D.B. Tuber: The Craigslist Bank Robber

A man, a plan, a bright yellow innertube. Tony Curcio made his name as the Craigslist Bank Robber after he used the site to devastating effect to hire temp workers. And then, years later, he needed a new name after he dipped into the criminal underworld of black market Pokémon.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Elizabeth Dunton. I got a question for you, Yes, do
you know what's ridiculous?

Speaker 3 (00:09):
I most certainly do.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Are you going to share it with me? I guess,
would you please?

Speaker 4 (00:13):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (00:13):
I will.

Speaker 4 (00:14):
I love this time of year.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
I'm a big fan of springtime, spring summertime.

Speaker 4 (00:19):
This spring summertime, not like the dog days of second
later on, but this is the best time. And I'm
really I just the other day cleaned my grill out
in the back.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
Oh not my teeth, the.

Speaker 4 (00:30):
Barb exactly, keep it crusty. The barbecue got that goes.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
WHI whisk it up right?

Speaker 4 (00:38):
It was you know, it was time I took the
cover off of it. It's the season.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yeah, I get ready for it.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
And I so I really like that.

Speaker 4 (00:44):
I like entertaining and grilling and that kind of stuff.
And you know, there are a lot of like chefs
that you can follow who do that. It feels like
it was maybe like fifteen years ago that it was
all like the tattooed chef guys who were like, I
want to show you how to girl?

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:01):
Whatever? Did is it?

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Now? Who are the big girls?

Speaker 3 (01:04):
I don't know?

Speaker 4 (01:05):
But one that I that always kind of pops up
is Bobby Flay.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Oh God, Bobby Fla.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
I'm like, not a fan.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Okay, doesn't people beat him? Is that the whole thing? Yeah,
You're supposed to see him on the guy beat Bobby
And I'm like, oh yeah, really yeah? Do you get
to watch him get whooped at the point of the game.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
I have not watched that show.

Speaker 4 (01:23):
Okay, surprisingly title, So yeah. So Bobby Flay, right, I
all I know about him is that he was married
to one of the eighty as on Law and Order.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Really, I think the blonde which blonde?

Speaker 4 (01:35):
The SVU one?

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Okay, yes, yeah, you're talking about Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
I think they were married. And if I'm wrong, don't correct.
I don't give a whoect anyway, but.

Speaker 4 (01:45):
There was something and I should have looked this up
before I came in here, but something where like when
they divorced, someone had like a sky like a banner,
a plane pulling a banner that said something.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
I don't care if this is true or not. I
love this.

Speaker 4 (01:57):
Yeah, anyway, So Bobby Flay, I don't like him cat
and I'm not sure why, but I just don't like him.
He has joined forces with pepsi.

Speaker 5 (02:06):
Damn it.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
I know it's gonna be about sky riding. Like you
know what, he found a new love because there was
a new message in the sky.

Speaker 4 (02:15):
Okay, so he he was like grabbed Pepsi by the
hand and was like, came here.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
They have a new grilling product.

Speaker 4 (02:22):
I forgot the grill, of course, but it's actually it's
called Smoked, a grilling inspired cola on Colone. It's a
cologne's eric and it combines quote the unmistakable scent combination
of pepsi and a flame fired grill.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
So it's a grid pepsi a grill.

Speaker 4 (02:47):
And so it's like they said, the world's first ever
cola own is designed to reinforce just how well grilling
and pepsi go together.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
They really want to push that cola.

Speaker 4 (02:57):
Is in all cats and all if you don't even
need to fire up the grill to experience the joy
of pepsi and grilling. You can bask any unapologetically delicious
scent everywhere you go, says Jenny Danzy, senior director at
Brand Pepsi.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
They need to apologize to the French for cola and
oh the stink of that, just the portmanteau of it.

Speaker 4 (03:21):
I know, col and then like Bobby Flay, there's a
picture of him all arms crossed like.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Bobby.

Speaker 4 (03:28):
Well, he's the one who came up with this, I guess.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
But do you think like they're gonna rebrand this as
just the burger king smell in a little while?

Speaker 4 (03:38):
Oh my god. Although you know, here's the thing, like
on East Fourteenth in Oakland, if you drive down East
Fourteenth as you go through each neighborhood on like a
Sunday afternoon, each like ethnic neighborhood, you get a different
barbecue scent, and it's amazing. You just roll the windows down,
like you go from like the Vietnamese neighborhood to the
you know, South American Mexican. I like that, but I

(04:02):
don't want to have it on my body anyway.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
That's ridiculous. You think Guy Fieri could pull this off?
I'm sure Cola Owned Can he pull that off? I
think he could.

Speaker 4 (04:11):
It'd be like Donkey Owned can just smell like mayonnaise
and tequila.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Well, well, I'll tell you what. That's ridiculous, Elizabeth. I
got one for you, if you got a second, Yes, please.
All right, this guy I'm gonna tell you about today.
He was called the Craigslist bank robbery Right now, for me,
I prefer his other nickname, dB tuber. Wait, yeah, Potato,

(04:43):
Yeah like dB Cooper, but dB tuber like YouTuber. You know,
like I'll explain later, but just know this, if you're
going to do the crime, make sure you get a
good nickname. Right, you got it. This is Ridiculous cron

(05:16):
a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers. Heiss and cons.
It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred
percent ridiculous. Yes, hey, Elizabeth, Hey, what's that you like stories?

Speaker 5 (05:31):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Sure, you like dogs.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
I love dogs.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
I know you like dogs. I was just dog sitting,
are you how'd that play out for you?

Speaker 4 (05:37):
Amazing?

Speaker 2 (05:38):
Did the dog? I agree? Like, oh hey that was also.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
The dog was like high five.

Speaker 4 (05:42):
I love this.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, let's do this again next week totally. Well, ever,
tell you about my time posting pranks on Craigslist.

Speaker 3 (05:49):
In the early days of Craigslist.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yeah, like this was like, this is like my dog sitting.
It's like how I entertained myself.

Speaker 4 (05:55):
I love this and I've got some Craigslist antics too.

Speaker 3 (05:59):
But keep those.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
Okay, well mine, we're just cheap entertainment. Like I'd post
an ad in the like services section for the short
term gig. There was no short term gig, Elizabeth. But
for example, like in San Diego, I posted an ad
that I needed someone from the military to beat me
up so my boss would believe my lie for why
I was not at work so I wouldn't get fired.
The post it read and I quote not kinky, looking

(06:23):
for a man to beat me up for one hundred
and fifty dollars. It has to be real. Oh my god,
can you guess what kind of reactions I go?

Speaker 4 (06:30):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (06:31):
No.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
One guy emailed me. He said, so I told my
buddy about this, and he said, we can drive there
from Colorado. We will take the trip. Wait, oh yeah,
a woman, a woman wrote in I'm not a feminist,
but I'm a woman. I've had a stupid day and
could use something like this instead of taking it out
on someone in a bitchy way. Off you up, let's talk.

Speaker 4 (06:53):
Wow, I'm not a feminist.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
I'd put in the ad that about how I didn't
think a woman could do it. That's why I'm asking
for a man. And I said look, I'm not a feminist, but.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
I was a little callback.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
It's like some Andy Kaufman stuff. Oh, totally producing me.
You would have loved it. Another person they wrote in
my boyfriend's trying to do this, his phones broke, So
that was the only message I got there picking out
their boyfriend's beating up but.

Speaker 4 (07:21):
The phones broke. I used to a friend of mine.
Friends would post like things for sale on Craigslist. I
would like create an email and then ask them questions
like I was interested in buying it, but like really weird,
like innocent questions, and then they'd get weirder and weirder,
and then they'd be telling all the friend groups like,
oh my god, I'm trying to sell this whatever they

(07:42):
want to know if my couch smells like curry?

Speaker 2 (07:46):
That was I liked another one. I also had posts
on Craigslist at ad in Cambridge, which is where t
is right, and so I asked for.

Speaker 4 (07:56):
People all over the country.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
Oh totally. I was asking people if they were willing
to become part of an underground experiment, right, And I said, like,
would you be a subject and let me do gene
editing on you? So I give you your skin stripes,
or like, maybe give you a taiale. I've worked out
both of these with gene editing. Now, some folks they
were willing to let me try my handed human experiments
for no pay. I offered no money whatsoever. I just
offered them the chance to have a tail or stripes.

(08:22):
Some real life furries. They came at me, Elizabeth, and
I didn't know they were furries at the time. They
didn't say they were. But these people, they were like,
give me the tale, right, Worse.

Speaker 4 (08:30):
Than furries, there are the other can ones.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
Oh yeah, come at me, just come at me at
this point.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
My favorite though, of all the Craigslist prank listings I did,
had to be when I asked people in LA to
come over to my house and help give advice to
my sister, who was reluctant to listen. Right now the
ad read quote wanted persuasive person to convince my sister
she's not a mermaid. And then I explained, because people
are like, well, so I wrote, help my sister thinks
she's a mermaid. We've paid for therapists, she says they're fools.

(08:58):
We've tried bringing in a marine bio. She said he
was denying her truth. She just spends all day in
the bathtub while I'm at work, and she makes my
wife wait on her, bring her food and drinks to
the bathroom, bring her new candles or incense. She gets
drunk on wine and sings. She chanties to herself. She
won't believe no matter how kindly we ask. Right now,

(09:18):
there's more to it. I gave her a whole backstory
about our parents and stuff and how her sister, my
sister wouldn't forgive me. Then I offered three hundred bucks
to anyone who could get her, like spatula, her out
of my bathtub. Now, obviously they have to talk to
her in the bathtub because that's where she lives. So
since she's a mermaid now, one woman wrote back to me, Elizabeth,
is this for real? I would love to come and
give it a try. I am a female unicorn fairy princess,

(09:42):
age thirty four. I think I can do it.

Speaker 4 (09:44):
Oh my god, No, of course you get those right.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
But a guy wrote to me, Dude, your sister just
needs to get laid or have a deep conversation. Either way,
I can be that guy for he let me know,
and I got you.

Speaker 4 (09:56):
Oh, my gosh, everything on this.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
There was another guy who wrote, I used to work
with Alex Jones. If I can handle that, I'm pretty
sure I can handle your mermaid problem. What Alex Jones person? Yes,
there was another person, a woman, who told me in
a rather scathing email for three hundred dollars, I will
convince you that you are a ridiculous storyteller and no
mermaid should ever be denied simply because you can't tell
a story that includes mermaids in a positive light. How

(10:24):
bad ass is it? Your sister is a mermaid. You
would think the tail would be a tell all, but
just like Bible thumpers, you need more proof because I
mentioned that she had a tail, but it's like a tail.
I made it like a costume tale. But anyway, it
was a long ass. Now I probably should have mentioned,
as I said that she was always splashing around in
the bathtub, because that was in the ad, like a

(10:45):
big part of it. Like she's splashing water and she's
got her tail. That's the whole point. Anyway. Some joykill
finally wrote in Elizabeth, what type of sick joke is this?
To lure people? I'm reporting this post? They thought I
was like trying to get people in my home. I'm
bizarre story.

Speaker 4 (11:01):
Where they're like, yet, no, seriously, that was that's a
very predatory, bizarre era in your life. It sounds what
are you talking about?

Speaker 2 (11:09):
I mean like, well, okay, you know the one I
told you about where the guy said, hey, beat me
up for my boss.

Speaker 5 (11:16):
Right.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
One person told me I just saw your ad. I
just want to let you know that you're saying a
woman can't kick your ass. This will make me do
it for real. Ten out of ten, I am a
girl who could beat them out of you. I'll do
it for seventy five dollars. WHOA. This is what I
wanted to see as I wanted to see all like
the negotiations and how people place value on the things
that I arbitrarily created, and how willingly they would be

(11:39):
engaged in and then they would travel from Colorado like
I was like, what will people the story they tell
themselves and then respond to and I'll just get them
going with some nonsense about a mermaid. Anyway, My point
is I tell you all this, Elizae, because this week
I found someone who used that exact same sort of
humor that I have, but instead of for a joke.
He did it to rob Bank. Okay, yeah, see this

(12:02):
dude used Craigslist job offers to pull off a super
wicked heist. Amazing, right, yeah, so I mean, you know me,
I'm like, hey, Craigslist, this is free entertainment. This guy's like,
hey Craigslist, this is free money and decoys. So Elizabeth,
they call him dB tuber. Now you ask why dB tuber?

Speaker 3 (12:20):
Is that like a potato dB Cooper, but Genie Cooper.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
But it's also because he's struck in on the Pacific Northwest,
just like dB Cooper. But also he had a wild plan,
an imaginative escape that he had planned, right, and that
was that he was going to use an inner tube. Therefore,
dB tuber.

Speaker 4 (12:36):
Oh what an inner tube? Yeah, I'm really excited to
find out how this all comes together.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
Doesn't involve water, oh it does.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Okay now these days his bio reads. Anthony Curcio is
a best selling author and motivational speaker who first gained
notoriety when he committed an audacious heist back in two
thousand and eight. Cursio stole four hundred thousand dollars from
an armored truck and then escaped in an inner tube
Downer River. Yeah that's right, Elizabeth, motivational speaker. This dude
is my kind of people in so many more ways

(13:05):
than one.

Speaker 4 (13:06):
How he has turned this into a motivational speaker career.
You know how I feel about motivational speakers and more importantly,
life coaching.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
Oh yeah, GTF.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Oh yeah, he raided those two to gather through in
some Ted Talk to give it some pizzazz and razzle dazzle. Now. Also,
he'll probably need to update his bio from doing Ted
talks to now working on his next memoir from prison
because this year, the same cat got involved in the
underground Pokemon scene.

Speaker 3 (13:30):
Oh wait, stop, Like yes.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
I swear to god he was pushing black market Sharrazard cards. Elizabeth,
I'm not even kidding. This dude dB tuber really got
involved in the Pokemon Criminal Underground, which totally is a thing.
There's Pokemon Criminal Underground, got lighting over here with I
like to imagine there's some dude out there who looks
like Vin Diesel and he's like part of the Pokemon
criminal underworld. He's telling you a Pokemon trainer is family. Anyway,

(13:56):
we'll get into all this later first, let's talk DV two,
but I want to explain what all that is. We'll
hold the Pokemon questions for later. Yeah, So, Craigslist bank Rubber, Elizabeth,
I'd like you to meet Anthony J. Curcio. He grew
up in the town of Monroe in the state of Washington.
Tony was a big man on campus. He was a
star athlete letard in football, basketball, so good in football

(14:17):
that he was the captain of the team. He was
that classic, as I said, big man on campus and
eventually here into scholarship to go play football in college
at the University of Idaho, which is in Moscow, Idaho,
if you're curious. And then something happened to Elizabeth that
derailed Anthony Cursio's all American story. Here, let's have Tony
Curcio explain it.

Speaker 3 (14:35):
Himself, Tony Curtis.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
If I could do it, Tony Curtis impresion.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
Tony Curtis explained this.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
I only do an impression of Tony Curtis doing an
impression of Kerry Grant. That's the something like it hot. Yeah. Anyway,
so this guy, Tony Curcio, he speaks with the site
sportsman dot Com, which is a Pacific Northwest side Anyway,
told the interviewer, quote, well, it is the story of
a good footballer who has never committed a crime, who thinks, ah,
screw it, I'm gonna go out and commit a robbery.
It wasn't like that at all. It was definitely a

(15:03):
gradual thing, and just like anything, it started small. I
was a fast wide receiver and I went to the
University of Idaho, the same place my dad had played
the seventies, and things were going great. Then I tore
a ligament in my knee, and that was pretty devastating.
This is the common story. Elizabeth star athlete gets injured
before turning pro, life changes dramatically. Now, I mean that's

(15:24):
the same plot of Woody Harrelson and Bill Murray's bowling
movie Kingpin, Right, I mean, boom there it is right there.

Speaker 4 (15:32):
Time.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
Yeah, we all saw it. We just looked past it exactly.
So Tony Cursey I was injured leads to an even
worse downward spirals. Tony Cursey, I told the Sportsman, and
I quote, my entire identity was wrapped up around sport.
When I was injured, it was like my self esteem
went down the drain. The pills made me feel good.
It was a perfect storm for the addiction to stick. Yeah,
that's right. He turned out pain pills.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
Yeah, that's what happens.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
It's terrible, totally tried to stay numb to life. But
he doesn't wholly blame the pills, right or the addiction
for him becoming a bank rubber. Instead, Cursio, he lays
the blame at the feet of a more elemental truth, Elizabeth,
about who he is, or has he put it. I
became very materialistic. I had never given it about fancy
cars or looking cool or needing attention, but now I

(16:15):
needed validation from other people constantly because I was so miserable.
So I started to go out and party. I wanted
people to like me. I just became a real douchebag.
That's the best way to describe it. So big man
on campus wants to reclaim glory, becomes bank rubber. Is
essentially the story he thinks he is no anyway, So
that's his Craigslist bank robber backstory. As I said, real douchebag.

(16:39):
Just keep that in mind. Now that we've met our
man of the hour, let's take a little break, Elizabeth,
and after these extra juicy ads. I got queued up
for you. I'll tell you how this bank robbery plan
plays out. Hey, Elizabeth Sarah, he diaging the Tony Cursio show.

(17:14):
I know you love a story of a big man
on campus. Yeah you also water sports.

Speaker 3 (17:20):
These are all your interests, all the good stuff.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
So after Tony Curcio left college, he came back home
to small town Minroe, Washington.

Speaker 6 (17:27):
Right.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
It's like a basically a suburb of Seattle, but it's
not really a suburb. It's more like just a town
outside of Seattle. Right. So Tony he gets back on
his all American program as best he can. So he
marries his high school sweetheart, They have a family. He
finds work and success as a real estate agent. Boom.

Speaker 4 (17:44):
Right, it sounds like a good fit for him if
he's you know yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
Yeah, and people know him like and he's got name
recognition in Monroe. So anyway, remember, as he said, he'd
become a douchebag or materialistic to put it or politely,
So he starts chasing after monetary success. This is all
to dull his sense of the lost promise of his life.
So and also he's popping pills and drinking. One day,
his wife, you know, she tells him she's pregnant again, right,

(18:13):
and the new baby's on the way. Tony curcioh he's
feeling a little overextended because he's a real ortor and
this is two thousand and eight and he needs more money.
So he decides to take the advice of your man
Willie Sutton. He went down to the bank because that's
where the money is. Exactly like will he suddenly planned
to rob it, or rather, he planned to rob the
armored truck that would deliver the money to the bank.
Why go inside if you don't have to exactly real

(18:35):
smart guy, you know, just a clearcut thinker.

Speaker 4 (18:37):
Efficient.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
So he picks a bank in his hometown of Monroe's
right in the bank. Everybody knows exactly the Bank of
America on Old Owen Road if you're from Monroe. Now
the sportsman, they asked him why he chose to rob
an armored car or truck or whatever, and Cursey I
recalled how quote I was coaching a junior high football
team in the town about forty minutes from where I lived.

(18:57):
So one of those days where I went to get something,
I was sitting there and I watched the Brinks truck
pull into the bank. That was it light bulb moment.
The seed had been planted.

Speaker 4 (19:08):
So now he's now he got a junior high school
football pitch eating the whopper in his car in a
parking lot season.

Speaker 3 (19:16):
Okay, yes, I'm painting a picture.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
I'm doing my own picture. And he goes, that's my
answer right there, everything inside that car. All have to
do is get it out and put it in my pocket.
So he you know, as I said, he'd fallen on
hard times when he wasn't being a real estate agent
because that pretty much fizzles out in two thousand and
eight because of the basically the financial meltdown, particularly in
the real estate industry.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
He's underwaters.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
He's underwater or try over his head with like you know,
bank loans and so forth on houses he's been trying
to leverage.

Speaker 4 (19:45):
He's just like, no one's selling Oh.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
No one's selling houses. Yeah, definitely. So he starts working
for his parents landscaping company. So he's doing that in
the in the coaching right. So now he starts using
the land gate company as cover. So while he cases
the bank, he just right bracket forth. You gotta see this,
Like I went and I looked at the Bank of America.
I did it your way. I Google drove around it.

(20:11):
There's very little landscaping to be done that way.

Speaker 3 (20:16):
He's on the sidewalk, and.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
It's ridiculous, like he would just need like a blower.
Fifteen minutes, you're done anyway. So that's his gig and
he's just doing it real slow. So we can case
the bank and find out what happens on a Tuesday
when the truck comes along, picks up the money from
the weekend, and then boom boom, boom boom. The security
guards they pay no attention to him because he's a landscaper,
so it's like we see him here all the time. Boom.

(20:39):
He's able though, to clock them, so he starts figuring
out what the security guards are doing, what the armored
car drivers are doing, gets the whole routine down. As
he put it, I watched it every Tuesday for a
month and a half, and there was a ton of
planning and logistics. Sure there was coach.

Speaker 5 (20:53):
Now.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
Once he had the armored truck delivery scheduled down, he
starts working on his disguise because he's everybody knows who
he is. He's in Monroe, so and he also needs
to get away because once again he's in Monroe. So
he decides, you know, because we always talk about this, Elizabeth,
the robbery isn't done until you get away with it,
exactly right. He figures that out. He's like, okay, I
gotta work on that first. So his first plan jet ski. Yeah,

(21:17):
he's like, look, there's a creek right by the bank, creak,
and I'm going to put a jet ski in the
creek and then just zoom away. It's a creek, Elizabeth,
it's a it's a creek. Yeah, it's it's everything you're
picturing jets. So he goes out. He dredges the bottom
of the creek for weeks and he figures out he
tries to make it deeper because it's a creek. It's

(21:37):
not going to take the jets.

Speaker 4 (21:38):
He's got like equipment, I suppose with his.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
He's got landscaping equipment. So he goes down there and
he's doing it and he cannot get it deep enough
to run a jet ski. So yeah, he's like, okay,
I'm going to need a new plant. So he switches
so much time, new plan inner tube.

Speaker 3 (21:57):
So it's the fastest way to get down.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
He's the best way. So he's like, you know what,
I may need a little help, So he strings some
cables along the side through the tree. So now he
kind of pulled himself along. Okay, right, that's not bad thinking.
So lastly, he had to make a plan for himself about,
you know, how to deal with the armored car security,
because he didn't want to use a gun, so since

(22:20):
that would change the nature of his robbery. So Tony Curcio,
he's just focused on the money bags and how to
convince an armored guard to drop the money bags. And
it would be key since he's not armed. He doesn't
want to hurt him, do want to punch him. He's
like dress as a ghost, yeah, boom, you know.

Speaker 4 (22:35):
And then you run to your inner tube in the
brackish waters and then he float on down.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
What Tony's plan was, and I quote the big problem
for me, he was getting the guard to let go
of the bags. A gun wouldn't have been sufficient because firstly,
I'm not a gun guy. I don't want to shoot anybody.
But secondly, I pull a gun. He pulls his and
although his hand comes off the bag. It's an immediate stalemate.
So became a question of how to get his hands
off the bag, plus make sure he doesn't pursue me

(23:02):
and ideally not even see me. And that's yeah, well
his answer. Yeah, that's where pepper spray became a win
win situation maker exactly. It's non lethal and the perfect
way to get his hands off and up onto his

(23:22):
eyes because no matter what, no matter how hard, people
try hit him with pepper spray, and they're going to
touch their eyes. Interesting, He's not wrong. It's a biological response.

Speaker 4 (23:33):
This.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
Now, as far as the arm guards and the question
of if they choose to shoot at him, Tony said
he had a plan for that too. The old fashioned
element of surprise, Elizabeth. Yes, if there's one thing I
learned from football, it's the element of surprise. Yes, people
always say football is the element of surprise.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
It's like warfare, the core notion of it.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
And He's like, as a wide receiver, I always knew
where I was going and what I was doing, which
gave me a huge advantage over the defensive. That was
my thing on the day. I had the advantage because
I knew where I was going Granted he had a
gun and I did not, but that still doesn't take
away how valuable that element of surprise can be.

Speaker 4 (24:12):
What was the surprise in being a player who knows
exactly where he's.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
The defensive back doesn't know his rout he's gonna ring.
So he's like, I'm totally surprised, man, this is just
blowing me away. All the defensive backs like, I just
watch your belt buckle and it tells me where your
body's gonna go. Anyway, his plan is he'll surprise the
arm guards, pepper spray them, grab money bags, make a
run for it, element of surprise down to his waiting
inflatable inner tube, and then escape down the creek. Whole

(24:37):
proof plan Elizabeth in his hometown. Now he's also created
tearaway clothing for his disguise, because remember a hometown. So
he secreted a bright yellow getaway inner tube, and then
he did a few dry runs because he wanted to practice.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
He use a bright yellow inner tube.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
I do not know, but so to practice ditching his
disguise and timing how long it would take to get
you would get away Interer two. But he's doing the
dry runs, you know. Lastly, he puts the final little
piece of his plan into action. He posts an ad
on Craigslist. Yes, the ad was for short term work

(25:14):
as a landscaper. It offered twenty eight fifty per hour,
which in two thousand and eight that's great pay, especially
for landscaping. Right there, you're like, oh, totally, But in
two thousand and eight, trust me, I was in construction.
That'd be like, I will be there on Tuesday. What time? Yeah,
So enough of that it would guarantee plenty of folks
like me to come. That's my point right now. So
potential employees were told to show up at the Bank
of America on Old Owen Road at a set time,

(25:36):
and to show up dressed for work. Right, So the
ad listed what these prospective employees should be wearing. So
now all is set, and then comes the fateful day
September thirtieth, two thousand and eight. It was, of course,
as I said, a Tuesday, because that's the day he's
watching every time. It's Tuesdays at around eleven am. Strangers
being able to show up at the Bank of America
wearing yellow safety vests, safety goggles, a blue shirt, and

(25:57):
a respirator mask. They all are wearing exact the same thing.
Among them is Tony Curcio, wearing the exact same thing,
only he's also wearing a wig, and all of his
outfit is tear away clothing with velcrow inside.

Speaker 4 (26:08):
Right, Okay, first of all, wigs, thank you.

Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yes, I needed that. You need the wig? I figured.
So when people arrive, he's already working, so and he's
always pretending to work, and he's spraying weeds outside the bank,
and his plan's working perfectly. People keep showing up, they
keep billing about more and more people. As he put it, though,
he gets a little annoyed by the people. I'll let
him toe it. They were very annoying when they got there.
I was already pretending to be working. So here's a

(26:32):
bunch of guys dressed like me, waiting for a supervisor
that hasn't showed up, and they want to know what's happening,
and they naturally assume I must know what's going on
because I'm working away. So these two guys start following
me everywhere, actually running after me. I had to go
around a corner real quick and ditch the disguise. And
this is before the money is even turned up by
the time it shows up. I'm up in these bushes

(26:53):
behind a grocery store putting my outfit back on. It
was crazy. I don't know, Elizabeth. Together you would think
that they were going to come up to you and
ask what's going on?

Speaker 3 (27:04):
Do you think would happen?

Speaker 2 (27:05):
I do know. I think you just wanted it all
to work seamlessly, like they all showed up at the
exact same moment, like within like thirty seconds of each other.

Speaker 4 (27:12):
But even then, they're not just gonna stand there like
you know video game characters are gonna have to do something.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
They're gonna know about and wonder who's paying me this?
Twenty eight do I talk to?

Speaker 3 (27:22):
Oh man, there's all these other dudes. I got here.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
Exactly there you go? You see Where'm But Elizabeth, what
why do we talk about this? Why not? You know?
We've gotten to the crucial moment, Elizabeth. I'd like you
to close your eyes. I'd like you to picture, Elizabeth.
You are in the small town of Monroe, Washington, located
there in the foothills of the Cascade Mountain Range, at
the confluence of three rivers, the Skykomish, the snow Homish,

(27:46):
and the Snow qualamy. In fact, the snow Quality Falls
is the famous waterfall that features in Twin Peaks, if
you're familiar with that anyway. At the moment, you're in Monroe, Washington,
looking to find work, and it isn't easy because it's
two thousand and eight. That whole globalomy crushing financial crisis
is bedeviling you. Two today, as I said, Tuesday, September thirtieth,
two thousand and eight, and you, Elizabeth, are pulling into

(28:07):
a Bank of America parking lot. You pull up in
a borrowed car at nineteen seventy seven Ford Ltd. That
rattles and runs a bit rough. It backfires, and you
pull into the parking lot. You find a spot, as
you also spy a gathering crowd in the parking lot.
A dozen strangers are wearing the exact same outfit that
you brought with you to this temp gate and they're
all standing in the parking lot outside of the exact

(28:28):
same Bank of America. Once you park, you put on
your bright yellow safety vest, your safety goggles, and your
respirator mask. You turn off the radio and shut off
the car. Its sputters and dies. You really hope it
will start again. When you're ready to leave. Then you
get out closed the heavy door, dressed in your matching
bright yellow safety vests, safety goggles, and respirator mask. You
walk over to where others are knowing about some guy

(28:49):
introduced themselves Mike, and he's hoping that you're in charge.
And she says, I came across the ad that was
for a prevailing wage job for twenty eight to fifty
an hour? Can you believe it? And that's all he
pretty much knows about anything. It's all you know. He seems.
Whoever is in charge, whoever is doing the paying and employing,
has yet to arrive. As you look around for someone
acting like a boss, you see an armored car arrived.
You don't know it, but it's right on schedules. Just

(29:11):
s's Tuesday. You wait a little more, nothing's happening. No
boss arrives. Now, being curious as you are, you note
that one of the landscapers is walking over towards the
security guard as they walk out of the bank with
the money bags that they are there to pick up.
The landscaper walks right up to the armored car guard.
He's pushing a hand cart loaded with heavy money bags.
The landscaper acts like he knows him. Then he whips

(29:33):
up his hand to ie leve him. He sprays something
in the guard's face. You guess it's pepper spray based
on the guards hanged the action. He cries out and
grabs at his eyes. Doing so, he drops the money
bag cart. The landscaper scoops up two money bags and
runs across the parking lot like a running back or
merging from the line and breaking away from a long
end zone run. He could go, oh the way you

(29:57):
watch a landscapers. He runs across the two lane roads.
He stops a moment, rimps off his yellow safety vest,
his respirator mask, his safety goggles and the wig all gone.
He runs across a gravelly parking lot between a pair
of small local businesses. You can still see the landscaper.
He stumbles as he crosses the grass. He drops one
of the money bags. He doesn't look back, He just
keeps going with the money bag. He runs along Steven's

(30:19):
Pass Highway, headed for Woods Creek. Then he disappears into
the woods down by the creek. Gone, Elizabeth. It doesn't
take you long to put it all together. You were
just conned into being a decoy for a bank robber.
You turn to the guy next to you, Mike, not Mike,
Oh sorry, and you say great, looks like we're not
getting paid, are we? And you also hope you're nineteen
seventy seven, Ford Ltd Starts back up now that you

(30:42):
have no reason to stay. But you're not going anywhere, Elizabeth,
because you just realize you're a night witness to a
bank robbery. The cops are gonna have questions.

Speaker 4 (30:49):
Oh my god, he dropped one of the bags.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
Oh yeah, so Elizabeth, you just watched all this go down. Yeah,
Tony Curciel's plan executed, gets away with his robbery, or
you know, at least one of the bags. And can
you guess how much cash was inside the bag? To
one bag?

Speaker 3 (31:04):
One bag?

Speaker 2 (31:06):
Four hundred thousand dollars?

Speaker 5 (31:07):
What?

Speaker 2 (31:08):
Yep? What grays is a very interesting question we did
for me. How much does four hundred thousand dollars in cash? Way?

Speaker 4 (31:15):
But okay, aside from that four hundred what are they
doing with four hundred thousand dollars at this bank?

Speaker 2 (31:22):
There was way more than that.

Speaker 4 (31:23):
Generally don't move that much cash.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
Oh yeah. Turned out that there was this like fair
in in the area at the time. The fair generated
all this extra money and he knew that it would be.
And then it's also basically right during the you know, September,
so people are all coming doing back to school stuff,
all the big shopping in September. So there's a lot
of loose money.

Speaker 4 (31:44):
Wow, that's a that's a ton.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
But mostly it's the state carnival that is in there. Yeah,
So how much does four hundred thousand.

Speaker 4 (31:53):
Dollars wagh nine million pounds?

Speaker 2 (31:56):
If it was in one dollar bills, it would weigh
eight hundred and eighty one pounds. In twenty dollars bills, though,
it would only weigh forty four pounds.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
And this was in one bag and there were multiple bags.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
Well, he only carried two. Yeah, he dropped in one. Yeah, Okay,
he got lucky because the one that he had had
the fourhundred thousand dollars in it. So one hundred and
eighty thousand of it was in one hundred dollars bills.
Can you guess how much one hundred eighty thousand dollars
one hundred dollars bills?

Speaker 4 (32:23):
Right, hundred thousands.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
I'll just tell you four pounds, four pounds. It least
four pounds. Yeah, okay, good, good, great answer. How'd you
know that?

Speaker 3 (32:30):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
So that's that's nothing. We can run at four pounds, right,
That's exactly what Tony Curcio said to the sportsman. He said,
one hundred and eighty thousand and one hundred dollar bills, that
was no problem. I could run with that like a
football all day. But the remainder, the other two hundred
and twenty thousand, that was in twenty dollar bills. Now,
can you guess how much two hundred and twenty thousand
dollars in twenty dollars bills weighs? Elizabeth, come on.

Speaker 3 (32:50):
Big Winter, Big winner, million pounds.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
Very close. Twenty four pounds. Okay, yeah, that may not
sound like much, but it's an awkward, sloppy twenty four pounds.
So Cursio said, that was a problem. That was a
lot of weight, but the adrenaline helped.

Speaker 4 (33:04):
It's like you get a twenty something pound bag of
dog food.

Speaker 2 (33:08):
Yeah, really, it's wrestling. Yeah, it's not easy.

Speaker 4 (33:10):
So going into the robbery, two of them thirteen pound
bag to that.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Way, he had no idea how much the money would
he expected the money bags right, and as I said,
he just knew there's a carnival in town. He expected
about three hundred and thirty thousand dollars way over because
one bag's got four hundred thousand. He's stoked, right, Yeah.
He manages to run down to the creek line. There
he finds his waiting yellow innertube. You asked earlier. This
is the waiting yellow innertube.

Speaker 3 (33:36):
Oh my gosh, it's like a kid.

Speaker 2 (33:37):
Yeah, like no bright yellow kids intertube. Look at that
bad boy. Could he be any brighter?

Speaker 4 (33:44):
He should have been on one of those swans.

Speaker 2 (33:47):
That would be amazing. So he hopped on this. It's
also wrapped in canvas a little bit on the bottom. Anyway,
pulls himself up the creek. It is. He doesn't go
down the creek. He goes weight up the creek. Yeah,
using a cable and pulley system that he'd rigged in
the trees. He goes two hundred yards upstream. There he
rips off his tear away disguise, climbs out of the water,

(34:07):
crawls into the trunk of a waiting getaway car disappeared
driven away by an association.

Speaker 3 (34:12):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
The cops respond quickly. They're honest small town to go upstream, yeah,
everyone would think exactly. So the cops respond quickly, not
quickly enough, Elizabeth. When they arrive, you're still standing there
with a dozen other people. That's all they have would
be landscape, and they all say, yeah, that guy ran
off that a way, and they'd go down to the
creek and they think, what you think they go downstream?

Speaker 4 (34:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
Anyway, the localman rope d quickly determined why there are
so many would be landscapers because they heard about the
Craigslist ad. They go, Okay, they do the math. These
people are decoys, and the detectives realize this is our
only lead to go on, is this Craigslist ad. So
then got to call Craigslist and see if they can
find out who posted the ad.

Speaker 3 (34:50):
Well, hello Craig.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
Meanwhile, Tony Curcio, he's at a you know, celebrating his
score because he'd done it. But the cops, they do
eventually discover the tear away disguise, the dust mask and
wig that the purp had worn.

Speaker 3 (35:05):
Oh DNA part.

Speaker 2 (35:06):
So now they've got a DNA party exactly popping off.
So if the purpose in the system he or his
family ever used twenty three and meters. He's gonna get
caught well.

Speaker 3 (35:15):
And then this is a federal thing though, because.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
It's exactly I was gonna come in.

Speaker 4 (35:21):
Local PD doesn't have to handle all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
So let's take a little break, Elizabeth, and we get back.
We will find out if and how they catch him.
Oh oh yeah, and also pokemon, Elizabeth. He ready for

(35:52):
some more. So my man, Tony Curcio, he's gotten away
with it. He's gone upstream instead of downstream. He's got
decoys instead of actually going in with like accomplices. The
guy's kind of brilliant in a lot of ways.

Speaker 3 (36:04):
Well, he did have the accomplished driving.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
He did have the accomplaice to drive him, so he did. Yes,
we know about that.

Speaker 3 (36:09):
So we did it, Joe.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
Now that he's done it, and he takes his four
hundred thousand dollars two hundred and twenty and twenties and
one hundred and eighty one hundred dollars bills, what do
you think he's going to go.

Speaker 3 (36:18):
Off and do I don't know, by a better n
or two?

Speaker 2 (36:22):
He bought a range Rover SUV. What yeah, okay, remember
materialistic douchebag, he said it himself.

Speaker 3 (36:27):
How did did he go in with cash?

Speaker 2 (36:30):
I'm assuming so then he also suspicious. He invited some
friends and his mistress to join him on a trip
to Las Vegas to go blow his payday, like want
to be high rollers? Wait mistress, Oh yeah, he's got
a mistress. Yeah, I just saw that in a couple
of news stories. They're just like, oh yeah, and his mistress. Anyway,
So back in Monrow, the FBI arrives in town and
they want to investigate the robbery. All they have to

(36:51):
go on is this physical evidence. Right, So they go
and they collect the DNA, they run it, they test it.
The purpose not in the system. Damn it, there's no
good but they hang on to it. Becau it's still
good evidence.

Speaker 5 (37:01):
Right.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
And then Tony Curcio though he's made one mistake, one mistake,
Elizabeth that the FBI and eventually, well his doom will
be all come together because this guy, what do you
think the one mistake was?

Speaker 3 (37:14):
Umm, the driver.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
It's a good one. It's a really good one. No,
he pretended that a homeless person or an unhoused person
wasn't a person, and it wasn't somebody sitting right there
watching what he was doing. He allowed her to be
a witness he was doing collect watching him do his
dry runs, watching him practice, watched him rip off his
wig and stuff, and then he had done that before

(37:37):
right in his dry run. Well, guess who went over
and collected a free wig and a free stuff. This
unhouse person and that guy is going to bring down
Tony Curcy carefully executed plan right because as I said,
during one of the dry runs, he tears away his clothing,
his wig, leaves it all there. The unhask guy he
keeps it and then he goes and he contacts the

(37:57):
City of Monroe employee about this odd behavior he had seen.

Speaker 3 (38:00):
Look at this good citizen right.

Speaker 2 (38:02):
And then three weeks later, that same bank that he'd been, like,
you know, sitting near watching this occur gets hit, gets
robbed by a man wearing a mask, a dust mask
and in a wig. So this same man comes forward again.
Now this concerned citizen becomes a good samaritan and he
tells the cops what all he's seen, what all's he's collected.
But not only that, this guy turns over and I

(38:23):
swear to God, this is amazing. A black two way radio,
a yellow safety vest, a black wig with a short ponytail,
dark sunglasses, a large can of mace, and a baseball
cap another DNA party.

Speaker 4 (38:34):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
Right, So also there's another thing he's got. He wrote
down the license plate of the car because of the
odd behavior of the man who just kept doing these
dry run So he hands over the license plate number
to the cops. He's like, here you go, and the
license plate the cops they run it real quick. The
license plate belongs to Tony Curcio's wife. He took his
wife's car. What ach Now they have a suspect. FBI

(38:57):
agents get to work. They start to surveil Tony Curcio.
Investigators grab a bottle that he was drinking from when
he pulls into some gas station. They run the DNA
on that. It matches the folks that they'd like the
Washington State crime Lab. Right. They test it and it
matches the DNA from the recovered items from the bank
job and from the dry run. Boom, Tony Curcio has
now been made. He's out driving around in his new

(39:19):
range Rover, shopping with a friend in an outlet mall.
The same buddy who was the getaway driver and the
FBI rolls up with the local Monroe PD and arrest
Tony Curcio at the outlet mall.

Speaker 3 (39:30):
Why is it so hilarious to me that isn't an
outlet mall?

Speaker 2 (39:33):
Yeah right, yeah, so materialistic and on a deal. So boom,
Just like that, Elizabeth, perfectly planned executed robbery goes bust
because he ignored one man, Yeah, human, one man who
is down on his luck.

Speaker 4 (39:46):
Yeah, it doesn't even realize he's there. Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 2 (39:49):
Further proof, Elizabeth, as you often indicate, you ignore another
person's humanity at your own peril. So, years after he
got busted by that on house good samaritan, Tony Curcio
looked back and he said, it was a huge surprise.
I was so shocked. I just never saw it coming.
After the robbery, everything went to plan. The money moved
exactly as it was supposed to, funneled and cleaned through

(40:10):
two small businesses in the area. But the person who
laundered the money became an informant, and that was another
nail in the coffin. You know, the only person who
stayed quiet, had no reason to stay quiet, was my wife.
She said to the police, do you think I'm going
to assist you put the father and my kids away.
He needs help, not jail, So she's right, but she
needs Yeah, And anyway, he got jail, so he was.

(40:32):
He was arrested on charges of robbery first degree. He
was released on bail. Tony. Then while he's out on bail,
he goes and tries to contact witnesses and gets sent
back to jail for engaging in witness tampera. Yeah. So
finally May fifth, two thousand and nine, he pleads guilty
and he sentenced to seventy two months in prison three
more years of supervised release.

Speaker 4 (40:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
Right, And as I told you up top, though, we're
far from over from Tony Curcio because out once he
comes out of prison, remakes and rebrands himself. Then he
gets busy in that underground Pokemon scene. Connect.

Speaker 4 (41:03):
I don't even know.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
You ready to hear about the recovery and the the
it's like rise in second Fall of Tony Curcio. So, Elizabeth,
after he gets out of jail, Tony Curcio published a book,
of course, because you know, as we constantly cover, there's
no better writing retreat than prison exactly. So he wrote
a book for children about what to think and feel
when daddy is in jail. Yeah, I think it's a
meaningful book. I mean he had talent. He was doing

(41:26):
pictures for the other inmates to give to their kids
when they come to visit. It means like I got
a talent for this. Then he started writing a book
about what it means when daddy's in jail. It's a
necessary yeah, totally so. And he parlayed the same book. Yeah, oh,
I know exactly. It's a very common book, but I
mean it can hurt if you can reap into a
different group whatever. Exactly, It's a story that needs to

(41:47):
be told. It's true anyway. He parlays that book into
a redemption narrative that eventually sees him land on like
the Ted Talk stage right now. He's He also gets
back into football, you know, and he starts coaching, as
I said, for the local.

Speaker 4 (41:59):
Youth team, going to try and go semi pro.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
And while I was riding high on all of his
newfound success, he gave an ama on Reddit, your favorite
place on the Internet, and he answered questions. Tony was
very candid, and I was surprised by this, Like he
was asked like if he came out of prison a
more hardened criminal, which is a question we often consider,
like you know, basically it's like you know, criminals university
and there exactly. Tony said, well, I'm definitely more hardened

(42:24):
now than I've ever been. And sure when I came home,
I did have a lot of offers to get back
into crime because I kept my mouth shut inside and
that's rare. Oh you didn't flip on yourself, buddy, Way
to go, right. But I'm not about the money anymore.
Money can't be important to you. If you want to
stay out, you can't get a career. Yes you can't
get a job, but you can't get a career, So

(42:44):
people go back to crime. It's a vicious cycle. But
ever since I walked out a solitary, I've never wavered
from where it is I wanted to go.

Speaker 4 (42:52):
What was he doing in the solitary.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
He apparently was in solitary for either his own protection,
he was getting in fights. I couldn't quite Yes.

Speaker 4 (42:59):
It is his own protection, because he irritated.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
That that's what I was, That's what I'm thinking. So
it changed him that his time in the hole and
forced him to confront himself, and he said, well, I
was in the hole. I started asking myself, how did
I get here? Who put me here? Whose fault is it?
We see this a lot right sometimes to come up
with good answers.

Speaker 4 (43:17):
I can answer that for him. Right now.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
I came to accept it was my fault, nobody else's.
I created the scenario, and if I could hold myself
accountable for that, I could change the direction I was going.
My focus stopped being about me, It became about my kids.
And that's when the transformation happened. Elizabeth. I think what
he said, he meant it. But then the colors came Pokemon,
and he forgot all, forgot about his kids.

Speaker 4 (43:42):
Plame the kids for that.

Speaker 2 (43:44):
The kids introduced him Gateway drug. So this year Tony
Carcio he made headlines again when the FBI arrested him.
And I have to say all that follows is alleged
because he's yet to be tried and convicted. So but
as FBI Assistant Director in charge James Smith alleges for
over two years, Anthony Carcio and Joe Bonder Chuck allegedly

(44:04):
manipulated common level trading cards to fraudulently inflate the retail
price from its true market value by assigning false validity grades,
resulting in more than two million dollars in victim losses.
How did they do this? Great question? Was a bit
thank you again, According to allegations in the DOJ's indictment, quote,
Cursio ordered from an online marketplace various items needed to

(44:26):
create forged cards, cases and labels. The items included various
card grading cases, thermal transfer bar code labels, a magnifier loop,
optical glass, a handheld inkjet printer, a lock cutting kit,
an electric grinding pen, an abrasive buffer and polishing wheel,
and abrasive and bristle brushes and drill bits designed for engraving.

(44:48):
End quote.

Speaker 3 (44:49):
So he bought all this stuff online.

Speaker 2 (44:51):
Yeah, that's a hell of a counterfeit kit.

Speaker 4 (44:52):
That's amazing.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
So what do you know about the world of Pokemon
Elizabeth and Pokemon cards?

Speaker 4 (44:56):
It's pronounced pokemon.

Speaker 2 (44:58):
Oh right, sorry, not much.

Speaker 3 (45:02):
I know that's the Pika choose.

Speaker 2 (45:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
Yeah, you have to collect the card.

Speaker 2 (45:07):
Do you know they're valuable? Sure, like like a lot
of valuable, totally surprisingly, So it works like this for
the modern trading card market because you're oftentimes like oh,
baseball cards aren't worth anything anymore. It's not exactly true.
It kind of is true, but you'll hear. So it
works like this. There's this company that functions as a
card authenticator and a greater. So for a fee, this

(45:29):
company will verify a trading card, be it a baseball, football, basketball, hockey,
or Pokemon or Pokemon, and the company they rate the
card graded on scale of one to ten, right one
being the lowest, ten being the highest. Top grade. You
send the card to the company to be graded, and
then they after inspection the company, they seal the card
in this quote distinctive Tampa resistant plastic case that encloses

(45:49):
the card to preserve its condition and indicate it's great
on in a fixed label label as a barcode. It's
a sealed deal, right. Naturally, the market value hugely affected
by this company's great process. So this is what Cursio manipulated.
For instance, I'll give you another for instance, nineteen eighty
six Fleer Brand Michael Jordan number fifty seven Rookie card

(46:09):
aka the nineteen eighty six MJ Card. Can you guess
how much this card is worth? If it carries a
grade of.

Speaker 4 (46:15):
Eight nine hundred million dollars six to.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
Seven thousand dollars. Now, can you guess what that same
card is worth if it carries a grade of ten?
Just two steps up hundred and eighty five to two
hundred and three thousand dollars hihs grade way up high?
Whoa big difference, right, Yeah? Enter Tony Curcio. In May
of twenty twenty two, he posted on the site The
Manhattan Marketplace that he possessed a nineteen eighty six MJ

(46:40):
card with a sale price of one hundred and seventy
one thousand dollars. Real deal, Elizabeth, Here's the card he listed,
just so you get a sense of.

Speaker 4 (46:46):
It, Okay.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
Now, rather than have the card be graded by a
company responsible for such things, he just did it himself.
He's like, I've got the tools, I've got the time.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
It looks like a ten to me.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
Yeah, exactly. I love this card. It's a total tag.
So the card listed he purported it to be in
a Tampa resistant plastic case that add the barcode from
the grading process, blah blah blah with a certification number. Now,
according to the FBI, Cursio and his Underworld associates they
successfully sell these cards through the Manhattan Marketplace for a while.

(47:19):
And they're all counterfeits, right, but they're real cards. The
grating is the counterfeit part. So you buy a Michael Jordan,
it's the Michael Jordan card, it's just like a two
instead of a tent exactly. It'll have like a rippling
in the card, or freight edges or like dogs spit
on it. I don't know, like whatever.

Speaker 4 (47:37):
This much money, oh yeah, And they're.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
Just milking people who are basically how afraid of us?
Are you? That's the kind of the thing. So they
sell their counterfeits. They mostly go to card shows. They
go to auctions places with a lot of foot traffic,
also card shops where people don't really know any better,
and of course online platforms. That's where they can really
bring in the suckers. Sometimes, though, a buyer would receive
the card and they would be like, wait a minute,
like you, this is bys this is fake, fraudulent, I

(48:02):
cry lie. They get pissed, right, so then they'd make
a bunch of noise and I'm gonna go into Manhattan
Marketplace and denounce you, and cursio Ow and his partner
they would apologize, Oh, I'm sorry when to sent you
the wrong card, send it back to us. We'll return
your money. They would, And then they go around and
they take that card. They'd find a new sucker and
sell it to him. So they just kept doing this
in all the while, they're doing this with fake names.

(48:22):
Right to Tony Curcio, he can't use that name because
you type it in into Google and poop Upcom's a bank robbery.
So his name was John Steele. Chum, so you wanted
to get into porn, I'm John Steele now. He would.
Also if he got into real trouble, he would occasionally
direct his buyers to one of his friends to deal
with the problem. For instance, according to the DOJ indictment

(48:43):
and I quote, after a victim complained to Bonderchuck about
his sales of fraudulent cards, including a Tom Brady Rookie card,
a John Elway Rookie card, and various Michael Jordan cards,
Bonderchuck gave the victim Cursio's phone number, but falsely told
the victim that the phone number belonged to another individual,
who in reality was a leader of the Hell's Angels
motorcycle wait a second, So that part was real. It
was a real Hell's Angels biker that the call got.

(49:05):
So the person goes, hey, I'm gonna bonder Chuck. The
associate goes, hey, you need to talk to John Steele. Yeah,
John Steele's actually Cursio, and it gives them Cursio's number.
Cursier was like, oh, you got to talk to my friend,
gives them the number of a Hell's Angel biker, a
real Hell's Angel biker who knows that the call is
coming in and scares the hell out of the person.

Speaker 4 (49:23):
Right, this is what I always want my life.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
Yes, that's what I wanted to tell you.

Speaker 4 (49:28):
Who can just do those kind of things exactly?

Speaker 2 (49:30):
So they had that, They had your dream. Now where
does the Pokemon mister Pokemon, where does he come into
all the Where does in Elizabeth? There was a nineteen
ninety nine Pokemon Venosaur or Venisair, I don't know whatever
it is Venusaur card and a nineteen ninety nine Pokemon
Charizard card. These are the two cards. Okay, yeah, I
know you love these.

Speaker 4 (49:50):
It is so good.

Speaker 5 (49:52):
No.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
Last year twenty twenty three, Tony Curcio and his black
market trading card underworld buddies. They were offering these two cards,
the Venosaur card for ten five hundred dollars. Found a buyer,
buyer put up money, they sent the card. When the
buyer received the card, the undercovered law enforcement agent was like,
thank you, Ding ding ding. We got our evidence. The
case was made. So people have been complaining about him.

(50:14):
Eventually somebody got to the marketplace and then that's all
it took. They needed one card. Fraudulent boom. Tony Cursio
gets popped for a second time. Now he's facing a
maximum of twenty years behind bars for wire fraud and
mail fraud because he sent it in the mail and
that's where they get you, the mail telling you and
every single one is its own charge. Yeah, and also

(50:35):
a federal good point now, setting aside his foray into
the dark underworld of counterfeit Pokemon, What I wanted to
know about Tony Curcio he ended up answering during his
Reddit ama. Yeah right, because someone on Reddit they asked
him the question I would ask, which is, why didn't
you just quietly take the cash and move to another state?
You got away with it, bro, What was the whole
point of staying in Monroe. If you robbed the bank,

(50:57):
and so he said, and I quote, the whole purpose,
the whole plan was to pull it off and stay
right where I was. That was never part of my thinking.
I wasn't really the wisest person back then, but I
also was wise enough to know I didn't want to
live without my family or live on the run.

Speaker 4 (51:14):
It sounded like he was laundering the money there, and
that's hard to move.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
Seems like he thought it would just be an investment plan,
like he would just get this money and then flip
it around and take care of whatever the financial schemes.

Speaker 3 (51:25):
He at going be suspicious.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
Yeah, the FBI wouldn't come in, Yeah whatever. Yeah, Well, anyway,
not really the move, Homy. But you may be wondering,
I thought he saw the light in solitary confinement. What
happened when he came back out the Pokemon card? Why
did he go back criming? Well, Tony Curci when he
robbed the Armborg car and he took the proceeds and
invested it in legitimate businesses, he also invested in some
of them were illegal, as we covered right, This kind

(51:48):
of points to he's never able to get away from crime.
He can't out help himself. He's just kind of criminally minded.
So with the benefit of time self reflection, he seemed
to grasp something elusive about himself. As Tony Curcio put it,
and I quote, I'm just very extreme. I got diagnosed
during my time in prison with the psychologist in there,
and they forced me to see psychologists as part of

(52:09):
my probation. After a while it got old. He got
frustrating to me, just because at this point I know
who I am and what I need to do for
my personality. He think he's right, he needs the juice.

Speaker 3 (52:20):
He was diagnosed as extreme extreme.

Speaker 2 (52:22):
You sort you have extreme itis. I'm so sorry you
got a.

Speaker 3 (52:25):
Case of extreme.

Speaker 2 (52:27):
It's not going to go away. Yeah, it looks radical,
bat it's congenital. It's totally radical batical, some gnarly tubularity here.
So he wants to beat the system. That's what I
seem to me like he wants to get away with it,
be too smart for everybody else to you know, he's
a big man on campus. He's used to getting away
with it. Yeah, and he expects to that's my read. Anyway,

(52:49):
what's our ridiculous takeaway here, Elizabeth?

Speaker 4 (52:51):
I don't understand the collections. I'm not a collector nor now,
so I don't. I'm thinking, like, what are you going
to use You're an experientialist, yeah, like what are you
paying all this money for a pikachuo card? For?

Speaker 3 (53:05):
Why?

Speaker 2 (53:06):
And just to fight change in time? Basically, that's what
I think. I think possessions give you a sense of
control in an ever changing world. And so therefore it's
like the nostalgia if you physicalize it and you can
connect to it, therefore, it's almost a way to go
take that back change you can, I can hold onto this.
That's what I think. It is the way of the
tiny way of control.

Speaker 4 (53:24):
Because I change, it just does not compute for me.

Speaker 2 (53:27):
You don't need that. You embraced change.

Speaker 3 (53:29):
I do, I really really do.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
You're more of a gardener I.

Speaker 4 (53:32):
Am, literally, but no, I think my my other takeaway
is that the impulse control idea, Yes, you always he
you know, he didn't have the impulse control before because
he sees the armored truck and it's like, oh, there's
my things. All of us that kind of stuff were like,
oh my god, could you imagine if I and then

(53:53):
we don't do it because we have impulse control.

Speaker 2 (53:56):
And we realize there will most likely be consequences for
our actions.

Speaker 4 (53:59):
It doesn't think about all the stories that we hear,
all these stories about people who rob armored cars and
get away with it and they're never heard of again. No,
there are no all those stories.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
Often, if you get away with it once, you'll try
it again until you get caught.

Speaker 4 (54:12):
But see, but like it just doesn't. It's so rare
that someone gets away with it.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
No, I think that that does happen. It's just rare
to do it once and get away with it.

Speaker 3 (54:20):
Yeah, but it's it's rare, just full stop.

Speaker 4 (54:22):
And so everyone thinks they're the exception.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
And he thought he was exceptional. Yeah, he does elizabeth them.
And my takeaway, thank you for asking. It's ridiculous. So
Tony Curcio said in his interview with The Sportsman that quote,
if you treat other people the way you want to
be treated, if you put them first and do good
things for them, it all comes back. That has been
the key to my happiness. I feel better when I'm
focused on other people than myself. My ridiculous takeaway is

(54:46):
he forgot the most basic lesson that he himself learned
is that what.

Speaker 4 (54:50):
He was doing when he was selling counterfit cards to
people for his daughter's kids, putting them first.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
So there you go. It's all I got for them.
For a talkback, flip one of those on Dave. Can
you hit the lights on the talk back? Here you go?
Oh my god, I.

Speaker 3 (55:12):
Love get.

Speaker 6 (55:16):
Thanks, ridiculous crime, no lame limerick rhyme now just bad haikup.
Hey Michelle here again. Sorry for the ridiculous poetry the
last time I left a message. What can I say?
You inspire my goofy side. I'm still laughing about the
Tiger King of Harlem weeks later, and I need a

(55:37):
bumper sticker that says I'm laughing because I'm listening to
Ridiculous Crime. Thanks, you're the best.

Speaker 3 (55:44):
That's you know, we gotta start doing.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
I do like that. That's a really nice bumper stick right.

Speaker 6 (55:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
We would not have come up with that.

Speaker 6 (55:49):
I like it.

Speaker 4 (55:50):
We're always talking about how we need more merch, but
we have busy on the go life.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
Especially you, especially me. I just have a passion for
design and you hate what I come up with. You're like,
you know what is that?

Speaker 4 (56:01):
Like?

Speaker 2 (56:01):
It's awesome? I did this with a sharp pid.

Speaker 3 (56:03):
A T shirt underwear.

Speaker 2 (56:04):
Come on, Well, that's all I got for you, guys.
You can find us online Ridiculous Crime on the social media's.
We have our website ridiculous Crime dot com where you
can get merch if you want some. And also we
can go to the iHeart app and you can download
it and record an app and maybe hear yourself here
on the show and emails. If you like Ridiculous Crime
at gmail dot com, you can always write dear Dave

(56:25):
just to mix it up.

Speaker 3 (56:26):
Oh yeah, do that.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
As always, thanks for listening. We'll catch you next crime.
Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zarain Burnett,
produced and edited by The Man Pokemon Collects Dave Coustin
and starring Anale Rutger as Judith. Research is by Don Russ,
Rated rookies Marissa Brown and Andrea Song Sharpen Tear. Our

(56:51):
theme song is by Thomas Tubing, is Life Lee and Travis,
My Other Cars and Inner Tube Dutton. The host wardrobe
provided by Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre.
Executive producers are Ben Dbi, Kopper, Lives Bowlin and Noel
I think dB tuber sounds like the name of a potato.

Speaker 5 (57:12):
Brown Redicus Crime Say it one more time, Gequs.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
Cry Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more
podcasts from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.