gallow on the phone
with David. Remember, yes, but now in light of everything
we just discovered, it's almost comical in a sick and
(19:37):
twisted way.
Speaker 13 (19:38):
We're having a corporate meeting with meeting tomorrow and the
president of Whole Foods A. C.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Gallow, who I spoke to on the phone.
Speaker 5 (19:47):
That did you not?
Speaker 7 (19:49):
Obviously not?
Speaker 5 (19:51):
I am fucking freaky.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Who the hell was pretending to be AC on the
phone with me that day?
Speaker 5 (20:02):
We're actually.
Speaker 12 (20:06):
With our values right.
Speaker 8 (20:11):
Comedy.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
I even listened to Ted talks with A. C. Gallo,
the president of Whole Foods, and this person who I
spoke to on the phone sounded identical to him. Did
David hire someone to impersonate A. C. Gallo? We have
to talk to the police and then all of a sudden.
Speaker 13 (20:33):
David just Textan. David just Textan waiting for our to call.
He's a few minutes behind schedule.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
David always refers to billionaire Ron Berkele as R in
his text messages to me. But I'm pretty certain at
this point that David doesn't actually know Ron Burkell at all.
So I make a call to someone who actually does
know billionaire Ron Burkell is that's never heard of David
(21:12):
Bloom because Fred Durst just told me they're friends. They're
best friends. And I was scared to ask him about
a while ago because if it was so believable, and
if it got back to Ron, then I was investigating
David that he would be like, how dare you?
Speaker 8 (21:32):
You know?
Speaker 1 (21:33):
It was a very good manipulative. I just feel like
an idiot.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Everybody does who's been skinned. He's been doing this for.
Speaker 8 (21:41):
Dickheads, dicads, and that's what makes me want to get
him do this.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
I just thought of something. He's been doing it for
almost as long as.
Speaker 7 (21:50):
You've been alive.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
Yeah, since the eighties and eighty four, if I'm honest. Though,
looking back, there were signs that David Bloom was off
for starters His apartment was weirdly spotless, like Serial Killer
Spotless twenty four to seven. It didn't even look like
anyone lived there really.
Speaker 12 (22:12):
He had a couple of shirts hanging in the closet,
that's all, and the few shoes lined up.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
David's room was like a furniture showroom.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
It always looked like he was ready to pack up
and go. It never looked like he made it his home.
Everything was very tidy.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
I think for someone like him, with so much stuff,
as he calls it going on in his head, he
would need to have everything else very clear and concise
and clean and organized around him because he's constantly organizing
things in his head, and even his phone.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
I remember Ryan saying once that David Bloom told him.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
That he deletes his text at the end of every day,
so that texts are just a thought. They're not a
communication process, They're just a thought at a moment in time.
Was his reason for it, And in my head, I said,
anyone deleting the tracks every day is for a reason.
You know, he was the only person on you deleting
every text.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
Maybe Ryan started deleting his He did.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Start deleting his text for a while.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Of course, you know, Ryan's always working on his mental
health and stuff like that. He thought it was like
a positive thing, when really it's just the scam artist,
who is you know, covering his tracks. It suddenly dawns
on back what our next steps need to be. I mean,
we're definitely reporting David to the police, but in the meantime.
Speaker 5 (23:34):
Record him Wall.
Speaker 12 (23:35):
We're in Texas and we need to get him to
say talk about Icy Gallo, talk about the meeting.
Speaker 7 (23:40):
You have to say, but I've been here five days.
Speaker 12 (23:42):
Every fact you can put in there that he can
confirm that he's set up for you.
Speaker 7 (23:47):
Then we've got him admitting that he did all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
So I pick up my phone and tap David Bloom.
I'm shaking with Ada.
Speaker 8 (24:13):
And him.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Then I suddenly get a text from David. Listen on phone,
we'll call you after that. I can't keep looking at
my phone to respond. I'm sitting with the CEO of Netflix.
Will text you from the car. He's always talking to
either the CEO of Netflix, ron VRCAL, or the CEO
of the Rams. But now I know that's all bullshit.
(24:43):
He doesn't know any of those people. Eventually, David does
call me back and we recorded it. He's still trying
really hard to convince us this whole Foods meeting is
actually happening.
Speaker 9 (24:56):
I'm trying to do everything that's in my powers. Take
this by I've offered you guys, because they know none
of you have a lot of money. I've offered today
for everyone's trip. I don't care about that. I just
want you all commonly cool.
Speaker 5 (25:07):
Headed because you are going to have a meeting and
they're going to offer you.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Something next time. On Once Upon a Con.
Speaker 9 (25:16):
I'll with dear clutter, I love you whatever you need
till that money comes in. You just tell me, I'll
hand it to you, Okay.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
David Bloom promises us the moon and we record it
all for police. He just thinks I'm just a goodly yummy.
Speaker 12 (25:31):
Now the table's a turn like he doesn't know that
you know, and now you're playing him so that he
can get his just rewards.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
This podcast is dedicated to the memory of my amazing mother,
Bonnie Major, who would be super proud of me standing
up for myself. Once Upon a Con is a production
of AYR Media and thirty two Flavors, hosted by me
Caroline de Morey, executive producers Eliza Rosen for AYR Media,
(26:04):
Alex Baskin for thirty two Flavors, and Jonathan Walton for
Jonathan Walton Productions. Written by Jonathan Walton, Producer Caroline de Morey,
Senior Associate producer Joe Pushesnik Coordinator Molena Kroyesky. Sound designed
by Tim Mulhern, Edited and mixed by Tim Mulhern, Supervising
(26:27):
editor Victoria Chang. Mastered by Victoria Chang. Engineering by Justin
Longerbem Legal counsel for AYR Media, Gianni Douglas. Our theme song,
Freshly Served, was written and performed by the incredibly talented
Mattie Noise and is available on her SoundCloud
Previously on Once upon a.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Con Several times Caroline would say to me in tears
that I thought this was my chance to be lucky.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
I thought this was my chance for someone to save me.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
I wanted the pot of gold at the end of
the rainbow. And I'm not ashamed to say it.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
That was the start of the cancer that David Blum
kind of planted.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I empty my bank account of all the cash I
have and get my loved ones and business partners to
fork over a combined thirty five thousand dollars to David
Bloom for that Soho house IPO.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
I remember I venmoed you, Yeah, venmo to nowhere.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
And shortly after that, David offers to invest two million
dollars of his own money in my company.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
He was the center of everything.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
It was bizarre who pinned everybody against each other. But
suddenly none of that matters because David gets the CEO
of Whole Foods AC Gallo interest did in selling my
Pizza Girl pasta sauce in every one of their five
hundred stores.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
Ac it's David. I'm gonna put you on a speak
your phone an interest you to Caroline.
Speaker 6 (01:10):
Right, Hi, how are you little did I know this
was the beginning of a nightmare that changed my life forever.
Speaker 7 (01:28):
Ship is what you?
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I'm Caroline de Morey and this is Once Upon a
con Episode three, dangling that Carrot.
Speaker 5 (01:56):
Ac and Ron go back over the deal of selling
the Wild Too Whole Food and who is part of Amazon?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Right It's July fourteenth, twenty twenty one. I'm standing now
in David Bloom's immaculate apartment at the Villa Carlotta that
he's paying eight grand a month for. He's prepping me
for the call he's about to make to Whole Food
CEO Ac Gallo, a man he knows through his close
friendship with billionaire Ron Berkele, and Sarana is now one of.
Speaker 5 (02:28):
The four artist shareholders of Amazon because of the Whole
Foods stock.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
I told David Bloom I wanted to record all of
this on my voice memos app so that I could
make notes later to share with my business partners. He
didn't object. I mean, he's dropping a lot of knowledge
on me right now, and I just want to make
sure I catch it all.
Speaker 5 (02:47):
And then the Whole Food's converted into Amazon's stock, got it?
No one knows? I mean, you know. Wow, I just
know that thisse we're friends.
Speaker 8 (02:55):
That's crazy.
Speaker 5 (02:55):
He's a big wig at Amazon, Ron, Wow, but he
knows ac of them multi.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Oh my god, this is literally a dream come true
for me. I'm pinching myself. I am so happy. David
calls up Whole Food CEO Ac Gallo, and I'm right
there beside him for freaking out.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
Ac sitting here with Caroline, the founder of CEO of
Pizza Girl, Thank you so much for taking time to
chat with me.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yes, Ron Berkele, the billionaires supermarket mogul I told you
about in the last episode, who David says he's good
friends with. That's how A. C. Gallo found out about
me and Pizza.
Speaker 9 (03:42):
Girl, about yourself.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
So this is my moment to pitch A C. Gallo.
I'm excited and I'm terrify, but I'm ready. Pizza Girl
pasta sauce belongs in every single Whole Food store in
the country, and I'm going to explain to their CEO
in no uncertain terms why.
Speaker 10 (04:12):
Okay, So my family owns a tiny, little hole in
the wall pizza restaurants called The Mare's Pizza. So I
grew up you know, in these pizza restaurants, and everybody
called me the pizza girl, and I hated it.
Speaker 5 (04:24):
I would walk down the street and they'd be like, Oh,
what's up, where's the pizza pizza girl?
Speaker 11 (04:28):
And I hated it for so long, and then you know,
I grew up and I.
Speaker 10 (04:31):
Was like, fine, you guys gonna call me the pizza girl,
that I'm going to be the pizza girl. And so
I found that there was really nothing special in the
organic sauce world, nothing by a millennial mom and just
something that was organic and ticked all the box. It
is no headed sugar and just like spoke to a
more now generation. It's all either very old world manly
(04:53):
like areos or like a Newman's and there was nothing
that really spoke to me. And I wanted to be
able to feed my daughter something healthy and organic right
out of the jar. So I use my grandmother's recipes
and I kind of brought this vision into today.
Speaker 11 (05:07):
And I'm finding a lot of supermarkets are really excited
about it, and I find that when people try it,
they buy it. It's definitely the best yard sauce that
you can find.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
FYI, David is motioning for me to speed things up
the entire time I'm talking, and it really throws me.
Speaker 11 (05:25):
A lot of celebrities talking about it, like Katty Hilton
just said it's her favorite sauce. Christy Cavalier just said
it's her favorite sauce. Like all these people are being
very verbal and nocal about this being the best tasting
and you know, their family's favorite sauce, which has been
really awesome. So I've just been getting a ton of
love on it and on just this very small startup level.
Speaker 9 (05:47):
So this sounds great if we're actually looking for products
like you were, just that.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
Align with our values, right.
Speaker 9 (05:55):
And products get Promotorily is a grand company.
Speaker 10 (06:01):
I don't know if you're familiar with the program we have
mobile producer program.
Speaker 5 (06:06):
I don't know about the loan program. No, the pp earns.
Speaker 9 (06:11):
Money small scale emergent businesses, local businesses helping investing communities.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
But in order to discuss this, like to have you
and your team come, what's it wants to next month?
Speaker 9 (06:25):
Okay, that we can set that up here with David
to help with that thinking into August.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
Perhaps, does that sounds like something you could do?
Speaker 7 (06:36):
Absolutely?
Speaker 5 (06:36):
I'm a partner. We got away for three weeks, right.
Speaker 10 (06:39):
Uh, they are going away, yes, but regardless, I'll make
it happen.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
I'll go mountains to make this happen.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
So I also said, a see your deck also has
your deck.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yes, it's lovely.
Speaker 5 (06:54):
This is a small part of what we want to
discuss with you.
Speaker 11 (06:56):
So is the next step meeting in Austin or for okay.
Speaker 5 (07:02):
What's your team?
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Okay?
Speaker 5 (07:05):
Yeah, with his team and can talk about the program,
which is sort of like the gateway to how will
you scale up to? Do you know? You know, a
national global deal.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
With the awesome all Right, the headquarters of Whole Foods
is in Austin, Texas, and their CEO, A. C. Gallo,
wants us all me, my business partners Rebecca Naron and
David to fly out there and meet with him a
S A P with the goal of getting Pizza Girl
(07:38):
pasta sauce on the shelves of every Whole food supermarket
in the country. Is this really happening? I had already
spoken to the president.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
Of Whole Foods.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
This is legit as far as I'm concerned, you know.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
To be.
Speaker 12 (07:55):
In the headquarters of Whole Foods and he would just
come for the first.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Bit, right, that's my business partner Beck.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
We did question why it was coming.
Speaker 12 (08:04):
Aaron and I were like, why does David need to
come to open the door and say, here's these guys.
So that was we were like, I kind of would
rather go.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Just us regardless. In late August of twenty twenty one,
nearly five months after first meeting David Bloom at the
Villa Carlata, my business partners Beck and Aaron and I
board a Delta flight to Austin, Texas, a city of
about a million people. Smack dab in the middle of
the lone star estate, there's slogan is and I kid
(08:33):
you not keep Austin weird. Definitely sounds like my kind
of place, and it's really beautiful here. We check into
our hotel and we wait.
Speaker 12 (08:44):
So we left on a Wednesday. We were having the
meeting on the Thursday, yes.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
And as we're sitting in Texas, we were kay on cash,
spending money for hotel rooms, flights. Plus David knew that
this is a baby startup and that we can't be
spending money that we you know, shouldn't be spending. We're
sitting in Texas and all of a sudden it's the
next day and David wasn't there.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
He said, you were delaying text He said.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
He was at he had to go to a meeting
at the head of Netflix's house. He was very good
friends at the head of Netflix. David used to talk
about Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos a lot. I knew they
were close, so his excuse made sense to me. By
the way, he was also dangling that carrot with Ryan right.
Ryan was my boyfriend at the time. Ryan had dabbled
(09:32):
in acting, and he had said that he was going
to help him get some sort of job in a
show on Netflix. And even though David's telling us he's
been texting with the Whole food CEO Ac Gallo the
past couple days about our upcoming meeting, we were getting
frustrated because we couldn't get a clear picture of what
Whole Foods was expecting from us in that meeting.
Speaker 12 (09:55):
And we kept asking David what will they want? What
do we need to prepare? And he was not giving
any answers.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
I've never been to a meeting in my whole career
of walking in completely blind from or by.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
The person who set it up.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Is zero background other than Whole Foods are going to
give us money.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
My question is why.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Then, all of a sudden, our auspicious Whole Foods meeting
gets pushed.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
He would say that I've had a COVID issue in
the office. No meetings today. I'm going to fly in tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Yep, COVID strikes again. It was actually a very common
thing back in twenty twenty one for sudden outbreaks of
COVID to snarl meetings and public events, So it made
sense to us. I actually got the vaccine for this meeting.
I did the Johnson Johnson and I was so sick
from it. And then shockingly that vaccination eventually becomes a
(10:59):
nun other reason for Whole Foods to delay the meeting
yet again. I whn't got vaccinated, but because I didn't
do it in time, a certain amount of days before
they could meet with me in person, I'm like, can't
we just do a zoom meeting at this point, you know,
with COVID and with all this stuff. So since we
got to Austin on Wednesday, our Thursday meeting with Whole
(11:22):
Foods that got delayed to Friday because of a COVID
outbreak in their offices is now being delayed till Monday,
because by then it would have been fourteen days since
my vaccination. Yeah, so it looks like we're spending the
weekend in our hotel rooms in Austin, and David has
yet to even fly out here to meet us. He's
(11:43):
still in Los Angeles.
Speaker 12 (11:45):
And on the Friday he rang you and he accidentally
did not hang up his phone. I don't remember where
he said he was, but I said, you know, don't
hang it up.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
I want to hear where he got to go.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
I'm in a meeting.
Speaker 12 (11:58):
And then you could hear him shuffling around and walking
into someone.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Wasn't he buying stamps or something? He's in the post office.
He's in the.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Post office, like I can hear him talking to people.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Eventually, David hung up his phone, and I remember I
called David and I was really upset. I was like David, like,
you know, I'm a mom, Like I have to get
home to my daughter. There was things that were really
starting to build up, like how can I sit here?
And he would say things to me like Caroline, when
I was broke, I you know, I spent my last dollar,
my last dime. You need to fight for what you
(12:32):
want in life. You need to stay in Texas and wait.
It doesn't matter if it takes a month, you wait
for that big meeting that's going to change your life.
So it's Sunday now, and our Whole Foods meeting is
scheduled for early Monday morning, and David's still not in
Austin yet. So I call him and he tells me
he's on his way to the airport. But I want
(12:54):
to make sure. So I called my friend Sylvie who's
at the car Lotta, and I said, just checking, like,
is David like, because he's supposed to be on his
way to the airport. She goes, he's by the pool
doing a barbecue for all these other people right now.
He's barbecuing at the when we're waiting for him to
land for this meeting, and he's like literally barbecuing at
(13:16):
the Villa Carlotta. I am stunned. Why is David lying
to me about heading to the airport. And if he's
lying to me about that, what else is he lying about?
So beck Aarin and I go for a walk to
clear our heads and figure out what we should do next.
And as we're making our way across a giant bridge
(13:39):
near downtown Austin, with the setting sun reflecting off the
tall buildings behind us, casting a bright haze on everything,
and with cars whizzing by, Beck suddenly stops in her
tracks on that bridge. She looks like she's seen a ghost.
She's scrolling through her phone now in shock, so aarin
(14:00):
he starts recording video of her on his phone.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
Can you just tell us what's just sad?
Speaker 12 (14:06):
He just found this article on quite just googling David
Bloom's scammer.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
We're just standing on the bridge after five days in
Austin waiting for this mysterious meeting to happen.
Speaker 12 (14:18):
After his arrest, mister Bloom pleaded guilty to federal mail
fraud and securities violations, and he traded in his lavish
apartment for the allen Wood Correctional Center.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
He seemed contrite.
Speaker 12 (14:27):
He really seemed like he thought he was a stupid, jerky,
ridiculous thing to do. When mister Bloom was released in
nineteen ninety four, he went home to his parents. He
started appearing at his old haunts, trying to make new friends.
He popped up at Nello and Elaine's and began hitting
the rounds of the charity galas and birthday parties of
the Upper east Side young investment bankers.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
He showed up to a gala the Second Chances as
a charity.
Speaker 12 (14:50):
He wore a pretty compelling story, said a woman who
met him shortly after his relations.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
At this point, while Beck's reading an old news article
about David blue UM's criminal past. I'm standing about twenty
feet behind her talking to a friend on the phone.
But I can see them freaking out about something. So
I walk up and Aaron says to me, a.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Really messive Oh no, what he's a scanner has been
in Chile a few times.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Beck has just found something.
Speaker 12 (15:22):
He has IPRs for people waitresses given twenty pound Beck.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Just found it by googling David Blooms. My heart is pounding.
I gotta go.
Speaker 13 (15:30):
I'm pulling back.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
I'm in utter shock and disbelief. Apparently David Bloom has
a long history of scamming a lot of people. I mean,
we found news reports about his cons that go all
the way back to the nineteen eighties. It feels like
my world just got ripped out from under me. All
those times that we were googling just David Bloom and
(15:56):
hundreds of other David Blooms would show up in the searchers.
No one ever tried googling David Bloom and the word
scammer until just now. It's a lot to take in.
We get back to the hotel and I just lose
it in the elevator.
Speaker 5 (16:16):
I all just try the.
Speaker 8 (16:17):
Hope of like being successful, and like he dangled the
carrot of like to hard working people that work really fucking.
Speaker 7 (16:25):
Hard and just wanted to like achieve something. We didn't
want to gift it to us. We wanted to work.
Speaker 13 (16:32):
We booked for I mean, all the decks and everything
that we put together for this fucking meeting, all the
all the pre planning, everything that we did is just insane.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Walking back to my hotel room, I can barely keep
it together.
Speaker 7 (16:48):
Just feel like closing up. I just feel like I'm
living a panic topic.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
The weight of everything is just crashing down around me
now because I'm beginning to realize that nothing David Bloom
told me was true. Nothing. I don't even think we
ever really had a meeting set up with the CEO
of Whole Foods, and I don't think there's an IPO
(17:15):
he invested our thirty five thousand dollars in and not
only are we out all that money, but we've spent
thousands of dollars on this Austin trip. We've been here
for five days now for nothing, and I feel like
it's all my faults. I roped everyone into this, my
(17:37):
business partners, my boyfriend, my boyfriend's family. It's just too much.
I'm standing in the hotel hallway now, just drowning in
my own grief and regret for literally hours. I'm talking
(18:00):
to Beck and Aaron. They're in their room and I'm
in mine, and we're on FaceTime, and I'm vacillating back
and forth between coherence and bawling, and I had this
bad feeling. I know we need to plan anyway, but
this whole thing is just really fucked with me.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
That's cool.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
Now, A bits trying too, crying for her.
Speaker 8 (18:28):
No, no, no, I'm fucking stupid, and I'm just like
a drug and glies along and I'm just run run's money,
like his family's money.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Ryan was my boyfriend at the time. He borrowed ten
thousand dollars from his family to invest with David Bloom,
and the fallout from all of this is actually one
of the reasons why we broke up. Eventually, though, my
tears turned to anger.
Speaker 7 (19:00):
Fine nights in Austin, five.
Speaker 10 (19:03):
Nights we've been sitting here in Austin because it's our
fucking life.
Speaker 7 (19:07):
We're gonna change.
Speaker 5 (19:08):
Oh my god, Oh my fucking god.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
I'm so angry. But what's really throwing me right now
about this whole entire situation is that I actually talked
to Whole food CEO A. C. Gallow on the phone
with David. Remember, yes, but now in light of everything
we just discovered, it's almost comical in a sick and
(19:37):
twisted way.
Speaker 13 (19:38):
We're having a corporate meeting with meeting tomorrow and the
president of Whole Foods A. C.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Gallow, who I spoke to on the phone.
Speaker 5 (19:47):
That did you not?
Speaker 7 (19:49):
Obviously not?
Speaker 5 (19:51):
I am fucking freaky.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Who the hell was pretending to be AC on the
phone with me that day?
Speaker 5 (20:02):
We're actually.
Speaker 12 (20:06):
With our values right.
Speaker 8 (20:11):
Comedy.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
I even listened to Ted talks with A. C. Gallo,
the president of Whole Foods, and this person who I
spoke to on the phone sounded identical to him. Did
David hire someone to impersonate A. C. Gallo? We have
to talk to the police and then all of a sudden.
Speaker 13 (20:33):
David just Textan. David just Textan waiting for our to call.
He's a few minutes behind schedule.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
David always refers to billionaire Ron Berkele as R in
his text messages to me. But I'm pretty certain at
this point that David doesn't actually know Ron Burkell at all.
So I make a call to someone who actually does
know billionaire Ron Burkell is that's never heard of David
(21:12):
Bloom because Fred Durst just told me they're friends. They're
best friends. And I was scared to ask him about
a while ago because if it was so believable, and
if it got back to Ron, then I was investigating
David that he would be like, how dare you?
Speaker 8 (21:32):
You know?
Speaker 1 (21:33):
It was a very good manipulative. I just feel like
an idiot.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Everybody does who's been skinned. He's been doing this for.
Speaker 8 (21:41):
Dickheads, dicads, and that's what makes me want to get
him do this.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
I just thought of something. He's been doing it for
almost as long as.
Speaker 7 (21:50):
You've been alive.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
Yeah, since the eighties and eighty four, if I'm honest. Though,
looking back, there were signs that David Bloom was off
for starters His apartment was weirdly spotless, like Serial Killer
Spotless twenty four to seven. It didn't even look like
anyone lived there really.
Speaker 12 (22:12):
He had a couple of shirts hanging in the closet,
that's all, and the few shoes lined up.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
David's room was like a furniture showroom.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
It always looked like he was ready to pack up
and go. It never looked like he made it his home.
Everything was very tidy.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
I think for someone like him, with so much stuff,
as he calls it going on in his head, he
would need to have everything else very clear and concise
and clean and organized around him because he's constantly organizing
things in his head, and even his phone.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
I remember Ryan saying once that David Bloom told him.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
That he deletes his text at the end of every day,
so that texts are just a thought. They're not a
communication process, They're just a thought at a moment in time.
Was his reason for it, And in my head, I said,
anyone deleting the tracks every day is for a reason.
You know, he was the only person on you deleting
every text.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
Maybe Ryan started deleting his He did.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Start deleting his text for a while.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Of course, you know, Ryan's always working on his mental
health and stuff like that. He thought it was like
a positive thing, when really it's just the scam artist,
who is you know, covering his tracks. It suddenly dawns
on back what our next steps need to be. I mean,
we're definitely reporting David to the police, but in the meantime.
Speaker 5 (23:34):
Record him Wall.
Speaker 12 (23:35):
We're in Texas and we need to get him to
say talk about Icy Gallo, talk about the meeting.
Speaker 7 (23:40):
You have to say, but I've been here five days.
Speaker 12 (23:42):
Every fact you can put in there that he can
confirm that he's set up for you.
Speaker 7 (23:47):
Then we've got him admitting that he did all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
So I pick up my phone and tap David Bloom.
I'm shaking with Ada.
Speaker 8 (24:13):
And him.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Then I suddenly get a text from David. Listen on phone,
we'll call you after that. I can't keep looking at
my phone to respond. I'm sitting with the CEO of Netflix.
Will text you from the car. He's always talking to
either the CEO of Netflix, ron VRCAL, or the CEO
of the Rams. But now I know that's all bullshit.
(24:43):
He doesn't know any of those people. Eventually, David does
call me back and we recorded it. He's still trying
really hard to convince us this whole Foods meeting is
actually happening.
Speaker 9 (24:56):
I'm trying to do everything that's in my powers. Take
this by I've offered you guys, because they know none
of you have a lot of money. I've offered today
for everyone's trip. I don't care about that. I just
want you all commonly cool.
Speaker 5 (25:07):
Headed because you are going to have a meeting and
they're going to offer you.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Something next time. On Once Upon a Con.
Speaker 9 (25:16):
I'll with dear clutter, I love you whatever you need
till that money comes in. You just tell me, I'll
hand it to you, Okay.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
David Bloom promises us the moon and we record it
all for police. He just thinks I'm just a goodly yummy.
Speaker 12 (25:31):
Now the table's a turn like he doesn't know that
you know, and now you're playing him so that he
can get his just rewards.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
This podcast is dedicated to the memory of my amazing mother,
Bonnie Major, who would be super proud of me standing
up for myself. Once Upon a Con is a production
of AYR Media and thirty two Flavors, hosted by me
Caroline de Morey, executive producers Eliza Rosen for AYR Media,
(26:04):
Alex Baskin for thirty two Flavors, and Jonathan Walton for
Jonathan Walton Productions. Written by Jonathan Walton, Producer Caroline de Morey,
Senior Associate producer Joe Pushesnik Coordinator Molena Kroyesky. Sound designed
by Tim Mulhern, Edited and mixed by Tim Mulhern, Supervising
(26:27):
editor Victoria Chang. Mastered by Victoria Chang. Engineering by Justin
Longerbem Legal counsel for AYR Media, Gianni Douglas. Our theme song,
Freshly Served, was written and performed by the incredibly talented
Mattie Noise and is available on her SoundCloud
Host
Caroline D’Amore
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