July 28, 2025 • 30 mins
Marc Lombardo struggles to acclimate himself to the extreme rigors and discipline of the Shock Program. Meanwhile, his twin brother Dave deals with his own turmoil as he attempts to climb out of a deep legal hole.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
There's a part of me that said, well, I don't
know if I want people to really know this about me?
You know, do I want people to know this? Will
people find out about this and maybe look differently at me?
I don't know that, but I certainly hope not. And
for that reason, I think it is time to go
ahead and tell the story.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
From iHeartRadio and doghouse Pictures. This is shock incarceration. I'm
Jeff Keating. Before Mark made one terrible decision that would
(00:52):
put him on the path to shock incarceration, he was
thriving in both career and love. He married Liz on
November seventeenth, two thousand and seven, and they began to
plan their future together. His twin brother, Dave continued to
build on his success as a broker, and Mark thought
about the money he invested with Dave in Jdsuniphase and
(01:13):
other stocks.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I think I gave about seventy grand that I had,
and I said, Okay, let me try to make an investment.
Hope the market goes and you think big picture of
thirty forty years from now, you hold on to it,
you don't worry about it. But that wasn't the case
with the stuff that I bought. I get it. Stock
market is volatile, right, It goes up, it goes down.
It is what it is. Ultimately, I lost most of it,
if not all of it. I can't say I wasn't
(01:36):
upset with him when I lost money. I just wish
he would have stopped the bleeding. I look back at
it now, and there was no communication. It was just like, hey,
I gave you money, and I don't remember him ever
advising me. You know what, Mark, you should probably get
out of this and go into this.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
After Mark's investments disappeared in Dave's portfolio, Mark got some
bad news about his twin brother.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I was at BMW and my friend Pete Caruso called
me and he said, Mark, what happened to Dave? I said,
what do you mean? He said, I just saw his
name in the paper. I said, are you serious? The
article is in a Bergen Record. So he read it
to me that David Lombardo arrested tampering with people's funds.
He was taking people's money and put it in his
own bank account. I mean he was stealing from his clients,
(02:24):
is what he was doing. You get greedy, right?
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah, I got away with this one, let me try
this one, let me try this other guy, and I
think he just got too fucking greedy and ultimately a
bit him in the ass.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
Everybody was telling me it was really bad.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
It was one of the clients that did some investigating.
It was brought to the branch manager's attention, and then
they ultimately did their investigation and found out there was
multiple occurrences where this was happening.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Darren Mark and Dave's childhood friend, remembers his reaction to
the news.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I was completely shocked, blown away.
Speaker 5 (02:58):
I didn't have any I didn't.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
I mean not to be an asshole, but I think
Mark was more capable of doing something like that than
Dave would be.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
That's for sure.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I would never expect that out of Dave.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
According to an August first, two thousand and seven article
in the Bergen Record, a grand jury in Mercer County
indicted David Lobardo on securities fraud, forgery and other charges.
This was his older brother Don's reaction.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
And I was like, I can't believe this, Like, does
anybody else know? How is it that I didn't know
anything about this?
Speaker 2 (03:31):
The article says Dave was accused of stealing more than
one hundred and thirty thousand dollars from clients between two
thousand and one and two thousand and three. He took
six checks he received on behalf of an elderly couple
worth one hundred and ten thousand dollars and deposited the
money in his own account.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
I didn't understand how he could possibly do something like that.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
I couldn't get it through my head.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Here's what else, the article said. Two years later, while
working at Bank of America, Lombardo allegedly stole twenty thousand
dollars from a client by forging that person's signature and
depositing a check for that amount into his own account.
His mother, Linda, took the news hard. It breaks my heart.
Speaker 6 (04:15):
Because I raised three boys the same and they are
all different in their own way, and it raised Dave
to be like this.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, boy,
this is bad.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
He's in a lot of trouble.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
The state of New Jersey filed a seven count indictment
against Dave on August first, two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
I'm like, well, fuck, this is gonna be bad.
Speaker 6 (04:40):
I was a mess, you know. I love my boys,
especially them being twins.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
It was.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
It's hard being a mother.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
I asked him what was up, and his answer to
me was, it's cool, don't worry about it.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Soon as Dave was arrested, his stepfather, Richard, sprang into action,
working as fast as he could to get him a
good lawyer.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
He went down that day when he was arrested and
he was arraigned. I know my mother was there, my father,
my stepfather. He was brought down to the Burton County courthouse.
My father knows a lot of people, so I don't
know if it was like, hey, you got to help
me out. This is my son, he can't go to
jail type kind of thing. He knows some high end
profile people in the political world.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
With a solid team in place, lawyers negotiate a plea
do with the Attorney General and the victims of Dave's
crime to keep him out of prison. But Dave had
to pay fines to the state and restitution to his victims,
and he didn't have the money. His sister, Judy remembers
it clearly.
Speaker 7 (05:44):
The only reason that Dave did not go to jail
was because my dad, Linda made restitution. Luckily, thank god,
the person he embezzled from. Their family said, look, if
you make it right, they won't press charges.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Well, that's where my stepfather came in and ultimately paid
it all and kept him from going to jail, wrote
him a check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
a big chunk of money. He did not go to jail.
He should have. I mean, the Attorney General of the
state of New Jersey was on him. I mean it
was a serious thing he was doing here. He got
blackballed from the industry. He'll never work as a stockbroker again.
(06:21):
Quite honestly, he should have gone to jail.
Speaker 6 (06:25):
Day went to jail, but he didn't do any time.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
He must have called my house.
Speaker 6 (06:32):
My husband went down and he was going to be released.
And when I think back to how my husband bailed
him out.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
My mother was extremely upset. Oh my god, this is crazy.
What a fucking mess. She's the sale too, What a
fucking mess. I can't believe he did this. My sisters,
my brother Don, all of them were very disappointed and
upset that he put not only my mother and my stepfather,
because don't forget my two step sisters, Vicki and Judy
(07:06):
that's their father, that wasn't even his blood son. This
is their inheritance that ultimately would be left to my
two stepsisters. So there's a lot of different moving parts
in here. I really stayed out of it for the
most part. I wanted it to all work out. But
I wasn't one of those guys that asked him a
thousand questions and why and who and what were you thinking.
(07:28):
I just said, he'll have to deal with it and
get through it. He did have probation where somebody stopped
by on a monthly basis. A probation officer actually checked
in with him to make sure you're doing the right thing.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Dave still needed money to support the life he'd built
for his family, but his options were limited. So a
few months after his arrest, he went to his twin
brother Mark.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
He asked me to help him out. He signed for
a loan. You know that I could get to start
this business. And what does anybody do they want to
help out there? Family? Right, your twin brother. So it
was a no questions asked thing. He told me, listen,
nobody's going to know about this. I'll make the payments
on the loan. Nobody'll find out about it.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
When Mark agreed to help secure the loan, Dave began
writing up a business proposal and doing the paperwork required
by the bank. He needed Mark socis security number, driver's license,
tax ID, previous W two forms, proof of income, and
employment history. The bank needed it all to sign off.
Marked it it all without telling his fiance Liz.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
I did it behind her back because my brother don't
pay for it. Don't worry about it. It's not going
to affect us. It's not gonna affect my credit. We
got to let him get on his feet. He'll pay
him back and we'll get back to square one. Because
I was sold in my head that that's exactly what
was going to happen. You couldn't tell me any different
at that time. I didn't care who you were. My
brother will take care of it and we'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Jason spoke with Mark about his tough situation.
Speaker 8 (08:55):
I've had a ton of conversations with him about what
happened and how would put Mark in a difficult position.
And no matter what, Mark always had Dave's back, and
he would say, it's like, what am I supposed to
do with my twin brother. There's nothing I can do
to make this different, you know, which was heartbreaking in
(09:15):
a way because he Mark would have done anything day.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
I didn't give a fuck about it, and I just figured,
he's my brother. Don't just have that brother lee relationship
and family relationship.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
But Mark soon learned money doesn't change people. It reveals them.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
There is love, there's compassion, there's loyalty, but there's also
finances that fuck you.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
You know, Mark tried to acclimate himself to Shock incarceration
(10:04):
and to all the crazy inmates in the bunk dorm.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Hainsworth we call them haines Worthless. That was his nickname.
I gave him that name. He was a troublemaker. We
had to do a lot of punishment from him. That's
happened on multiple occasions, multiple occasions just from him. You
want to do something to him, You want to retaliate,
that's your natural instinct, right, Fuck this guy, I'm going
to retaliate, you know, I'm going to do something.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
During his years at Shock incarceration, drill instructor Clark saw
many inmates retaliate.
Speaker 5 (10:36):
Inmates fighting each other very common because there's fifty four
guys living in a small area on half of each
other and they pay for each other. So ear pressure
was a hard thing, and sometimes they'd go the wrong
way and there'd be a fight. I don't know, as
we know, there's lots of gangs in jail, so I
made it well known that there's only one gag at
Lake Fiel, and we all were gray and we would
always win. But early out of the program, oh my god,
(10:57):
I've had inmates fight.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Here's former shot inmate Ed Revere.
Speaker 9 (11:02):
But we had two people fighting. They literally put a
mop head on one person and lipstick on the other,
and they in the middle of the mess hall. They
had to hug each other and sing the Barney song
I Love You, You Love Me. Crazy stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Lakeview had many ways to deal with inmates fighting and
acting out of order, including the so called friendship log.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
It was a six foot log and you'd have to
carry it, you and him anywhere you went. You go
to lunch, you know, we go to the messhall, we
go for dinner, you just have to carry it. You
got to go to the bathroom, hold on, you gotta
wait for your buddy to go in and take a piss,
you know, And they would have you do that for
three four days, sometimes a week. They fight, getting a
lot of to Cary. They're going to talk back to you.
Speaker 5 (11:45):
Don't kick them out of the program, give them a
lot to carry I don't kick them out and just
make things a little more difficult on them.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Maintaining composure as others acted out of line was tough,
especially with all the shit birds.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
I think it was from the Bronx Spanish kid probably
twenty four to twenty five, like one of those GQ
type kind of guys thought it shit, didn't stink, and
the drill instructors picked up on it, and they didn't
like that attitude. And ultimately there's only so much time
that they're gonna let you get away with certain things.
And he came out of the mess hall said something
(12:23):
and within a matter of three seconds there was about
four correctional officers just literally had him up against the
wall and were pounding the pounding them. I just think
it was his mouth. It was either his mouth or
a facial expression rolling his eyes, and that's all it takes.
It's a very minimal minute, little thing you need to do,
and they can easily snap.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Garcia was another guy who seemingly never got on track
the total opposite of the arrogant by Erga. Mark cared
for the hapless Garcia and wished he could have done
more to help him out.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Garcia was also in my section, and I really tried
to help this guy, but he was beyond help. He
really was. He was a lonely kid from the Bronx,
and I have to be honest, I had a soft
spot for this guy, but he was never really improving.
You know, his bed looked like a bomb went off
on it. His clothes were never ironed properly. And we
(13:17):
even had people that offered to help him and do it,
and I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it.
But he would get smacked multiple times right in the
back of the head. What you know what. They used
to love smacking him. I probably saw him get smacked
at least ten times.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Just two weeks after arriving at Lakeview, Mark and the
other Preshock inmates learned a valuable lesson. You don't ever
screw around in the dorm ever, not even on a holiday.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Even though it was New Year's Eve, it was still
lights out, all right. We didn't get an extra five minutes.
We weren't staying up to see any ball drop. One
of the guys threw a couple bars of soap across
the dorm and caused immediate commotion, enough noise to bring
the drill instructor to turning on the lights. He found
the bar soap on the floor and basically, so, okay,
(14:09):
you guys want to fuck around, I'll fuck around. And
they opened up every single window in that dorm. Then
we had these big fans, obviously for the summer, but
he put those on, so open up all the windows,
turned all the fans on and basically said, fuck you guys,
Happy New Year's and we froze our balls off all night.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Overnight lows dropped to the mid twenties as Mark struggled
to get sleep in the freezing dorm. The inmate who
caused this tortuous group punishment was never identified, though as
he tossed, turned and shivered, Mark hoped that the inmate
who brought this pain on the group learned that screwing
around is a no win situation.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
You feel like a piece of shit, and that's the precedence,
they said, that's the way they make you realize it
doesn't matter what you do. We're going to do one
step above you. It doesn't matter what games you want
to play. We have better games to play, and they're
going to win in the end of the day.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
It was about this time Mark wrote his first letter
home from Lakeview to family and friends. Not wanting to
alarm his mother, he held back on specifics to what
he'd seen and experienced, but as he signed off, Mark
made it clear shock was intense. Here's Linda reading an
excerpt from the first letter for drill instructors.
Speaker 6 (15:31):
Come on bus and start screaming at you and yelling
you losers, assholes and spitting in our face.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
This place is nuts.
Speaker 6 (15:39):
I saw two guys get blasted in the stomach by
police for not following your orders. Crazy fucking shit here.
I will write again soon. I miss you all so much.
I love you all. Love Mark. PS. I don't fucking
belong here. My punishment doesn't fit my crime. This place sucks.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Ed also remembered what it meant to receive supportive letters.
Speaker 9 (16:05):
It meant everything, so thank god. At that time in
my life, I had a very nice supportive girlfriend. She
actually would rate me a letter every single day. But
I also noticed there's a lot of people that didn't
receive letters, and at that time, being self centered, I
didn't really think about it, and now I look back
at it, that was really probably very dishurting.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
At this point, Mark was in a holding pattern in
what's called Shock Junior. His six month sentence wouldn't begin
until he got assigned to a newly formed platoon.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
So when you go into Shock Junior, you get a
brown hat, and this is how you know who was
who in the prison. So anytime we left the dorm
in Shock Junior, we had a brown baseball cap on.
You had other people wearing green baseball caps. Those are
folks that are just started the actual shock program and
they're in the beginning stages. The people that are wearing
(16:59):
red hat are into their third or fourth month in
the program, and then people that are wearing gold baseball
caps are in their fifth or sixth month.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
The pt and discipline from the drill instructors didn't let up. Ever,
even when the inmates eight, it was strict, it was orderly,
and it was silent or else.
Speaker 9 (17:22):
So going into the mess hall was always in an adventure.
Just that it's very quick paced and you cannot miss
a step, so it is you're in line you is
my d I would say, dicks to ass. So you're
literally your nose should be touching the inmate's back of forehead.
(17:43):
That's how tight you need to be. You come up
to the line, you take your tray, nice fork, and
now you have to move side to side, so you
have to move your right foot so your left foot
touches your right and you move your right foot to
your left, so you're going down the line in the
head to be in with the guy next to you.
Speaker 5 (18:01):
So they had to march through the line, holding up
their fingers on how much food they needed or what
the quantity they wanted because they knew everything they took it.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
They had to eat.
Speaker 5 (18:10):
If you're found talking, you had to stand, or you
had to take your tray outside and eat.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
You cannot talk when I tell you, there's three hundred
people in this messhole, and you can hear a pin
drop if you.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Were caught looking up, and there were many of people
that were. They would get called out. They'd go over,
they'd smack the guy in the back of the head.
They'd make them stand on the table and eat his food.
There was probably three to four hundred prisoners in the messhole.
You know, different platoons sitting down, and to be that
one asshole that gets put up on the table and
have everybody look, it's a pretty pretty embarrassing feeling. Talk
(18:43):
about just kind of kicking in the balls when you're
already down.
Speaker 9 (18:46):
You know, you go to your table and you stand
there and you wait, and the drill instructor will say seats,
and you all sit down at the same time, and
that's when the clock starts. You have ten minutes and
you must finish. Yeah, for some reason you don't finish.
The drill instructors would make you get on your knees
(19:08):
and finish the food. As you're walking on your knees
back to the barracks.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Drill instructor Eggleston was walking up and down and he
noticed that witting Brader had no beans on his tray.
He says, where's your beans? He says, sir, I don't
eat beans. He says, like, hell you don't. Yes, you do.
He says, sir, I don't eat beans. We walked out.
We went back to our dorm and drill instructor Eggleston
walks into the danger zone and calls witting Braider front
and center. So, yes, sir and runs down there, want
(19:35):
you to eat this couple of beans, and bottom line
was witting braider did not eat beans and he refused
to eat them. So until he ate the entire cup,
we were all going to be punished for and we
were just going to do push ups until he could eat.
I mean, your arms were literally falling, and then it
(19:55):
was jumping Jackson. He didn't eat them out, and he
didn't finish him out. Finally, this is the kicks on
the lot. You're hunched over because of the paint in
your gut, your arms are flaring up, and this poor
dope is just standing there refusing to eat a little
cup of beans.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Then there was the Myers cookie incidents.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
He stole two cookies from the mess hall and they
did a food inspection when we came outside the mess hall,
which was rare, but they did it because obviously they
saw something. And long story short, they took the two
cookies out of Myers jacket pocket. They called them up
front and smashed the cookies all over the ground and
made them meat it off the pavement. It was sad.
It wasn't funny, it was fucking sad. It really was.
(20:33):
That human being was laying down there doing that, you know,
licking the pavement like a dog.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
December moved into January and Mark and his fellow inmates
in pre shock still didn't have a platoon, meaning their
six month sentence had an officially begun.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Every day it is the same day there. It's like
groundhog Day. They would have some activities like where they
would have a log pile outside that maybe had four
hundred logs or a rock pile that had six hundred rocks,
and they'd say, okay, let's go outside. We're going to
take that log pile and we're just going to move
it over here. And you just went over, grabbed the log,
(21:16):
brought it twenty feet and stacked it. And they would
kill two hours three hours of just manual labor. Oh
my god. They were big on sweeping, sweeping the rocks.
I was sweeping the parking lot once a week. It
was probably the size of giant stadium.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
When they weren't running several miles through blizzard like conditions
or doing pt in the blistering cold, drill, instructors created
a task for the inmates to accomplish together.
Speaker 5 (21:41):
Everything they did was evaluated, so at the end of
the day they got a report card that we every
drill structer had to fill out, and that's what kept
them in the program or kicked them out.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
When other platoons are getting ready to graduate and you
hear it, the drill instructs will tell you, oh, we
got a graduating class next week. You know, hopefully you
guys are up. And it's based on order of how
you come in.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
But none of the men in Mark's dorm knew for
sure when they'd get their green hats and move into
the program. Like everything else at Shock, inmates are left
in the dark, which kept them on their toes.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
You find out the morning of they said, pack your bags,
you're going to I was in the rough Rider platoon,
so they said. They read the names Lombardo again mcvatt
and well, let's go back your shit.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Several years before Mark Lombardo found himself in Shock incarceration,
his twin brother Dave, had been charged with dozens of
accounts of fraud and was finished as a stockbroker. Dave
now owed hundreds of thousands in fines, fees, and restitution.
After borrowing money from his stepfather to get back on
his feet, Dave turned to his brother Mark.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
He called me and said, would you mind meeting me
at the bank on Franklin Turnpike. He was trying to
start his own company. He was trying to get a
business loan and ultimately get back on his feet because
he clearly needed some income. Landmark Consulting was the business
that he tried to create. One of the things that
they got involved in. It's a pretty smart product. A
(23:34):
lot of kids, elderly people, they had problem swallowing pills right,
some people don't do it. It's a plastic cup and
it's a disposable and it had a little mechanism inside
the cup where you put the pill in it, and
the way you drink it, it would physically force and
funnel those pills down your throat. It was actually pretty genius.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Each family member had a different experience with Dave asking
for help.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
The only thing I think that keeps us tighter is
that there was no money between us. I never lost
any of that like anybody else did. But as the
years went on, everybody knew that I didn't have any
money for anybody, and Dave never asked me for a dime.
Speaker 6 (24:18):
It got to a point where you can't pull blood
out of a stone, you know, you would say, I'm
trying my best, I'm trying to work, I'm trying to
do this. My husband would give them all kinds of
suggestions of well, maybe you should sell the house, maybe
you should get some smaller and never happened.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Mark thought the best way to support his brother Dave
was to go with him to the bank and help
him secure alone.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
When we got there, it wasn't like we were going
there to pitch it. It was oh, okay, Dave, yeah
I have everything here, just need some signatures. It was
a matter of just doing the paperwork. It was form
after form after form, and just okay, sign here, okay,
sign here. And I did not know what the fuck
I was signing. I had no idea. Holes I knew
was it was helping my brother Dave get some money
(25:04):
so he could possibly start a company. I didn't know
if I was the actual what are they called the
Garran tour of the loan? Was I a co signer?
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Dave walked out of there with a sixty thousand dollars
check and all bank correspondents moving forward went to his house,
not Marx.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
And then there was another small loan at a different bank.
I want to say that was only for about thirty
that I got for him. Again, I didn't even question it. Whatever,
I don't care, no big deal of just do you
handle the payments.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
We'll get through that. And then there was one other
small loan he got from another bank for forty thousand.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
By twenty eleven, a few years since Mark signed for
the loans, he hadn't given it much thought.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Liz and I we were living together at the condo.
We had just gotten married.
Speaker 10 (25:49):
No, I did not find that out until after we
were married, because he did eventually tell me, but he
said he signed the papers before we got married.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
It was a couple of years after I had given
him the signal to get the loan. I started to
receive letters in the mail. She got the mail, you know,
and what's this? What's that? I don't know, what's take
a look at it. And that's when I found out
that David wasn't paying the loans back.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Dave had not been making payments for several years. On
top of that, he'd increase the debt extended in Mark's
name with his signature as guarantor. Just as Mark and
Liz were beginning their life together.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
She was livid. She was livid. Okay, so we can't
get a loan if we want to buy a house,
we won't be able to have a good credit. So
our dream of having a family and kids has ultimately
just gone down the toilet because you co signed a
loan for your brother that you didn't tell me about.
Speaker 10 (26:43):
There just had their handout in every different direction and
no one was saying anything. I was so confused. And meanwhile,
they have a brand new car, they have a brand
new marble kitchen, saltwater pool for the dogs. I was like,
when does this end? Can you slap everyone else in
the face over and over and over.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
I trust my brother.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
Our family is the good and bad of sticking with it,
not really getting to the point just hoping that everything's
going to be okay. I think everybody is just wanting
everything to be okay and hoping that it is, and
(27:22):
in a lot of cases not doing the hard work
to get there, not doing that accountability that you're talking about.
It isn't there to get through to the other side
of a problem quickly. It always kind of drags on.
And that's a lot of the problem.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
When Liz, ultimately she's thinking, who the fuck did I marry? Right?
I mean, this guy's willing to go on the line
and help his brother out, but not a tell me
about it or be think that it's never going to
be an issue. This is an issue. This is very serious,
very serious.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Mark and Liz were left to figure out how he'd
become buried in debt by his twin brother, so they
headed to his sister's house to see if Judy and
Pete could help him understand the legal and financial implications.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Judy and Pete's home is where I went, and I
sat at the kitchen table when I first got these letters,
and I said, Hey, what the hell's going on? And
Pete knows how long. He's very smart, very brilliant man,
and I always respected his opinion, and he was the
first person I reached out to. Pete was the first
person I reached out to to say, Hey, what am
(28:34):
I doing here?
Speaker 7 (28:35):
Mark and Liz are sitting there, I believe, sitting looking
to buy a car, and they're like, well, you can't
get approved for this because you have this credit card
maxed out on this hand. And they're like, what are
you talking about? I don't have this card. I don't
have that card.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Unfortunately for Mark, all of the correspondents were going to
Dave's house.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
I signed for it. I didn't hear anything about it.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Again, I wasn't getting letters were going to his address,
No payments were being made. So my wife got the
mail at our condo saying that it was from the IRS.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
About these bank loans.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
And you know, all my mind, they're going to start
garnishing my wages, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 7 (29:16):
You know, come to find out, Dave has taken out
multiple credit lines and credit cards in Mark's name. Easy
thing to do if you're a twin, right, Like what
are the security questions? Mothers made a name, you know,
like all these things.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
That once any bank gives you a business loan, what
are they going to give you business credit card? Oh?
You need it. You got to have a business credit card.
So he got two fifty thousand dollars credit cards from
the loan that we did the fifty grand. So now
you went from ninety to one hundred and ninety, you know,
one thousand dollars.
Speaker 10 (29:47):
Well, it should have been a red flag if you
lost a security license from stealing from elving clients. So
that should have been the first big, gigantic flag. I
think he was like an opportunist and just speaking.
Speaker 11 (30:05):
Shock Incarceration is a joint production from iHeartRadio and Doghouse Pictures,
produced and hosted by Jeff Keating. Executive producers are Mark Lombardo,
Tommy James, Noel Brown, and Jeff Keating. Written by Jim Roberts,
Tommy James, Chris Rogozzo and Jeff Keating. Story edited by
Jim Roberts, Edit mix and sound design by Lame Krauts.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
From Herd's Creek Productions.
Speaker 11 (30:28):
Music composed by Diamond Street Productions, accompany by Tyler Greenwell,
Danny Wattanas, Sean Thompson and Spencer garn Special thanks to
Trinity Investigative Group and Mark Lombardo's family and friends who
contributed to the podcast.
There's a part of me that said, well, I don't
know if I want people to really know this about me?
You know, do I want people to know this? Will
people find out about this and maybe look differently at me?
I don't know that, but I certainly hope not. And
for that reason, I think it is time to go
ahead and tell the story.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
From iHeartRadio and doghouse Pictures. This is shock incarceration. I'm
Jeff Keating. Before Mark made one terrible decision that would
(00:52):
put him on the path to shock incarceration, he was
thriving in both career and love. He married Liz on
November seventeenth, two thousand and seven, and they began to
plan their future together. His twin brother, Dave continued to
build on his success as a broker, and Mark thought
about the money he invested with Dave in Jdsuniphase and
(01:13):
other stocks.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I think I gave about seventy grand that I had,
and I said, Okay, let me try to make an investment.
Hope the market goes and you think big picture of
thirty forty years from now, you hold on to it,
you don't worry about it. But that wasn't the case
with the stuff that I bought. I get it. Stock
market is volatile, right, It goes up, it goes down.
It is what it is. Ultimately, I lost most of it,
if not all of it. I can't say I wasn't
(01:36):
upset with him when I lost money. I just wish
he would have stopped the bleeding. I look back at
it now, and there was no communication. It was just like, hey,
I gave you money, and I don't remember him ever
advising me. You know what, Mark, you should probably get
out of this and go into this.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
After Mark's investments disappeared in Dave's portfolio, Mark got some
bad news about his twin brother.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I was at BMW and my friend Pete Caruso called
me and he said, Mark, what happened to Dave? I said,
what do you mean? He said, I just saw his
name in the paper. I said, are you serious? The
article is in a Bergen Record. So he read it
to me that David Lombardo arrested tampering with people's funds.
He was taking people's money and put it in his
own bank account. I mean he was stealing from his clients,
(02:24):
is what he was doing. You get greedy, right?
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah, I got away with this one, let me try
this one, let me try this other guy, and I
think he just got too fucking greedy and ultimately a
bit him in the ass.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
Everybody was telling me it was really bad.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
It was one of the clients that did some investigating.
It was brought to the branch manager's attention, and then
they ultimately did their investigation and found out there was
multiple occurrences where this was happening.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Darren Mark and Dave's childhood friend, remembers his reaction to
the news.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I was completely shocked, blown away.
Speaker 5 (02:58):
I didn't have any I didn't.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
I mean not to be an asshole, but I think
Mark was more capable of doing something like that than
Dave would be.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
That's for sure.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I would never expect that out of Dave.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
According to an August first, two thousand and seven article
in the Bergen Record, a grand jury in Mercer County
indicted David Lobardo on securities fraud, forgery and other charges.
This was his older brother Don's reaction.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
And I was like, I can't believe this, Like, does
anybody else know? How is it that I didn't know
anything about this?
Speaker 2 (03:31):
The article says Dave was accused of stealing more than
one hundred and thirty thousand dollars from clients between two
thousand and one and two thousand and three. He took
six checks he received on behalf of an elderly couple
worth one hundred and ten thousand dollars and deposited the
money in his own account.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
I didn't understand how he could possibly do something like that.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
I couldn't get it through my head.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Here's what else, the article said. Two years later, while
working at Bank of America, Lombardo allegedly stole twenty thousand
dollars from a client by forging that person's signature and
depositing a check for that amount into his own account.
His mother, Linda, took the news hard. It breaks my heart.
Speaker 6 (04:15):
Because I raised three boys the same and they are
all different in their own way, and it raised Dave
to be like this.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, boy,
this is bad.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
He's in a lot of trouble.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
The state of New Jersey filed a seven count indictment
against Dave on August first, two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
I'm like, well, fuck, this is gonna be bad.
Speaker 6 (04:40):
I was a mess, you know. I love my boys,
especially them being twins.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
It was.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
It's hard being a mother.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
I asked him what was up, and his answer to
me was, it's cool, don't worry about it.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Soon as Dave was arrested, his stepfather, Richard, sprang into action,
working as fast as he could to get him a
good lawyer.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
He went down that day when he was arrested and
he was arraigned. I know my mother was there, my father,
my stepfather. He was brought down to the Burton County courthouse.
My father knows a lot of people, so I don't
know if it was like, hey, you got to help
me out. This is my son, he can't go to
jail type kind of thing. He knows some high end
profile people in the political world.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
With a solid team in place, lawyers negotiate a plea
do with the Attorney General and the victims of Dave's
crime to keep him out of prison. But Dave had
to pay fines to the state and restitution to his victims,
and he didn't have the money. His sister, Judy remembers
it clearly.
Speaker 7 (05:44):
The only reason that Dave did not go to jail
was because my dad, Linda made restitution. Luckily, thank god,
the person he embezzled from. Their family said, look, if
you make it right, they won't press charges.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Well, that's where my stepfather came in and ultimately paid
it all and kept him from going to jail, wrote
him a check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
a big chunk of money. He did not go to jail.
He should have. I mean, the Attorney General of the
state of New Jersey was on him. I mean it
was a serious thing he was doing here. He got
blackballed from the industry. He'll never work as a stockbroker again.
(06:21):
Quite honestly, he should have gone to jail.
Speaker 6 (06:25):
Day went to jail, but he didn't do any time.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
He must have called my house.
Speaker 6 (06:32):
My husband went down and he was going to be released.
And when I think back to how my husband bailed
him out.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
My mother was extremely upset. Oh my god, this is crazy.
What a fucking mess. She's the sale too, What a
fucking mess. I can't believe he did this. My sisters,
my brother Don, all of them were very disappointed and
upset that he put not only my mother and my stepfather,
because don't forget my two step sisters, Vicki and Judy
(07:06):
that's their father, that wasn't even his blood son. This
is their inheritance that ultimately would be left to my
two stepsisters. So there's a lot of different moving parts
in here. I really stayed out of it for the
most part. I wanted it to all work out. But
I wasn't one of those guys that asked him a
thousand questions and why and who and what were you thinking.
(07:28):
I just said, he'll have to deal with it and
get through it. He did have probation where somebody stopped
by on a monthly basis. A probation officer actually checked
in with him to make sure you're doing the right thing.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Dave still needed money to support the life he'd built
for his family, but his options were limited. So a
few months after his arrest, he went to his twin
brother Mark.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
He asked me to help him out. He signed for
a loan. You know that I could get to start
this business. And what does anybody do they want to
help out there? Family? Right, your twin brother. So it
was a no questions asked thing. He told me, listen,
nobody's going to know about this. I'll make the payments
on the loan. Nobody'll find out about it.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
When Mark agreed to help secure the loan, Dave began
writing up a business proposal and doing the paperwork required
by the bank. He needed Mark socis security number, driver's license,
tax ID, previous W two forms, proof of income, and
employment history. The bank needed it all to sign off.
Marked it it all without telling his fiance Liz.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
I did it behind her back because my brother don't
pay for it. Don't worry about it. It's not going
to affect us. It's not gonna affect my credit. We
got to let him get on his feet. He'll pay
him back and we'll get back to square one. Because
I was sold in my head that that's exactly what
was going to happen. You couldn't tell me any different
at that time. I didn't care who you were. My
brother will take care of it and we'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Jason spoke with Mark about his tough situation.
Speaker 8 (08:55):
I've had a ton of conversations with him about what
happened and how would put Mark in a difficult position.
And no matter what, Mark always had Dave's back, and
he would say, it's like, what am I supposed to
do with my twin brother. There's nothing I can do
to make this different, you know, which was heartbreaking in
(09:15):
a way because he Mark would have done anything day.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
I didn't give a fuck about it, and I just figured,
he's my brother. Don't just have that brother lee relationship
and family relationship.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
But Mark soon learned money doesn't change people. It reveals them.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
There is love, there's compassion, there's loyalty, but there's also
finances that fuck you.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
You know, Mark tried to acclimate himself to Shock incarceration
(10:04):
and to all the crazy inmates in the bunk dorm.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Hainsworth we call them haines Worthless. That was his nickname.
I gave him that name. He was a troublemaker. We
had to do a lot of punishment from him. That's
happened on multiple occasions, multiple occasions just from him. You
want to do something to him, You want to retaliate,
that's your natural instinct, right, Fuck this guy, I'm going
to retaliate, you know, I'm going to do something.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
During his years at Shock incarceration, drill instructor Clark saw
many inmates retaliate.
Speaker 5 (10:36):
Inmates fighting each other very common because there's fifty four
guys living in a small area on half of each
other and they pay for each other. So ear pressure
was a hard thing, and sometimes they'd go the wrong
way and there'd be a fight. I don't know, as
we know, there's lots of gangs in jail, so I
made it well known that there's only one gag at
Lake Fiel, and we all were gray and we would
always win. But early out of the program, oh my god,
(10:57):
I've had inmates fight.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Here's former shot inmate Ed Revere.
Speaker 9 (11:02):
But we had two people fighting. They literally put a
mop head on one person and lipstick on the other,
and they in the middle of the mess hall. They
had to hug each other and sing the Barney song
I Love You, You Love Me. Crazy stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Lakeview had many ways to deal with inmates fighting and
acting out of order, including the so called friendship log.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
It was a six foot log and you'd have to
carry it, you and him anywhere you went. You go
to lunch, you know, we go to the messhall, we
go for dinner, you just have to carry it. You
got to go to the bathroom, hold on, you gotta
wait for your buddy to go in and take a piss,
you know, And they would have you do that for
three four days, sometimes a week. They fight, getting a
lot of to Cary. They're going to talk back to you.
Speaker 5 (11:45):
Don't kick them out of the program, give them a
lot to carry I don't kick them out and just
make things a little more difficult on them.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Maintaining composure as others acted out of line was tough,
especially with all the shit birds.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
I think it was from the Bronx Spanish kid probably
twenty four to twenty five, like one of those GQ
type kind of guys thought it shit, didn't stink, and
the drill instructors picked up on it, and they didn't
like that attitude. And ultimately there's only so much time
that they're gonna let you get away with certain things.
And he came out of the mess hall said something
(12:23):
and within a matter of three seconds there was about
four correctional officers just literally had him up against the
wall and were pounding the pounding them. I just think
it was his mouth. It was either his mouth or
a facial expression rolling his eyes, and that's all it takes.
It's a very minimal minute, little thing you need to do,
and they can easily snap.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Garcia was another guy who seemingly never got on track
the total opposite of the arrogant by Erga. Mark cared
for the hapless Garcia and wished he could have done
more to help him out.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Garcia was also in my section, and I really tried
to help this guy, but he was beyond help. He
really was. He was a lonely kid from the Bronx,
and I have to be honest, I had a soft
spot for this guy, but he was never really improving.
You know, his bed looked like a bomb went off
on it. His clothes were never ironed properly. And we
(13:17):
even had people that offered to help him and do it,
and I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it.
But he would get smacked multiple times right in the
back of the head. What you know what. They used
to love smacking him. I probably saw him get smacked
at least ten times.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Just two weeks after arriving at Lakeview, Mark and the
other Preshock inmates learned a valuable lesson. You don't ever
screw around in the dorm ever, not even on a holiday.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Even though it was New Year's Eve, it was still
lights out, all right. We didn't get an extra five minutes.
We weren't staying up to see any ball drop. One
of the guys threw a couple bars of soap across
the dorm and caused immediate commotion, enough noise to bring
the drill instructor to turning on the lights. He found
the bar soap on the floor and basically, so, okay,
(14:09):
you guys want to fuck around, I'll fuck around. And
they opened up every single window in that dorm. Then
we had these big fans, obviously for the summer, but
he put those on, so open up all the windows,
turned all the fans on and basically said, fuck you guys,
Happy New Year's and we froze our balls off all night.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Overnight lows dropped to the mid twenties as Mark struggled
to get sleep in the freezing dorm. The inmate who
caused this tortuous group punishment was never identified, though as
he tossed, turned and shivered, Mark hoped that the inmate
who brought this pain on the group learned that screwing
around is a no win situation.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
You feel like a piece of shit, and that's the precedence,
they said, that's the way they make you realize it
doesn't matter what you do. We're going to do one
step above you. It doesn't matter what games you want
to play. We have better games to play, and they're
going to win in the end of the day.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
It was about this time Mark wrote his first letter
home from Lakeview to family and friends. Not wanting to
alarm his mother, he held back on specifics to what
he'd seen and experienced, but as he signed off, Mark
made it clear shock was intense. Here's Linda reading an
excerpt from the first letter for drill instructors.
Speaker 6 (15:31):
Come on bus and start screaming at you and yelling
you losers, assholes and spitting in our face.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
This place is nuts.
Speaker 6 (15:39):
I saw two guys get blasted in the stomach by
police for not following your orders. Crazy fucking shit here.
I will write again soon. I miss you all so much.
I love you all. Love Mark. PS. I don't fucking
belong here. My punishment doesn't fit my crime. This place sucks.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Ed also remembered what it meant to receive supportive letters.
Speaker 9 (16:05):
It meant everything, so thank god. At that time in
my life, I had a very nice supportive girlfriend. She
actually would rate me a letter every single day. But
I also noticed there's a lot of people that didn't
receive letters, and at that time, being self centered, I
didn't really think about it, and now I look back
at it, that was really probably very dishurting.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
At this point, Mark was in a holding pattern in
what's called Shock Junior. His six month sentence wouldn't begin
until he got assigned to a newly formed platoon.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
So when you go into Shock Junior, you get a
brown hat, and this is how you know who was
who in the prison. So anytime we left the dorm
in Shock Junior, we had a brown baseball cap on.
You had other people wearing green baseball caps. Those are
folks that are just started the actual shock program and
they're in the beginning stages. The people that are wearing
(16:59):
red hat are into their third or fourth month in
the program, and then people that are wearing gold baseball
caps are in their fifth or sixth month.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
The pt and discipline from the drill instructors didn't let up. Ever,
even when the inmates eight, it was strict, it was orderly,
and it was silent or else.
Speaker 9 (17:22):
So going into the mess hall was always in an adventure.
Just that it's very quick paced and you cannot miss
a step, so it is you're in line you is
my d I would say, dicks to ass. So you're
literally your nose should be touching the inmate's back of forehead.
(17:43):
That's how tight you need to be. You come up
to the line, you take your tray, nice fork, and
now you have to move side to side, so you
have to move your right foot so your left foot
touches your right and you move your right foot to
your left, so you're going down the line in the
head to be in with the guy next to you.
Speaker 5 (18:01):
So they had to march through the line, holding up
their fingers on how much food they needed or what
the quantity they wanted because they knew everything they took it.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
They had to eat.
Speaker 5 (18:10):
If you're found talking, you had to stand, or you
had to take your tray outside and eat.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
You cannot talk when I tell you, there's three hundred
people in this messhole, and you can hear a pin
drop if you.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Were caught looking up, and there were many of people
that were. They would get called out. They'd go over,
they'd smack the guy in the back of the head.
They'd make them stand on the table and eat his food.
There was probably three to four hundred prisoners in the messhole.
You know, different platoons sitting down, and to be that
one asshole that gets put up on the table and
have everybody look, it's a pretty pretty embarrassing feeling. Talk
(18:43):
about just kind of kicking in the balls when you're
already down.
Speaker 9 (18:46):
You know, you go to your table and you stand
there and you wait, and the drill instructor will say seats,
and you all sit down at the same time, and
that's when the clock starts. You have ten minutes and
you must finish. Yeah, for some reason you don't finish.
The drill instructors would make you get on your knees
(19:08):
and finish the food. As you're walking on your knees
back to the barracks.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Drill instructor Eggleston was walking up and down and he
noticed that witting Brader had no beans on his tray.
He says, where's your beans? He says, sir, I don't
eat beans. He says, like, hell you don't. Yes, you do.
He says, sir, I don't eat beans. We walked out.
We went back to our dorm and drill instructor Eggleston
walks into the danger zone and calls witting Braider front
and center. So, yes, sir and runs down there, want
(19:35):
you to eat this couple of beans, and bottom line
was witting braider did not eat beans and he refused
to eat them. So until he ate the entire cup,
we were all going to be punished for and we
were just going to do push ups until he could eat.
I mean, your arms were literally falling, and then it
(19:55):
was jumping Jackson. He didn't eat them out, and he
didn't finish him out. Finally, this is the kicks on
the lot. You're hunched over because of the paint in
your gut, your arms are flaring up, and this poor
dope is just standing there refusing to eat a little
cup of beans.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Then there was the Myers cookie incidents.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
He stole two cookies from the mess hall and they
did a food inspection when we came outside the mess hall,
which was rare, but they did it because obviously they
saw something. And long story short, they took the two
cookies out of Myers jacket pocket. They called them up
front and smashed the cookies all over the ground and
made them meat it off the pavement. It was sad.
It wasn't funny, it was fucking sad. It really was.
(20:33):
That human being was laying down there doing that, you know,
licking the pavement like a dog.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
December moved into January and Mark and his fellow inmates
in pre shock still didn't have a platoon, meaning their
six month sentence had an officially begun.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Every day it is the same day there. It's like
groundhog Day. They would have some activities like where they
would have a log pile outside that maybe had four
hundred logs or a rock pile that had six hundred rocks,
and they'd say, okay, let's go outside. We're going to
take that log pile and we're just going to move
it over here. And you just went over, grabbed the log,
(21:16):
brought it twenty feet and stacked it. And they would
kill two hours three hours of just manual labor. Oh
my god. They were big on sweeping, sweeping the rocks.
I was sweeping the parking lot once a week. It
was probably the size of giant stadium.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
When they weren't running several miles through blizzard like conditions
or doing pt in the blistering cold, drill, instructors created
a task for the inmates to accomplish together.
Speaker 5 (21:41):
Everything they did was evaluated, so at the end of
the day they got a report card that we every
drill structer had to fill out, and that's what kept
them in the program or kicked them out.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
When other platoons are getting ready to graduate and you
hear it, the drill instructs will tell you, oh, we
got a graduating class next week. You know, hopefully you
guys are up. And it's based on order of how
you come in.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
But none of the men in Mark's dorm knew for
sure when they'd get their green hats and move into
the program. Like everything else at Shock, inmates are left
in the dark, which kept them on their toes.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
You find out the morning of they said, pack your bags,
you're going to I was in the rough Rider platoon,
so they said. They read the names Lombardo again mcvatt
and well, let's go back your shit.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Several years before Mark Lombardo found himself in Shock incarceration,
his twin brother Dave, had been charged with dozens of
accounts of fraud and was finished as a stockbroker. Dave
now owed hundreds of thousands in fines, fees, and restitution.
After borrowing money from his stepfather to get back on
his feet, Dave turned to his brother Mark.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
He called me and said, would you mind meeting me
at the bank on Franklin Turnpike. He was trying to
start his own company. He was trying to get a
business loan and ultimately get back on his feet because
he clearly needed some income. Landmark Consulting was the business
that he tried to create. One of the things that
they got involved in. It's a pretty smart product. A
(23:34):
lot of kids, elderly people, they had problem swallowing pills right,
some people don't do it. It's a plastic cup and
it's a disposable and it had a little mechanism inside
the cup where you put the pill in it, and
the way you drink it, it would physically force and
funnel those pills down your throat. It was actually pretty genius.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Each family member had a different experience with Dave asking
for help.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
The only thing I think that keeps us tighter is
that there was no money between us. I never lost
any of that like anybody else did. But as the
years went on, everybody knew that I didn't have any
money for anybody, and Dave never asked me for a dime.
Speaker 6 (24:18):
It got to a point where you can't pull blood
out of a stone, you know, you would say, I'm
trying my best, I'm trying to work, I'm trying to
do this. My husband would give them all kinds of
suggestions of well, maybe you should sell the house, maybe
you should get some smaller and never happened.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Mark thought the best way to support his brother Dave
was to go with him to the bank and help
him secure alone.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
When we got there, it wasn't like we were going
there to pitch it. It was oh, okay, Dave, yeah
I have everything here, just need some signatures. It was
a matter of just doing the paperwork. It was form
after form after form, and just okay, sign here, okay,
sign here. And I did not know what the fuck
I was signing. I had no idea. Holes I knew
was it was helping my brother Dave get some money
(25:04):
so he could possibly start a company. I didn't know
if I was the actual what are they called the
Garran tour of the loan? Was I a co signer?
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Dave walked out of there with a sixty thousand dollars
check and all bank correspondents moving forward went to his house,
not Marx.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
And then there was another small loan at a different bank.
I want to say that was only for about thirty
that I got for him. Again, I didn't even question it. Whatever,
I don't care, no big deal of just do you
handle the payments.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
We'll get through that. And then there was one other
small loan he got from another bank for forty thousand.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
By twenty eleven, a few years since Mark signed for
the loans, he hadn't given it much thought.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Liz and I we were living together at the condo.
We had just gotten married.
Speaker 10 (25:49):
No, I did not find that out until after we
were married, because he did eventually tell me, but he
said he signed the papers before we got married.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
It was a couple of years after I had given
him the signal to get the loan. I started to
receive letters in the mail. She got the mail, you know,
and what's this? What's that? I don't know, what's take
a look at it. And that's when I found out
that David wasn't paying the loans back.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Dave had not been making payments for several years. On
top of that, he'd increase the debt extended in Mark's
name with his signature as guarantor. Just as Mark and
Liz were beginning their life together.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
She was livid. She was livid. Okay, so we can't
get a loan if we want to buy a house,
we won't be able to have a good credit. So
our dream of having a family and kids has ultimately
just gone down the toilet because you co signed a
loan for your brother that you didn't tell me about.
Speaker 10 (26:43):
There just had their handout in every different direction and
no one was saying anything. I was so confused. And meanwhile,
they have a brand new car, they have a brand
new marble kitchen, saltwater pool for the dogs. I was like,
when does this end? Can you slap everyone else in
the face over and over and over.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
I trust my brother.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
Our family is the good and bad of sticking with it,
not really getting to the point just hoping that everything's
going to be okay. I think everybody is just wanting
everything to be okay and hoping that it is, and
(27:22):
in a lot of cases not doing the hard work
to get there, not doing that accountability that you're talking about.
It isn't there to get through to the other side
of a problem quickly. It always kind of drags on.
And that's a lot of the problem.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
When Liz, ultimately she's thinking, who the fuck did I marry? Right?
I mean, this guy's willing to go on the line
and help his brother out, but not a tell me
about it or be think that it's never going to
be an issue. This is an issue. This is very serious,
very serious.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Mark and Liz were left to figure out how he'd
become buried in debt by his twin brother, so they
headed to his sister's house to see if Judy and
Pete could help him understand the legal and financial implications.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Judy and Pete's home is where I went, and I
sat at the kitchen table when I first got these letters,
and I said, Hey, what the hell's going on? And
Pete knows how long. He's very smart, very brilliant man,
and I always respected his opinion, and he was the
first person I reached out to. Pete was the first
person I reached out to to say, Hey, what am
(28:34):
I doing here?
Speaker 7 (28:35):
Mark and Liz are sitting there, I believe, sitting looking
to buy a car, and they're like, well, you can't
get approved for this because you have this credit card
maxed out on this hand. And they're like, what are
you talking about? I don't have this card. I don't
have that card.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Unfortunately for Mark, all of the correspondents were going to
Dave's house.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
I signed for it. I didn't hear anything about it.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Again, I wasn't getting letters were going to his address,
No payments were being made. So my wife got the
mail at our condo saying that it was from the IRS.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
About these bank loans.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
And you know, all my mind, they're going to start
garnishing my wages, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 7 (29:16):
You know, come to find out, Dave has taken out
multiple credit lines and credit cards in Mark's name. Easy
thing to do if you're a twin, right, Like what
are the security questions? Mothers made a name, you know,
like all these things.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
That once any bank gives you a business loan, what
are they going to give you business credit card? Oh?
You need it. You got to have a business credit card.
So he got two fifty thousand dollars credit cards from
the loan that we did the fifty grand. So now
you went from ninety to one hundred and ninety, you know,
one thousand dollars.
Speaker 10 (29:47):
Well, it should have been a red flag if you
lost a security license from stealing from elving clients. So
that should have been the first big, gigantic flag. I
think he was like an opportunist and just speaking.
Speaker 11 (30:05):
Shock Incarceration is a joint production from iHeartRadio and Doghouse Pictures,
produced and hosted by Jeff Keating. Executive producers are Mark Lombardo,
Tommy James, Noel Brown, and Jeff Keating. Written by Jim Roberts,
Tommy James, Chris Rogozzo and Jeff Keating. Story edited by
Jim Roberts, Edit mix and sound design by Lame Krauts.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
From Herd's Creek Productions.
Speaker 11 (30:28):
Music composed by Diamond Street Productions, accompany by Tyler Greenwell,
Danny Wattanas, Sean Thompson and Spencer garn Special thanks to
Trinity Investigative Group and Mark Lombardo's family and friends who
contributed to the podcast.
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