No Whammies…Ever: Michael Larson

The game show Press Your Luck was an 80s fan favorite. And the biggest fan? Michael Larson. He studied the show for weeks, finding the weaknesses and plotting his attack. Heading out to Hollywood, he took his chance at stardom. And he didn't just make it onto the show, he made it into the history books. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
En Elizabeth, Are you yeah? I'm doing all right?

Speaker 3 (00:07):
Listen here? Do you know what's ridiculous I do?

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Elizabeth?

Speaker 3 (00:11):
Please share?

Speaker 4 (00:12):
I found some word I think you may not know.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Okay, yeah, I know you're.

Speaker 4 (00:16):
Like what, I know a lot of words that's not
true at all.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Like here, I'll give you an example.

Speaker 4 (00:20):
Do you know the word at the end of your
shoelace is what that's called?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Right, We've talked about.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
This before, dangle or something.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
You actually told me.

Speaker 4 (00:28):
This, so I know you know it at one point, right.
Or the way it smells after it rains is one
of my favorite words is petrocore. Yeah, these are just
like random words, right, But here's the one that I
think you may.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Know or who knows.

Speaker 4 (00:40):
The armhole enclose where the sleeves are.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
What's that call? What's that whole called? It's called the
arm sky, the arm sky.

Speaker 4 (00:49):
It's like arms eye, but it's s okay, c y
e armsig armside Okay.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:55):
And so then it's one of the ones where people
actually did it backwards. They thought it was like a
printing air. And that's why people call it armsky because
these letters got pushed together. It turns out no, we
had reversed it and said, oh, it's arms eye because
of it's armsky, and we just prefer that it makes
more sense to say arms eye. So for a while
older printers would say arms eye. Then they went back
to it's actually arms sky. Anyway, the whole of a shirt,

(01:17):
T shirt or whatever, it's called an arm sig. I
got one last one for you. Yeah, okay, I actually
use this one all the time. I thought i'd invented it,
but apparently I did not. They have a term for
it when you combine the question mark with an exclamation point.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Do you know what that's called?

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Isn't that something that.

Speaker 4 (01:34):
It's on the tip of your tongue. I can see
it right there, just spin it out.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
I can see it.

Speaker 4 (01:37):
It's right there, Elizabeth, there's the tarot bang you said
bang first? Then yeah, yeah, so there that is. It's
not ridiculous. We have all these little words, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
I love those little hidden secret words that don't really
ever come out to play.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yeah, they do.

Speaker 4 (01:58):
Exactly, and then you find it and then you know,
some of us often sound pedantic wreck Actually that's an
entro bag.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
But this is just you and me right now? Is
that fun?

Speaker 3 (02:07):
It's beautiful and it's ridiculous. Do you want to know
what else is ridiculous?

Speaker 2 (02:11):
I am horror for it.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
No whammies ever. What this is a ridiculous crime A

(02:38):
podcast about absurd and outrageous caper's heists and cons. It's
always ninety nine percent murder free. And guess what, one
hundred percent ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Damn right.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
We were just talking about game shows the other day.
You and I we both love Jeopardy.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yes, big time favorite.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
That's about the only game show I like. Really, I
liked rock and Roll Jeopardy on V one.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Back all day.

Speaker 4 (03:01):
I had a friend who won that really yeah, he indact,
he bought like a mini.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Cooper with the I killed.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
If I'd have gone on there, I'd still be winning,
the show.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
Would still be on. He'd be that shows Ken.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
Jennings, Yeah, I should have been on the show.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
You should have.

Speaker 4 (03:14):
You really do kill it that.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
I'm so good tell me this long.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
Time about that era. We were talking the other day
about how his kids we knew people who were stoked
to stay home sick and watch game shows, and I
never really got into that.

Speaker 4 (03:28):
My sister was a Price is Right girl. She was
really into that. So she said home. I had to
stay home because she was my younger sister. Mom's like,
you stay home too and take care of her. I'm like,
all right, single mom rules, okay. So then yeah, she
love the prizes right well.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
Like so, back in the eighties, there was a game
show called Press Your Luck.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
She loved that one too.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
It was contestants answered trivia questions in order to earn
spins on a game board, and like the board would
sort of randomly shuffle the spaces on itself, and the
spaces were for stuff like prizes or cash or extra spins,
or the space could have like a little scruffy cartoon
qtie gremlin thing called the Whammy. Yeah yeah, And if

(04:06):
you landed on the Whammy you lost everything. You'd one
up to that point, and the Whammy would do like
a little dancer skite. It was kind of like a
like a little cartoon devil meets Animal from the Muppets
meets Baby Babu frick.

Speaker 4 (04:21):
Yeah meets the Sandman from the Apollo Yes.

Speaker 3 (04:25):
Exactly, So Press your Luck. It was a CBS show
and it ran from nineteen eighty three to nineteen eighty six.
The host was Peter Tamarkin.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Rod Roddy was the Great Voice Rody.

Speaker 3 (04:37):
And Bill Carruthers was both the director and the voice
of the Whammy Oh. There were three contestants on each episode,
competing against each other, and the game had four rounds.
There were two question rounds and then two big board rounds,
so it would go like question, big board, Question, bigboard,
and the big board round. Contestants used all the spins

(04:58):
that they had gathered up to try and win cash
and prizes, and the game board it had eighteen spaces
laid out in like a rectangular loop six by five. Yes,
I feel like this is like when someone's trying to
explain a border card game to me at a party
and I'm totally lost and I have to act like
I know what I'm doing, and I keep thinking like
this is why I don't leave the house, Like I

(05:19):
don't have to learn these things. I'm a slow learner. Anyway.
A light would flash randomly around the board, marking one
space at a time, and then the contestant in control
uses the spin by hitting their buzzard to freeze the
board and collect whatever's lit at that moment. Okay, so
remember if you hit the whammy, you lose everything totally. Well, yeah,

(05:41):
contestants would say no whammy's if you landed on the
whammy a total of four times, that was called whammying out. Yes,
you got the boot from the game.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Dude. My old roommates still love the show.

Speaker 4 (05:53):
And he used to say, like in things, just in life, right,
like we were going up and we were waiting in
line and there's like two different lines. He's like, no way,
I mean, mammy, like, we're going to get the shorter line.
I mean, he's it all the time.

Speaker 3 (06:03):
It's part of the culture. So I've established that. Now
we understand press your.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Luck total, We're all for the most part.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
With that established, Let's talk about a guy, Michael Larson.
He was born in nineteen forty nine in Lebanon, Ohio,
and he had three older brothers.

Speaker 4 (06:21):
He's just like little classic baby boomer born in the
Middlewest brother troll Baby. He's got older brothers. This is
a big boomer energy.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
They said that his first scam was in middle school
when he would buy candy bars and sell them to
other students at an inflated price. During pe class.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
Sat capitalis it's not a.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
Scam, that's capitalism. Like I'm like, okay, Well, you know,
after high school he elevated his scam game beyond snickers
the scam.

Speaker 4 (06:48):
They weren't really candy bars, Now that was a scam.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
He had this thing going where he would open and
close bank accounts because at the time, some banks would
offer money for you customer new toe also, she could
get as much as like five hundred bucks for opening
the bank account. Those days are long gone. Yeah yeah,
but back then, Larson would open account, get the cash,
close the account, lather, rinse, repeat.

Speaker 4 (07:11):
Well this is before they deregulated the banks and near
fighting over customers exactly.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
So one time he registered for another scam. He registered
a business under a family member's name so he could
then hire and fire himself and collect unemployment. Amazing.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
I like that one.

Speaker 3 (07:28):
His brother James said, quote, he didn't understand the value
of good, hard, honest work. He thought those people were fools.

Speaker 4 (07:35):
There like suckers. He's like, he was very out of
step with everyone else in the Midwest. Yeah, we all thought,
what's wrong with this guy? He should go to la.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
Between nineteen sixty nine and nineteen eighty two. Sure, he
got arrested three times for stuff like receiving and concealing
stolen goods. Okay, petty theft, larceny by trick. Three arrests
in thirteen years isn't bad by a ridiculous crime?

Speaker 2 (07:59):
Stand pretty good. They're all small.

Speaker 3 (08:01):
Yeah, and like my personal standard is zero in thirteen years.
You have a ball, you know, among these folks. So
that takes us up to nineteen eighty three. By this time, Larson,
he's been divorced twice. He has three kids with three
different women.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Awesome, no judgment.

Speaker 4 (08:17):
Oh no, I'm not judging. I'm laughing at his commitment
to bad decisions.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
Like this doesn't work.

Speaker 3 (08:22):
Moving on, His main squeeze was his girlfriend Teresa dinwitty dim.

Speaker 4 (08:28):
Witty with an end, And yeah, I thought it was
dim witty. I was like, that's just come on, family.

Speaker 3 (08:33):
Here's how she described her man quote, he always thought
he was smarter than everyone else and had a constant
yearning for knowledge.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
Is that like a dim witty to say that?

Speaker 3 (08:41):
Well, I mean like he thinks he's smarter than anyone else,
but for knowledge. It's just like, yeah, what was he.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
Doing for a living and what was he doing for knowledge?

Speaker 3 (08:51):
He was an h back guy and he also drove
a mister Softy ice cream truck.

Speaker 4 (08:55):
Oh, mister Softie. I talked about them.

Speaker 3 (08:57):
And in his free time he read magazines and news papers.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Oh yeah, I'm.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
The Other thing he did was stare at a wall
filled with twelve TVs? What looking for get rich quick schemes?

Speaker 2 (09:10):
Wait? Wait? What? Yeah? Wait?

Speaker 4 (09:11):
Is this his own wall? Or he go to like
a TV salesman?

Speaker 3 (09:14):
And this is what Dinwiddy said. Quote He had an
entire wall of twenty five inch televisions stacked one on
top of the other. What He watched them all at
once and it got so hot the paint peeled off
the wall.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
Oh wow.

Speaker 4 (09:29):
You know I always saying I can't ever get enough information.
I want as much information as you have. I please
give me more than why always say that? He found
the line that I won't cross twenty five TVs stacked
and just sitting there going watching all.

Speaker 3 (09:41):
The twelve TVs twenty five inch television in nineteen eighty
three was expensive, totally and hot. And how are you
plugging all?

Speaker 2 (09:51):
These these are flat screens? These are just radiating.

Speaker 4 (09:54):
One of them, he says, sitting in a hot box
with these screens like Elvis.

Speaker 3 (09:57):
At the end, I feel like maybe it's not the
best way to come up with get rich Quick schemes.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
It's a lot of power, it's also.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
Incredibly creepy visually all of it.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
So but apparently it worked.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
But here's the yeah, Well, so the get Rich Quicks games,
they started to zero in on game shows.

Speaker 4 (10:12):
That's because that's what's on in the daytime, right, that's
all he's got, Like I'm a rob, a soap opera actor.

Speaker 3 (10:18):
Or like Bob Ross. Anyway, So he watched a ton
of The Prices Right and Wheel of Fortune, and he
determined that those were unhackable. He wasn't going to be
able to beat those games. He couldn't outsmart him.

Speaker 4 (10:31):
I thought someone hacked Planko. Anyway, it doesn't matter, I don't.
He just wasn't under the show.

Speaker 3 (10:35):
He couldn't do it. In November of nineteen eighty three,
he sees an episode of Press Your Luck.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
For the first time, all right, and he's smitten.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Fired up the old VCR.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
Yes whammy, Yes whammy.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
He starts taping episodes to study the show. For six months,
he watched the show for eighteen hours a day. What
for six months eighteen hours a day.

Speaker 4 (10:57):
I'm getting to the eighteen hours six months he did
this then now eighteen hours every one of those days,
the same show.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
And over and over different episodes.

Speaker 4 (11:08):
Sure, but I'm saying the same, Like, he's not watching
Jeopardy and this show. He's just watching this pressure all
the time.

Speaker 3 (11:14):
He came away with observations.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
I bet he did.

Speaker 4 (11:16):
I bet he came away with a religion.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
Well, first he figured out that the lights on the
board moved in five different predetermined patterns. They weren't random
like the show said they were.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:27):
And then the other thing he figured out was that
the whammy never appeared in squares four and eight.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
Whoa never showed up there.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
This was big intel and it was the key to
cracking the show. No Whammy's for real.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
Yeah, So months.

Speaker 4 (11:41):
Went by, it hits four and eight right.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
Yeah, exactly. And he keeps watching episodes of Press Your Luck.
He memorizes the episodes. He like tested his reflectures to prepare.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
Like when you watch Jeopardy.

Speaker 3 (11:54):
Well, yeah, he's like pausing the tape to see if
when he pauses on the right thing. He practiced mirroring
the mannerisms of the contestants who did well, and they'd
say certain things and he like committed those to memory.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Okay, so like fake it till you.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
Make it, I guess in May of nineteen eighty four,
so just before Olympic fever began sweeping the Oh of.

Speaker 4 (12:18):
Course, yes, before the world and learned if Mary lou
Retti what I.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
Was gonna say? Like he just like Mary Lourettin hopping
up onto the balance beam. Larsen made his move. Yeah, sassy.
So he didn't make a whole lot of money. He
didn't make a lot of money, so he didn't have
a lot of cash lying around. So he took what
he had and he bought a ticket to fly from
Ohio to California to audition for pressure Luck. So he

(12:42):
takes everything he's got, heads out.

Speaker 4 (12:44):
There, go to La where the Olympics will be occurring.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
Right, Lewis, I'm sure that the pricing was getting higher.

Speaker 4 (12:51):
Yes, take a lot of excitement. Did Cardi get a
hotel room?

Speaker 3 (12:54):
Totally? He's like, you know what, I am a compelling
contestant character.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
Sure, I'm perfect fest I'm good for TV.

Speaker 3 (13:02):
He tells the producers that he's unemployed, and he tells
him that he rode the bus all the way out
to Hollywood a shot on his favorite show. He said
he was broke. He said he was so broke that
he couldn't even afford a birthday present for his daughter,
who just is about to turn six.

Speaker 4 (13:19):
He's like, you know, you heard that new song Jack
and Diane. I'm from their town.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
He's got a chili dog in his hand. He said
he was so broke that the dress shirt he was wearing,
he said he bought it at a thrift store down
the street for sixty five cents. Yeah, that's what he
tells him, and that the show would be a chance
for him to finally make something of himself.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
This is my chance.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
I only win while doing what he loved.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
You held the key to my dream exactly.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
This is what I've always wanted. This show that's been
on for like six months. So the show's director, executive
producer and voice of the Whammy, Bill Carruthers, he likes,
he liked larcense, jim.

Speaker 4 (13:57):
I bet good, dudetanding of all got charisma.

Speaker 3 (14:01):
He's got that special something, this spark that's going to
resonate in the Madness Contestant coordinator Bob Edwards was not feeling.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
He knows people.

Speaker 3 (14:11):
He said, He's like, I would not recommend Larsen. When
they said why, he said he couldn't put his finger
on it, but he knew that he was just no good.

Speaker 4 (14:20):
Yeah, he could in the eye. There was that extra
watching it.

Speaker 3 (14:24):
Carruthers overruled this decision. This is what This is what
Edwards said.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
Quote.

Speaker 3 (14:30):
We held daily auditions, one in the morning and one
in the afternoon, maybe fifty people in each session. Larson
walked up right off the street and told us he
was an ice cream man from Ohio. There was something
about him that I just didn't believe. I didn't trust him.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Hmm.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
So he's like, I'm an unemployed ice cream man. Remember
how Larson spent all that time studying the tapes that
I forget. In his audition, he repeated the phrases he
heard most often from contestants, and he even some of
their facial expressions.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
That's super odd. And do you think they remember it well?

Speaker 3 (15:05):
I think that he's thinking like this was successful in
the past and they're not going to connect it. This
is how he put it later. Quote, I took six
months out of my life and said I was going
to do this, and everyone said it was silly until
I did it, and then they said, hey, that's pretty neat.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
That's what I did it for the Neat.

Speaker 3 (15:25):
May nineteenth, nineteen eighty four. Time to record an episode.
All right, Zaren closure, Oh yes, close, I want you
to picture it. So Zaren, you are not Zaren Right now.
You are a dental assistant named Janie Leeitris. You're a
big fan of the show. Press your luck and you've
finally got in the call to be on the show.

(15:45):
It is your big day. You get all dulled up
in your favorite red striped ruffleneck rayon blouse with a
thin maroon ribbon in a bow at the neck. You
got the day off work. You're ready for your fifteen
minutes of fame. If you sit in the producers is
a very nice woman applies powder to your face. The
backstage area of the set bustles around you, peeple chat.

(16:06):
A squeaky cart rolls by with reels of films stacked
on top. Up tempo music plays softly in the background
as a man hypes up the studio audience. A production
assistant approaches and tells you it's time to take the stage.
You push back your chairs, smooth out your sensible pant legs,
and follow the assistant to the main area of the
sound stage. Your low heels click on the hard floor.

(16:29):
As you approach the stage, you see a long table
with three spots, each with a light up number board
in front of them. There are six spaces on the
number board, with the first space dedicated to a dollar sign.
It hits you that you could possibly win tens of
thousands of dollars today. Dare you dream so big? A
production assistant leads you to your spot at the far

(16:50):
end of the lectern. As the studio audience laughs and
chats in their seats. Two other assistants lead in the
other contestants. A man in a tan suit sits at
the other end of the lectern. He's Ed Long, a
Baptist minister and the winner of the last episode, the
reigning champion. Then up comes the fella in the center spot,
Michael Larson. He's in a blue suit and his beard

(17:12):
is as wild as his eyes. The host, Peter Tremarkin,
comes out to greet you all. You are starstruck. He's
just as personable and handsome in real life as he
is on TV. The audience quiets down and settles in
for a great match. You are so nervous, your palms
are sweating. The theme song starts up and you put

(17:33):
a deep breath. Time to Shine, Janey, Time to Shine.
Let's take a break. Here's some ads. Get our wits
about us. When we come back, I'm going to tell
you all about this particular episode of this particular game show.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
All right, Zaren, did I win?

Speaker 4 (18:09):
I've been waiting this all time.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
Well you're gonna have to wait a little bit longer.
So we've got returning champion baptist minister ed long dental
assistant Janie Lee Trice. That was just me and Michael Larson.
They're all lined up for a chance to literally press
their luck on a game show.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
No Whammies, girl, No whammies.

Speaker 3 (18:27):
The show's host, Peter Tamarkin, asked Larson what he did
for a living, and he answered, quote, I drive an
ice cream truck in the summer, and I hope to
win enough money to not have to do that. That's
a good answer. So this was the first question you've
probably got. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in your pocket or

(18:48):
purse right now, because his likeness is on the headside.
Larson buzzed in prematurely and yelled fifty dollars Bill, Well,
first of all, wrong, yeah it's a dime. Second of all,
I thought you were broke, buddy, He well with the
what's with the high roller? Twenties on the top and
the fifties on bottom the top not as oh yes,

(19:08):
we got them?

Speaker 2 (19:09):
Oh damn right?

Speaker 3 (19:10):
What was that about? Did you know, Zaron, that has
spent a long time since I first got down, but
I still keep making these funky sounds.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
I did know that get your money.

Speaker 3 (19:19):
Yeah, So this this bum answer kind of knocked the
wind out a Larsen. He sat back for the rest
of the question round, but eventually he earned three spins.
On his first spin, he stopped on square seventeen. What
was the prize A whammy? Sons? Yeah, this gave him
a chance so to kind of figure out his buzzer timing.
Remember how he determined that the whammy never showed up

(19:42):
on squares four eight? Yeah, Well, his next two spins
landed on square four both times, and that made him
twenty five dollars.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
Yes, positive yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
So on the second half of the show, they've answered
more questions. Big board comes back up. Squares four and
eight are still safe, but in this it they also
come with extra spins in addition to the cash prizes noted.
So while some of the squares had like fifteen hundred,
others had fifteen hundred plus one spin, and so four
and eight always had the plus a spin.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
Okay, keep it going.

Speaker 3 (20:14):
Yeah, And like I said, they also never have whammies. Yes,
so these are.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
And to keep it going.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
Yes. So he knows all this from his intense studies,
and he just cut loose in the second half of
the show. He knows he's unstoppable, and he could not
only collect cash, but he could like keep the extra spins.
So he earned seven initial spins in the question round,

(20:41):
and since his previous showing during the big board round
was pretty weak, he got to go first. In his
first fifteen spins, he'd sometimes hit squares four or eight,
but he managed to avoid the whammies altogether. His luck.
It was pressed.

Speaker 2 (20:57):
It was very much pressed.

Speaker 3 (20:58):
Then came spin sixteen, so from then on he landed
only on.

Speaker 2 (21:03):
Four or eight, just to keep it safe.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
For twenty nine consecutive spins. Yeah, he racked up one
hundred and two thousand, eight hundred and fifty one dollars.
Oh my gosh, that's prizes.

Speaker 4 (21:15):
What was I standing there thinking? When I was on
the set.

Speaker 3 (21:17):
Next to him, he would just who knows.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Picking my job off the floor.

Speaker 3 (21:21):
You can find the montage of spins on YouTube like
search Press your Luck Michael Larson, and there's one by
the account killer Watt VIDs. That's pretty good. It's thrilling.
I imagine watching it and not knowing how going to be.
It must have been wild. So at the tapings.

Speaker 4 (21:39):
Money Carlos stuff, a big gambler comes in, Yes.

Speaker 3 (21:42):
So to Marke, and he's kind of freaking out, Like
first he's all blown away by this guy's supposed luckily
we've never seen this happen roll. Then he's like trying
to process. He's like, this is unreal.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
That's thirteen in a row. I don't know how that's possible.

Speaker 3 (21:55):
And then he's getting frustrated. Yeah, it's like six, and
it says, you've got to be kidding me.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
At one point, I mean, your hands.

Speaker 3 (22:03):
When he hit thirty thousand, he was already doing something
unimaginable total show. Tamarkin said, then, quote, Michael, you are
really pressing your luck. After this show, you're going to
get a special call from the president of CBS.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
Oh, like he's already you must be cheating.

Speaker 3 (22:22):
Yeah, he's just you know, he's thinking, like this isn't good.
This is not good.

Speaker 4 (22:28):
One of us is getting a call from the president.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
Just spinning and spinning. After each successful spin, he has
a choice to stop or keep going, and like the
tension and drama is he just charges ahead. Is great television.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
Everyone thinks he's about to lose it all everything.

Speaker 3 (22:45):
And he wins it and so then it was like,
oh my god, stop, you're going to lose it all,
you idiot. And then he'll say let's do it again.
It goes crazy.

Speaker 4 (22:55):
So I would love to see the footage of the
people's faces. Yeah, I'd spin seventy then at twenty three
and then.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
You can hear it, like you've got to watch the montage.
It's amazing. He gets to spins forty four and he's
getting tired, and on spin forty five he didn't hit
four or.

Speaker 4 (23:12):
Eight pass the other competitors. Could you do the spin?

Speaker 3 (23:15):
So forty five he misses. According to him, he misses finally,
according to him quote, I remember that moment. I was
just so drained. I suddenly forgot where their whammies were.
So I stopped and passed control of the board to
the other players. I felt so relieved that it was over.
So he doesn't hit a whammy, he doesn't get four
or eight, and then he's like, okay, I've got a star.

Speaker 4 (23:36):
He really could have hit the wammy by mistake.

Speaker 3 (23:38):
Then completely and he realized his only real wrisk.

Speaker 2 (23:40):
Yeah, so he's like, oh, I don't want that.

Speaker 3 (23:43):
He hands it off to Ed Long's Baptist minister. He
gets the leftover spins, and because remember Larson has been
banking spins.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
Each time.

Speaker 3 (23:53):
Ed got a whammy on the first he cursed got.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
It's like one of those.

Speaker 3 (23:58):
Those people who say that like a slot machines hot
and then all of a sudden, now it's bad.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
Don't go near it.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
Yeah. So what what were the odds that that Larson
was beating? So, according to the Hollywood Reporter quote, the
odds of hitting a whammy were one and six, the
same odds as rolling a seven at a craps table.
Larson had made forty five spins without hitting one. It
was a statistical impossibility.

Speaker 4 (24:23):
Yeah, it's like in the trillions are yeah, higher than that.

Speaker 3 (24:25):
So at this point, the show's control booth operators like
they know something.

Speaker 2 (24:29):
Yeah, they just don't know what.

Speaker 3 (24:30):
They figured that Larson had cracked the board in some way,
so they called Michael Brockman.

Speaker 4 (24:34):
And you said that there was only five patterns or
whatever they're running, and they did. They didn't quickly put
that together.

Speaker 3 (24:39):
Yes, I think they did. They're like, something's gone on.
They called Michael Brockman, CBS head of daytime programming. All right,
he told TV.

Speaker 2 (24:47):
Guide later, what's happening? They call?

Speaker 3 (24:49):
Yeah, okay, he tells tv Guide later. Quote, something was
very wrong. Here was this guy from nowhere and he
was hitting the bonus box every time. It was bedlam,
I can tell you. So there's talk behind the scenes
of pulling the plug.

Speaker 4 (25:03):
He's like doing like, oh, yeah, the cancel. There's a
fire along.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
Yeah, they're like stop the taping somehow. But like Larsen
hadn't technically broken any rules as laid out by the show.
So the CBS compliance person Darlene Tipton said, quote, it
wasn't unusual for contestants to go on streaks. It was
kind of the way the game was designed. But after
about ten spins of the board, it started to become

(25:27):
obvious that he was hitting the same prize on the
same square every time.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
He's always hitting four and eight, and that's skill.

Speaker 3 (25:34):
It's not random.

Speaker 4 (25:35):
He's doing that with his stopping of the timer, right,
So it's literally a physical talent.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
Yes exactly, not saying like stop.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
Yeah, well and she goes on. It's not random and
it's not luck. He could aim and hit, which we
didn't think was possible. First the booth got very quiet.
Then there wasn't Oh my god, oh my god, oh
my god, what do we do? People were turning to
me saying, can we stop this? We knew how to
deal with every other situation, but all we could do
with this was hang on for the ride.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
Damn.

Speaker 5 (26:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:02):
So this is kind of like.

Speaker 4 (26:03):
That, like a sniper and the rigging with like an
elephant's franke gun, Like, all right, we're gonna have to
go at option unicorn.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
Did you see during the Olympics all the speed walking, yes,
controversy that like, uh, it's like mall walking. I guess
it's very sassy and they're not supposed to run her job.
You can't leave the ground, yeah, like they you have
you can't have both feet off the ground at the

(26:29):
same time to the naked eye. And so like when
they were slowing down the footage, these people were very
obviously jogging, but just in a super sassy way. But
like because that was in a slowed down version, it didn't.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
Count because it's not the naked eye, right, so.

Speaker 3 (26:43):
You know, so it goes Yeah, have.

Speaker 4 (26:45):
You seen those kids that what they do it? But
they looks like they're floating, like stepping on the air
the whole time. I'd like to see a competition of
them where it looks like you can't ever touch.

Speaker 3 (26:52):
The more interesting to me, Yeah, that's two di visual
eyes naked eye. So the real question with Press Your
Luck sure is how lazy did they have to be
to build a.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
Board totally the five patterns? Even I whould come up
with something more about.

Speaker 3 (27:06):
Head of Daytime Programming Michael Brockman he addressed this issue, quote,
pilots are test vehicles. You can cut corners on this show.
What was expensive to create was the light pattern on
the board. No one wanted to spend that much money
on the pilot, and then the pattern wasn't improved enough
when the show went into production. So what that tells
me is they didn't think this show was going to.

Speaker 4 (27:27):
Go into production, oh exactly, or I didn't think their viewers
were that smart, you know.

Speaker 3 (27:31):
Yeah, why not?

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Both?

Speaker 3 (27:32):
So back to the episode It's your turn janeye Lee
tris to her turning against exactly what did she do?

Speaker 2 (27:38):
Prester luck?

Speaker 3 (27:39):
She no this agent of chaos as from one agent
of chaos to another recognized, she gave her last three
spins to Larsen. Way to go, let's do this. She's like, yeah,
this is insane, break me off some exactly. So Larson,
because of the rules, had to use those spins. So

(28:02):
at this point, his score is so high that they
had to ditch the dollar signed space on his light
up number board and just go with all totals. Remember
he's over one hundred thousand dollars. He hit squares four
and then eight on the first two spins, like dastard.
He missed on the third one and hit square seventeen.
Oh but no whammy.

Speaker 4 (28:23):
Took Okay, another time he took an honest chance.

Speaker 3 (28:25):
He didn't get a whammy. Instead, he won a trip
to the Bahamas, and with that the game was over.
Like so all told, Michael Larson won a sail boat wow,
an all inclusive vacation to Kawaii, which like yes, please
that trip to the Bahamas and one hundred and ten
two hundred and thirty seven dollars in cast.

Speaker 4 (28:46):
She won like half their season's prize budget.

Speaker 3 (28:49):
Oh completely, it's nearly three hundred and fifty thousand dollars today,
ed long, he still got his eleven grand from the.

Speaker 2 (28:56):
Previous episode, Old.

Speaker 3 (28:58):
Gal Janey, she and it on a whammy and she
walked away with nothing, just her dignity.

Speaker 4 (29:03):
And the memories Elizabeth, and you can't take those away.

Speaker 3 (29:06):
While the control booth had figured that he wasn't really cheating,
CBS Standards and Practices they were sure, oh, cheating.

Speaker 4 (29:14):
The control is basically talking electronic cheating. They're like, you
have nobody exactly in your ear. You're not getting electronic
you know, signal on your foot.

Speaker 3 (29:21):
And that's like in the taping and afterwards, Standards and
Practices looked at it and they're like, no, he's a cheater.
He's all crimed up and They're like, because of this,
we can't pay him out. Oh, they're just positive.

Speaker 4 (29:32):
There's just no way pulled the casino move, Like, I
question your wins.

Speaker 3 (29:35):
Yeah, so they went over CBS went over the footage
frame by frame, but came up.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
Like this a pruider film.

Speaker 3 (29:42):
Because he wasn't using he wasn't using a device to
control the board or working with someone else.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
Yeah, he wasn't doing any known cheats.

Speaker 3 (29:50):
He just basically beat him at their own game.

Speaker 4 (29:52):
Well, he did a mental algorithm.

Speaker 3 (29:54):
Essentially, he pressed their lucks not being better about the setup.
So a former executive for CBS Daytime Programming, Bob Boden.

Speaker 2 (30:05):
Not Bob Boden, Bad Bobby Boden.

Speaker 3 (30:07):
And Bobby Boden said, quote, he fit every criteria. He
had not broken any rules of the game, he had
played fairly, and he was an eligible contestant. We paid
him his money. He was simply smarter than CBS.

Speaker 4 (30:20):
Yeah, are you smarter than a CBS the.

Speaker 3 (30:24):
Show Brockman, that head of Daytime Programming, he said, quote,
I said, how did he cheat? He beat the system.
CBS finally agreed to pay him what he'd won, So
he's won. That guy's on his side.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
There's a new mayor in Television City, and this is
Michael Larson.

Speaker 3 (30:40):
They cut Larson a check a couple of weeks later,
but they didn't let him come back for the next episode,
as was the custom, because he's blown by the network's
prize limit of twenty five thousand dollars. Yeah, this boom gone.
The episode was such a beast that they had to
split it into two parts.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
What Yeah, it was.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
A two parter. So the first half aired on June eighth,
nineteen eighty four, and the second half was shown on
the eleventh. And some at CBS didn't want to show
it at all.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
I bet not. I'm surprised they did.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
They did come to an agreement that it wouldn't air
as a rerun or in syndication. Oh and then also
CBS established a seventy five thousand dollars cap on contestants winnings.

Speaker 2 (31:26):
Huh, So that's you know, wow.

Speaker 3 (31:29):
That's it. It did air though, and then there's the
big board.

Speaker 4 (31:33):
I kind of understand, like, it seems to me that
would be the kind of show you would want, if
you're in their position, you'd want would want to air
that to put out the challenge for other people to
try to beat your show become yeah all the time.
Maybe I'm too like, you know, trained by our modern
virality and the idea of like you want to get
you know, you want to get the gourd of mouth.
So obviously this probably wasn't the big thing in the eighties.

(31:54):
They would have called it, you know, the water cooler moment,
but it seems to be this is your water cooler
moment if you have a new show this and get
everyone think about it.

Speaker 3 (32:01):
Is they the network gave them a cap of twenty
five thousand. They don't career contestant, so they don't have
a big budget. Sure, and they're probably thinking that now
that the networks had to get legal involved and they've
had to pay out over one hundred thousands money there,
so they don't want to do a call to action
of other people to be like, oh, yeah, I guess what, Like,
I've got.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
A big brain.

Speaker 3 (32:21):
I can get on there and outsmart this. That's my guess.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
That's a good read.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
It's just a cheap show.

Speaker 4 (32:26):
You can see the blood in the water, and they
don't want to invite more sharks.

Speaker 3 (32:28):
Yeah, and it's supposed to be a cheap show. They're
not going to spend a lot of money and get
a good return.

Speaker 4 (32:33):
And now they're spent a lot of money and I'm
saying that they could get a bigger return. They're like,
that's not what we want.

Speaker 3 (32:38):
Right exactly, that's my guess. So the big board, right,
they had to reprogram it.

Speaker 4 (32:42):
Of course, hopefully more than five patterns.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
They put in twenty seven additional light patterns. That's a
good number to make things seem more random. Although I
assume someone could memorize those two you memorize.

Speaker 5 (32:54):
Not me.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
I couldn't memorize one of them, but there are people
out there.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
I bet you could. You could do it. If it's visual.

Speaker 3 (33:00):
This is purely visually.

Speaker 4 (33:01):
If it was like my ear, I might not be
able to.

Speaker 3 (33:04):
I'd be like trying to get whammies because I like
the little cartoons totally. It was like it's very babus,
which I love. I like that.

Speaker 4 (33:17):
You couldn't help yourself even trying to wind.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
You'd still do my my animal brain would be like,
let's watch another ram cartoon.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
I wouldn't lie to you again.

Speaker 4 (33:27):
This is it better than a trip to the you're
for yourself?

Speaker 3 (33:32):
Oh yeah? The Whammy wears like a little cape and
has double horns. It's like a bad teeny little super guy.

Speaker 4 (33:39):
A lot of that in the eighties, like the Annoyd
from Domino's.

Speaker 3 (33:43):
Remember Curious Larson heard about the big board overhaul, and
he wrote to the contestant coordinator at pressure like quote,
it's like a zodiac letter. I know you've added patterns
to the board, but I bet I can beat you again.
How about a tournament of champions?

Speaker 2 (34:02):
I like his heart. I got to bet they didn't
answer no. I bet they were just like whatever.

Speaker 3 (34:07):
Larsen set the record for most game show winnings in
a single day with that one ten in nineteen eighty four.
It stood until two thousand and six, when The Price
Is Right had someone win one hundred and forty seven thousand.
Whoa and then another Prices writer A pr contestants broke
that with one hundred and seventy thousand and twenty thirteen.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
In one show Yeah, and then.

Speaker 3 (34:31):
Michael Stauber won a total of two hundred and sixty
two thousand, seven hundred and forty three on the October fourteenth,
twenty nineteen episode of The Prices Right.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
How are they winning this much? On the pres Has
this show changed?

Speaker 3 (34:44):
I have no idea. I never watched it in the
first place. Shocking, I know.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (34:48):
Do you remember when the Wheel of Fortune you would
get some money after a round, then you'd have to
do shopping. They'd like open up her room. Yeah, that's
seed my sister. She was into game shows. I remember,
so people don't even know existed growing up.

Speaker 3 (35:01):
And to this day, I watched Jeopardy and then change
the channel as fast as I.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
Can hear the song.

Speaker 3 (35:06):
I hate it because I can't stay you know what.
I'm glad. I'm glad he had three careers, but I
can't keep then Pat Sajack's little face, Yeah, I don't
want to see it sounds like and it's just to me,
I think it's a dumb game totally.

Speaker 4 (35:20):
He was like a human, like chipmunk and like the
only and like normally you'd be like, oh, that'd be
kind of cool.

Speaker 3 (35:24):
You can tell him, no, he doesn't have a babu ACoM.
And it's also they get the dumbest contestants. Oh my god. Anyway.
Twenty eleven, Damn Interesting media outlets said that despite the
nineteen eighty four win having been called a cheat, a
scammer scandal.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
Quote.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
His impressive performance on Press Your Luck maybe one of
the only honest days of work that Michael Larson ever did.
When Peter asked Larson on air what was going what
he was going to do with his winnings, Larson told
him quote invest in houses is his answer. Yeah. He

(36:01):
paid the taxes on his winnings. And then he bought
his daughter a bunch of presents for his sixth birthday
that happened to be the day before the show was taped.
As he said, I can't even afford the presence. Then
he took a year off of work, I suppose driving
the ice cream truck or the h fact that he
didn't want anyone to know about. He gave the sailboat
to his son, and I don't know if he took
the trips or he opted for the cash payout on those,

(36:24):
or if that was even an offer for him. He
opened a marketing company marketing yeah, his brother James. His
brother James said, quote, I tried to get him to
look at some reasonable investments. He put it in the bank,
and for some time he was doing the right thing, well, Zaren,
For some time he was until.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
He was how long did sometime last?

Speaker 3 (36:46):
Let's take a break and when we come back, we'll
check in on Michael Larson post pyl victory. No Wammy's,

(37:12):
no Wammy's, no wammies. There it is Michael Larson Saren.
The episode of Press Your Luck where he dominated aired
in June of nineteen eighty four. By late nineteen eighty four,
following a dizzy in case of Olympic fever, he withdrew
one hundred thousand dollars from five different banks.

Speaker 4 (37:32):
I gotta ask my friend's style if he remembers this
because he was so into it. Yeah, actually is old
enough you can remember it.

Speaker 3 (37:38):
So he goes around, He takes out one hundred grand,
five different banks. He gets them all in one dollar bills.
Why well, he was not heading to sloths.

Speaker 4 (37:48):
I say, that's my only guest. Immediately lost loyal hower.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
The gals and bills while they ignore him and sleep
soundly under down comforters at a very generous area of
personal space.

Speaker 4 (37:58):
Maybe I try to tuck one in a pocket of
a robe.

Speaker 2 (38:00):
You get you don't get that, you get that clothes.

Speaker 4 (38:02):
Oh, I thought you could maybe like daintily chuck it up.

Speaker 3 (38:05):
On that table and then the well when we wake up,
the gal say, they'll get over there. No, he was
trying to win a radio game that offered a prize
if you matched announced numbers with those on a dollar bill.

Speaker 4 (38:19):
Oh so he wanted many chances possible and he was
not successful.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
Yeah, that's a bad one.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
He gave up. He redeposited half the bills. Oh no,
and what did he do with the rest of the money.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
Lottery scratch offs?

Speaker 3 (38:30):
No, he hid it in various places in his girlfriend's house,
remember her Dinwitty.

Speaker 4 (38:36):
Yeah, so one night he's acting like a guy who
watched his twelve TVs it once again exactly, he's got
like Mason jars of one dollar bills basically buried in
the backyard.

Speaker 3 (38:45):
One night, the two of them, the couple, they're out
on the town, living it up at a Christmas party.
That's fun for them. While they were out, though, something
bad happened. Burglars broke in and they took the fifty
thousand he had squirreled around the house.

Speaker 4 (38:58):
How did they know where it was? Sounds like an inside.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
John Arson was convinced that his girlfriend.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
I'm thinking, was not so dim wady.

Speaker 3 (39:05):
She woke up one morning and he was standing over her,
staring at her like after this, just staring, So she
bounced like good for her, no room for creepy. Sure, yeah,
I mean this guy has a wall of television sets
and you know, and this is.

Speaker 4 (39:20):
What makes her bounce. She wakes up one day and
he's staring. After the robbery, I get, there's a greater concept.

Speaker 3 (39:25):
So she grabbed five thousand dollars that he had hidden
in the kitchen drawer that the burglars hadn't gotten. She
grabs the kids, she runs. That was her house, though,
so she stayed at a hotel while she waited for
him to get his stuff and go go. He did.
They never figured out who stole the cash, and they
never will. Nineteen eighty six, Press your luck went off

(39:47):
the air, moment of silence.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
Please really that quickly?

Speaker 5 (39:49):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (39:50):
It did not last long. Let's jump forward to the
mid nineteen nineties. I wasn't even born then. I was
born in twenty fifteen. So by this point, Larson he
had moved to Dayton, Ohio, and he was working as
an assistant manager at Walmart.

Speaker 4 (40:04):
Was this mid nineties, Okay, so I was a retiree
in Ohio, at this.

Speaker 3 (40:09):
Yes, you had already retired at this point.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
Being one of the greatest generation at all.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
Yeah. So he's he's living in Dayton, Ohio. He's working
at Walmart, not the Walmart and bowling green over big
shout out that appeared in the Pokemon episode. This is
the Walmart date store. Yeah, is it a superstar? I'm
curiously so Larson. He had a job, he had a
new girlfriend, and he had a new con He was

(40:33):
selling shares in a multi level marketing scam run by
a company called Pleasure Time Incorporated. Oh god, Hubba hubba.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
Pleasure Time Incorporating.

Speaker 3 (40:42):
Well, here's what that was. So there were indeed, ahub
in Taro Bay. There were ads, very early online ads
on America Online. Oh whoa that said, you can't lose
about this For just one hundred and eighty nine dollars a.

Speaker 4 (41:01):
Share, just pennies dollars on the day.

Speaker 3 (41:03):
Investors could get in on the ground floor of an
operation that would yield them at least sixty dollars a week.
That sounds good least Yeah, more twenty thousand people thought
it sounded good. And what was this scheme called the
American Indian Lottery that familiar. Basically, it's unregistered securities. Yes,

(41:23):
which translates to classic Ponzi skis. Pleasure Time Incorporated did
business under the name Telephone Information Systems and Group Dynamics.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
Downline, Group Dynamics done. You know that they rip people.

Speaker 3 (41:38):
They promised huge profits in return for signing on more
investors MLM baby. Okay, but this this wasn't just taking
place in magazines or through the mail. This was online.
Stanley B. Witten with the Securities and Exchange Commission in Chicago. Yeah,
they said, quote. It's the first time the Commission has
brought a case in which most of the offer sale

(42:00):
of securities took place in cyberspace. Oh wow, que the
lasers people fibers. Investors were told that by buying a
quote membership share in Telephone Information Systems, they would profit
from a worldwide telephone lottery that would be set up
in conjunction with a Native American tribe. Sorry, of course,

(42:22):
there's no tribe involved.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
Oh, none of this.

Speaker 4 (42:24):
And twenty thousand people fell for this. Yeah, there's going
to be a worldwide on the phone lottery run from
an Indiana.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
What does this lottery work? Well, people would call a
nine hundred telephone line. Oh do you remember those?

Speaker 2 (42:36):
Dial a minute?

Speaker 3 (42:37):
I don't remember them because I was born in twenty
eighteen and I don't know what a cassette tape is.

Speaker 4 (42:42):
I actually got reach and that's how I retired, was
off of one nine hundred numbers.

Speaker 3 (42:46):
So like that's you would it would cost money to call.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
A nine hundred line by the minute, yes, and.

Speaker 3 (42:54):
Then one nine hundred yeah, and that's but this is
how the public would get into the lotto, however much
it is a minute is one thing. Sure, that's the
gravy on top, because they'd call and then buy a
seven dollars ticket for the lottery over the phone.

Speaker 4 (43:08):
Okay, And they'd have to wait, I'm sure, on the
phone to handle some of the.

Speaker 3 (43:12):
Process as the as racking up. And this would give
money to the investors in the project, supposedly, and according
to the ad, half of the seven dollars telephone wager
went to the lotto pot and the rest would be
divided among the tribe, the investors, and operating expenses.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
Sure.

Speaker 3 (43:32):
Joan McCown, who was the chief counsel of the SEC
Enforcement Division in Washington, said that the SEC's market surveillance
department was monitoring the financial bulletin boards of online services.
So she's on message boards on like an AOL board. Yes,
for the Chatter Frontier, it's the wild West. This is

(43:56):
the first case where most of the advertising of the
scam was online, so there's no chunk mail, no classified
ads and papers. Federal District judge froze the assets of accounts.

Speaker 4 (44:07):
This still counts as as wire fraud, not postal fraud. Right,
so they've just gotten around the postal fraud.

Speaker 3 (44:14):
Okay, Yeah, so they freeze accounts in Florida, Indiana, Ohio,
but most of the investors' money had already been withdrawn. Sure,
the SEC tracked more than three million that came from
investors as Telephone Information and Group Dynamics downline made pitches
on these computer networks. The scammers even took the idea

(44:34):
to Europe, where they got people to sign up for
two hundred equivalent of two hundred dollars apiece that same
one pleasure time. The reason it had the name is
it's a remnant of the company's old service. Something they
called quote Fantasy calls on the nine hundred line. So
it was a phone sex operator. Yeah, they switched over

(44:56):
reached over to Indian I thought they.

Speaker 4 (44:59):
Were just diversive, Like, we got to find a way
to get more elderly people in this. We've got all
these younger dirtbags going with the sex phone calls.

Speaker 3 (45:06):
We can get more money out of the older You
use these.

Speaker 4 (45:08):
Same lines later a week had or earlier, I guess
probably in the morning.

Speaker 3 (45:11):
Well, and so there's Michael Larson involved in a non
existent American Indian lottery that raised three million dollars from
twenty thousand investors. You know what, that made him one
of the pioneers of internet scams.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
Wow, look at him for.

Speaker 3 (45:25):
One of the laziest men people didn't believe in exactly.

Speaker 4 (45:27):
He's out there scamming game shows the Internet.

Speaker 3 (45:30):
In the middle of all this precedence, seem made a
play for more fame.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
What see.

Speaker 3 (45:34):
In nineteen ninety four, a movie came out, produced and
directed by Robert Redford.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
Wait a minute, one of your favorite John.

Speaker 3 (45:41):
Taturo, your boy Rob Morrow, Yes, and Rafe Fines.

Speaker 4 (45:46):
Oh different movies the movie I know these when you're talking.

Speaker 3 (45:48):
About quiz show, yeah, dramas?

Speaker 4 (45:50):
Are you're talking about sneakers? Your other one?

Speaker 2 (45:53):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (45:53):
God, no, that was that's that's in a class of
its own. I would never be smirch it by bringing
it into this. So quiz showed traumatization of the fifties
quiz show scandals. Larsen went on Good Morning America to
talk about the movie and his experience on Press Your Luck.

Speaker 4 (46:09):
Okay, I've scammed a game show.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
I know this.

Speaker 3 (46:11):
He told him that he was bummed out that he
never got to go on Jeopardy because, quote, I think
I have figured out some angles on that. Yeah, like
what being smart? Ken Jennings, James Holsauer with like a word.
He got interviewed by from White Men Can't Jump, Yes, everybody,
everyone would like a word. He got interviewed by TV Guide.

(46:34):
They asked him what he did with all of his
whammy free winnings. He said, quote, it didn't work out.
We had a cash flow problem. Then I lost everything.
Easy come, easy go.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
Oh my god.

Speaker 4 (46:46):
I was about to say, like, he's the kind of
guy who believes literally in easy comings.

Speaker 2 (46:50):
He's like burnet im.

Speaker 3 (46:52):
And then he said, it's more the thrill of the chase.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
He's in for the actions, and he's literally in for
the action.

Speaker 3 (46:59):
He told interviewers that he chose Pressure Luck to beat
because of the cash prizes it had. Quote, I just
memorized the patterns. I thought maybe there would be a
pattern in the way the lights moved. So I videotaped
six or eight of them, and I watched them frame
to frame. Six months later, I had a pattern down. Okay,
he said he was currently studying video poker casino games
in the hopes of going to Vegas.

Speaker 2 (47:20):
Okay, good luck.

Speaker 3 (47:22):
The next year, in nineteen ninety five, he gets charged
for that American Indian Lottery skill. He was under investigation
by the FBI, IRS SEC and you can guess what
he did. He made a run for it.

Speaker 4 (47:35):
I was just gonna say, I bet he's a kype
of cut and run.

Speaker 3 (47:37):
He pressed his luck. So, according to his brother James, quote,
winning that game show was the start of his downfall.
It made him think he could trick anybody and do
just about anything he pleased.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
I'm above the law.

Speaker 3 (47:49):
Yeah. So he was on the run for four years.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
Well good on him.

Speaker 3 (47:53):
Yeah, it's a long time.

Speaker 2 (47:55):
From what we've found, that's not easy to stay out
that long.

Speaker 4 (47:58):
And I mean to stay ahead of the and then
also head of your own guilty conscience, he said two
different things.

Speaker 3 (48:02):
Yeah, he nineteen ninety nine. Investigators tracked him to Florida.

Speaker 2 (48:07):
He didn't even leave the country.

Speaker 3 (48:08):
No, And what did they find a gravestone?

Speaker 5 (48:11):
What?

Speaker 3 (48:12):
Yeah, he had just passed away from throat cancer at
the age of forty nine.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
Dear God.

Speaker 3 (48:18):
Yeah, they were too late, Darren.

Speaker 4 (48:20):
So he was smoking like massively while he was watching
those eighteen hours of TV. So I think that kind
of goes hand in hand. That room had like striator
grace smoke.

Speaker 3 (48:29):
I can see the whole thing.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
It's hot. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:31):
Yeah. There was a film adaptation of the whole mess
called Press Your Luck that was supposed to be in
pre production as of August two thousand.

Speaker 4 (48:39):
Howard twenty twenty four, Elizabeth, I know.

Speaker 3 (48:41):
Howard Franklin was the screenwriter and director What Happened? Nicholas
Cage was signed on as a producer and who was
supposed to play Larsen?

Speaker 2 (48:50):
Rob Morrow, Bill Murray? What?

Speaker 3 (48:53):
Yeah, Billbury?

Speaker 4 (48:55):
This is I want to be a dramatic actor.

Speaker 3 (48:57):
Fair March sixteenth, two thousand and three, the Game Show
Network showed its first ever documentary.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
About the event, first ever doctum.

Speaker 3 (49:06):
Yeah, the two hour long Big Bucks the Press Your
Luck Scandal documentary. It brought together Janey the Preacher, Peter
Tomarkin from the original taping, did.

Speaker 4 (49:19):
Have Monty Hall just for like a commentary why not.

Speaker 3 (49:22):
There was a reboat of Press Your Luck called Whammy,
the all new Press Your Luck. I don't think so
they had when it was on, though they had a
March seventeenth, two thousand and three, memorial episode of the
show with Ed Long and Janie Lee Trice. They returned
to play against James Larson, Michael Larson's brother. The brother

(49:46):
was like, I'll take a taste of this, get my
beek wet. November thirteenth, twenty seventeen, this book company, modern
Itto Books published a graphic novel about his Press Your
Luck winning streak called Larsen The Luckiest Man in the World.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
If the ant he kills everyone with the sword.

Speaker 3 (50:03):
It's by Hobby di Castro. So Yeah, unable to let
it go Sure. The Game Show Network rolled out a
documentary series What And Its first episode was about the
Press Your Luck scandal that aired in twenty eighteen.

Speaker 4 (50:15):
Game Show Network I Hardly Knew You.

Speaker 3 (50:18):
On May ninth, twenty twenty four, Protagonist Pictures announced its
adaptation to the scandal called Press Your Luck.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
I was goe A guess Yeah.

Speaker 3 (50:26):
Maggie Briggs and Sameir Oliverros wrote the script. Oliverro's directed,
and Paul Walter Hauser was cast as Larsen.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
If he says, so is Aaron.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
What's your ridiculous taway?

Speaker 2 (50:36):
Man?

Speaker 4 (50:37):
If I was to sit around and imagine a game
show to cheat from the early eighties or even just
for the eighties in particular, it's no way I would
have picked no Whammies. That one is so known for
you not beating it. I mean, that's like the whole idea,
no Whammy, no Wamy, and they get the wamby. Yeah,
this guy's like, I can beat the whammy. I really
respect the fact that his goal was to beat the
wam He beat the I mean to honestly, like I

(51:01):
told you about my buddy style. This is like between
us and inside joke that he pretty but spread to
me because he liked the show and my sister like
the show. So I was just always kind of like
a I don't want to admire us of but I
marveled at both he and my sister, two people close
to me, two people I live with two people who
I trusted implicitly were so afraid of this thing called
the Whammy.

Speaker 3 (51:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (51:22):
I just thought that was amazing. And here this guy goes,
I'm afraid of no whammy. That's ridiculous to me. Elizabeth,
what about you? What's your ridiculous takeaway? You see, I did
that all smak.

Speaker 3 (51:31):
Thank you for asking on. I love the fact that
the Game Show Network has gotten into documentary.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
Total in a series of them.

Speaker 3 (51:38):
Yeah, that's fair for them.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
This is our thirty for thirty, Like we're kind of
out of.

Speaker 3 (51:42):
Game Show Show Dave. You know what I need to
talk back?

Speaker 2 (51:48):
Hell yeah, oh my god, I w ge.

Speaker 6 (52:02):
Y'all are ridiculous. Horsey sauce is horse Radish, Horsey is
Arby's slang nickname for horse radish, and oddly enough, I
just got back to work from eating lunch at Arby's
and eating Horsey sauce.

Speaker 3 (52:22):
Ah. There you go. That's it for today. You can
find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also
at Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram. Email us
at Ridiculous Crime at jamail dot com, and then also,
most importantly, leave a talkback on the iHeart app.

Speaker 2 (52:43):
Do It, Reach Out, Do It.

Speaker 3 (52:49):
Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett,
produced and edited by Wammy Tamer, Dave Coustatom, starring Emilie
Rutger as Judith. Research by Marissa three thousand dollars and
one Spin Brown and Andrea A Trip to Jamaica song
Sharpen Tear. The theme song is by Thomas Go Back

(53:10):
to spaces Lee and Travis Yes Whammies. Dutton post wardrobe
is provided by Botany five hundred. Guest hair and makeup
by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are Game Show
Baptist Preacher Ben Bollen and Likable Dental Assistant Noel.

Speaker 5 (53:25):
Brown, Gus Clime, Say It One More Time Gequus Cry.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts.
My heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows