The Knife: Off Record – 126

This week Hannah answers a listener’s question about a man named Tommy Lee Buckley and his “Treasury Gate” scheme— a web of corruption, secret bank accounts, government conspiracy, and a billion dollar  payday that was always just around the corner.  Then, Patia dives into the dark side of sudden wealth with stories of lottery winners whose luck went sideways, including Tonda Dickerson’s unforgettable Alabama jackpot in 1999. 

Recommendations:  

The Lodge podcast 

Blink podcast 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

(00:21):
Welcome to The Knife Off Record. I'm patia Eton, I'm
Hannah Smith, and today we have two crime stories, one
from you, maybe one and a half from me. Okay,
interesting one and a half and then some res All right,
well let's get right into it. Yeah, So I'm really
excited about what I have to talk about today. This
started when a listener named Nick emailed me. He'd actually

(00:46):
been a listener of The Opportunist years before and then
a listener of The Knife, and he reached out and
said that, you know, we had this question about this
scam that his father was involved with, and he wanted
to get more information about it and wanted to see
if I could find anything.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Out about it, and you were the lady for the job.
I said, I don't know, I'll try.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
So we ended up jumping on a video call together
and I recorded a little bit of what he told
me about what he knew about the situation, and so
I'm just going to play a clip here for you.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Great.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
What I remember is that my dad, he discovered this
thing that he was involved with that was going to
pay him off big time. He explained that it was
like this guy down in Amarillo named Tommy Buckley that
had discovered some kind of like certificates, like treasury certificates

(01:45):
worth like billions, maybe trillions of dollars, and that's somehow
it was like illegal, and that Tommy Buckley had discovered
this and he was going to sue the US Department
of Treasury. I know that he was sending me Buckley
seventeen dollars US a month to receive a newsletter, and
I remember my dad saying and also seeing in the

(02:07):
newsletters the payoff is coming, payday is coming. And my
dad like fully bought into it, and then he got sick,
like he passed away in two thousand and five. But
as he was getting sick, he was like, Nikki, remember
if I die before this comes to fruition, you're the beneficiary.
You have to get in touch with Tommy and like

(02:28):
you're going to get that, you're going to get to
reap the rewards. And I was like, okay, okay, Dad,
Of course, nothing ever happened. My dad died. I then,
like maybe a couple of years after he passed away,
I looked up Tommy Buckley Amarillo, and I found his
phone number and I called him and this like totally gruff.

(02:50):
Texan answered the phone, and then I was like, I
told him who I was. I told him who my
dad was and that he had died, and he was like, oh, yeah,
I remember Kenny was a good green Light member. He was, oh, yeah,
I was a good member. And then I was like,
well he told me that, like I was the beneficiary
into treasury game or whatever. And he's like, yeah, yeah,

(03:12):
that's true. By you'll need to send me the death
certificate in the mail.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
So ultimately Nick didn't send his dad's death certificate. He
was like, I was raising a kid. My life was busy.
He also, in the back of his mind was like,
I think this is a scam. And then he looked
it up a few years later, And this was after
Tommy Lee Buckley had been indicted on fraud charges. And
so since that happened, it's been over like it's been

(03:39):
fifteen years since Tommy Lee Buckley was indicted.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
But his original call where he said this like gruff
text and answers the phone that was prior to Tommy
being indicted a few years past. Then he looks back
at it again and realizes he's been indicted. Yeah, okay,
got it.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
So he's probably like glad that he never sent his
dad's death certificate or any of his personal information to
Tommy Lee Buckley. But at this point in time, he
is just curious what all was going on with this scam.
There's not a ton of information online about it. There's
like the Justice dot Gov indictment information that talks about

(04:16):
the fraud, but it's pretty vague. And he looked back
to see if he had any of the old newsletters
because I was really wanting to see those, obviously, but
he couldn't find any. So, you know, he was just like,
I'd love to know more information about what he was
doing if you can find anything. So it's like, I
don't know, I'll give it a try. Did some googling,
Like not a whole lot of information out there. But

(04:38):
then I was able to get court documents actually from
the trial because he had a trial, multiple day trial,
and I didn't get the whole trial, but I got
three days. And these were three days that Tommy Lee
Buckley himself was on the stand.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
Love, so when the defendant testifies, right, a gold mine.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
Yeah, And so that was a lot of information and
helpful to see, you know, his version of the story
when he's talking with his own attorney and then when
he's cross examined, how like, there's just so many holes
in the story, right, right, But payday was coming, But
payday was coming. And interestingly, at the trial, some of

(05:23):
his long standing subscribers to his newsletter were there as witnesses,
and a lot of them still believed that payday was
still coming, that these certificates were real, and that it
was just a matter of time, like even then. So
it's a really, you know, it's interesting story about how
this guy sort of runs this con and there's a

(05:43):
lot of it that feels a little bit cult like
to me, honestly. So let's get into it. So Tommy
Lee Buckley is a West Texas guy. I couldn't find
where he grew up, but he went to three different universities,
Arlington State College, Texas Tech, and Texas Christian University. He
didn't actually ended up graduating any of them, No, he

(06:03):
like spent a little time at one, transferred and transferred,
and then ended.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
Up dropping out. Okay.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
Originally, in the trial he stated that that was because
his mom was having financial difficulties, so we had to
leave to help her. In the cross examination, he denies that,
and he says he dropped out because he was offered
a job. So I don't know, but what I'm gathering
is that he didn't come from a lot of money.
He ends up in the Amarillo area. He started his
own business, a clothing store called Tom Buckley's Men's Shop

(06:31):
around nineteen seventy, and he had that for about five
years before it went out of business. Then he works
at another store, a clothing store, and eventually starts another
chain of men's clothing stores with some business partners that
last for a couple of years and then goes out
of business. By this time, it's nineteen eighty and he

(06:52):
decides to change careers completely. And in the eighties there's
this huge oil.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
Boom in West Texas.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
Like all of a sudden, all of these huge companies,
international companies are swarming West Texas and starting to drill.
And there's a lot of people who become like very
wealthy suddenly because they own land or they own like
oil rights, mineral rights to land that is like where
there's a lot of oil discovered, Okay, And so he

(07:21):
decides to get in on this, and he becomes a
right of way agent, which is like someone who helps
secure land rights for drilling. Okay, and things are going well.
He is an independent contractor. Then he goes he gets
a full time job. He's working in the oil industry.
He got married in nineteen seventy or seventy one to
his first wife. They had three kids, but they got

(07:44):
divorced at some point, and then in nineteen ninety he
remarries a woman named Phyllis who he'll be with until
the end. Okay, so you know he's working in oil
and gas. It's the mid eighties. He meets this guy
named Lou Driver also known as Lewis Driver, but they
call them Alou.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
So they've got Tommy Buckley and Lou Driver. These are
like names ripe for a con story, one hundred percent.
I'm like, this could be the best way. No offense,
no offense, great names. So they partner up.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
They start a company called International Gas Recovery. I'm not
going to get into what exactly they do. It's in
the oil and gas industry. Yeah, copy that, moving on,
moving on, not important. But they end up traveling a lot.
They meet all different kinds of people working in this industry.
They meet people from all over the world. But eventually

(08:36):
this business is also kind of going under in like
nineteen eighty nine, and part of that is that the
price of oil has dropped, and so this big oil
boom is like kind of coming to a little bit
of a halt, but not a problem for Tommy Lee
Buckley and Lou Driver, because they're about to get into
a whole different business, endeavor business. So this is where

(08:58):
things start to get strained. Basically, what Buckley says on
the stand is that his partner, Lou Driver, was in
Los Angeles on business and he met this guy named
mister Edison Daminick. Okay, he's an Indonesian lawyer, and somehow
they meet, and what I think happens is that mister Daminick,

(09:19):
as he's referred to, starts to hear about all the
wealth in West Texas, all the new wealth from from
this oil boom. So he is like, I'm going to
let you in on a little secret to Lou Driver,
and he goes on to tell him that, you know,
he has come into possession of financial instruments they're referred

(09:40):
to as different things CDs, Treasury notes. Certificates is the
most common way that Buckley ends up referring to them.
I've heard of CDs, Yeah, Certificate of deposit CDs, which
is sort of like a.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
Never knew what it stood for action saying.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
Yeah, I was like, write this down CD fixed interest
rate savings account. So I still don't really understand exactly
what it is. But it's like money. It's like a
certificate that represents money in a bank account, right, And
so he's like, I have all of these certificates and
some of them are worth billions of dollars, billions, some trillions,

(10:21):
Like the amount listed on these certificates is astronomical. And
he says they were created by the US government but
owned by foreign entities as well as rich influential people
across the world. And somehow he's come into contact with
them or he has them. But it's complicated. You can't
just walk into a bank and redeem them. May I

(10:42):
have one trillion dollars please? Yeah, I'll just go ahead.
And in twenties, and she had twenties, and he's also
from Indonesia. He wants to redeem them in the US,
and he's looking for some locals to help him, and
he thinks that Lou Davis and Tommy Lee Buckley are
just the people for that. So you might be wonder
and like how he got these certificates. I am yeah,

(11:03):
and you know it's vague. Buckley says in court that
some of them are Swiss, and the one in question
that they talk about a lot is worth supposedly five
hundred million dollars Swiss certificate, and he said he believed
mister Daminick, who is from Indonesia and betrayed himself as
highly connected, had received them from either the Indonesian government

(11:24):
or some very wealthy Indonesian people, but for some reason
they'd chosen mister Daminic to be entrusted with these certificates,
and it was his job to go figure out how
to redeem them.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
I feel bad for anyone who actually has a Swiss
bank account because like the context that I here Swiss
bank account being used in, I'm like guilty, guilty on
all charges run yeah, yeah, okay, So he is convincing
Tommy and Lou that he's the real deal. He's the
real deal, okay, and who knows, maybe at this point

(11:58):
they really believe him, you know, Yeah, maybe they believe
it the whole time. I have no idea, but they
come up with a plan. So this is what they do.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
They go back to Amrello and they put an advertisement
in the local paper for low interest business loans, and
they mentioned the ad in the court transcript and right
up top it has like a big, you know print,
five hundred million dollars and they're looking for applicants who
want to start a business locally, and they're going to

(12:26):
give them very low interest loans each applicant, it said,
can be granted as much as two point five million,
and encourage people to apply, and there was like a
number that they could call to get more information, and
it also said something like limited.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
Spots, you know, of course. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:43):
And so when people called, they were told, okay, there's
going to be a meeting. They called it the Executive
Summary Meeting, and it's going to take place at Amarello
and this is the date. If you want to be
invited to the meeting, it costs two hundred dollars to go.
So eighty eight people show up to this meeting and
they write proposals. And what the meeting turned out to

(13:05):
be was, you know, they had these certificates on display
at the meeting, and so it really turns into Tommy
Lee Buckley mainly convincing the room selling them on this
idea that these certificate its are real. The US government
legally will have to redeem them. We have figured out
this sort of loophole, and once we redeem these, that's

(13:28):
where this low interest loan money is going to come from.
But really the loan is like a ruse, and everyone
gets really excited about this idea. Oh my gosh, we're
going to be able to get super rich from this,
and he gets people on board. This is the very
beginning of what he ends up calling green Light, which
is his group, and he'll end up having some loyal

(13:49):
followers who will continue to follow him and believe in
this for twenty years after, because this is nineteen ninety.
So the people that are interested, he encourages them to
give a five hundred dollars pledge and they also give
their mailing addresses, and he's like, I'm going to keep
you updated about this. With this five hundred dollars, you're

(14:10):
in on this, and that is an investment so that
when we redeem these, you'll get money back. What kind
of businesses, do you know or was it just like
small businesses West Texas. He had a list of them
that I didn't write down, but it was like oil
and gas, agriculture, stuff like that. Okay, yeah, five hundred

(14:32):
dollars then small price to pay. Yeah, if you think
you're going to get two point five million, yeah for
your business.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
Right.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
So what begins is that he then starts sending out
newsletters monthly to everyone who's given him money. And we're
talking newsletters. We're talking, you know, physical newsletters pre Internet.
You can't email. So he's you know, writing these out,
printing them, copying them, putting in envelopes, and mailing them
out to people. This would be the newsletter that Nick'

(14:59):
dad would eventually Okay, Nick's dad was living in Canada
at the time, so he was not at this meeting.
I think he joined a few years later, but he
would eventually have people from all over who were part
of this screenlight. The newsletters were cryptic, and you know,
the first one he sent out thanked everyone for their
pledge and said things like you're going to receive a

(15:19):
special compensation soon. He also talked about how this was
highly confidential but very quickly, the newsletters start to change
the tone of them. You know, the next month he's like,
you know, if you haven't sent in your pledge yet,
make sure to get it in. I have gotten really busy.
I'm dedicating all of my time to this. And we
start to see this narrative develop in his newsletters where

(15:39):
he's really creating a world and like a story about
what is happening here. And one of the things that
pops up quickly is that there are like enemies who
are trying to stop him from achieving this goal. In
the second or third newsletter, he says, within the last
four days, I have found out who complained to the
FBI and began the tremendous problems we have. And he's

(16:02):
like writing about how they're threatening the project. But don't worry,
he's not going to stop it anything. He's dedicated.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
That's wild because if I'm someone who was at that
meeting and decides to give this pledge and I want
this money, if I hear that the FBI knowing about
it is a problem, I'm out. I'm done. You can
keep my five hundred dollars. I want no part of this.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
You know, I don't have the newsletters. But I think
a big part of the appeal and the laura around
this is that it's like the secret that the US
government is keeping from people. That the US government legally
has to redeem these CDs, but they're not going to
want to just give it to any old regular citizen.

(16:44):
They lost these or I don't know what happened, but
somehow these certificates got out of control, and the US
government is going to try to cover this.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
Whole thing up. Peski US government. Yeah, typical.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
And then of course he ends every newsletter with like
the payouts coming soon. We're so close. I'm so excited,
you know, thank you for being loyal to me. He says,
I won't forget those who stand by me. I don't
know that anyone actually reported to the FBI. Probably not.
I think that he sort of was creating these scenarios
where he was like under attack. So then in December

(17:17):
of nineteen ninety, which is like a few months after
the meeting, he has a newsletter where he's saying, you know,
my costs are more than expected. I'm having to pay
for phones, facts FedEx travel. He says, I spent four
two hundred dollars alone on plane tickets this month. So
now he's like, if you want to keep being part
of this, you're gonna have to pay fifty dollars a month.

(17:38):
If you want to drop out, fine, I'll reimburse you
all the money you've paid as soon as that first
payment comes through with the CDs. But if you want
to keep in on this and this really important thing,
now you've got to pay me every month. And so
people start paying him.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
Dang. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
So this continues to go on, and you know, he
is doing things to try to supposedly redeem these certificates.
So we're thinking that this stage and whatever is happening,
that he's a believer in the certificates. He claims that
he is, and he's calling people, he's trying to make

(18:16):
meetings with people who he thinks might be able to
help him with this, like bankers and stuff. Okay, And
then he's writing about all of his efforts in the
newsletter to keep everyone updated with what he's doing to
try to like get them their big payout. He separates

(18:39):
his green lighters, as they're called, into active and inactive.
You know, Nick remembered his dad saying that he would
call a number to get updates sometimes, and that's true.
So Buckley used something called facts Mail that was faster
than the mailed newsletter. So if you wanted updates outside
of the monthly newsletter, you called a number and then

(19:00):
you would receive a fax automatically with updates on green Light.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
So he was writing a lot of letters. He was really,
really he was busy writing letters. Yeah, it was just
like in publishing basically, and he like no longer is
working at any other job. This is his full time job.
He gives himself a salary, you know, like he's doing
things like he travels to Las Vegas to meet with
some people who are selling a hotel that's in bankruptcy,

(19:25):
and I don't know what his plan was, but obviously
that he doesn't buy it, but he you know, includes
that in the newsletter. And he flies to Mexico City
to meet with someone who he thinks is going to
help him redeem these certificates. That doesn't pan out, Okay,
of course he writes about it, and the question really
becomes too are all of these meetings real that he's

(19:45):
writing about? Is he really flying in Mexico City? I
don't know, stories from far away places like maybe but
maybe not maybeeah, a telltale sign of ACAN. Well, I mean,
this whole thing starts with the Indonesian government supposedly, which
you know, our away places that you can't verify, especially
in the nineties, but there is one meeting that's real.

(20:07):
Through his network, he ends up securing a meeting in
Dallas at the Federal Reserve Bank for July of nineteen
ninety one. So he brings these certificates along with blu Driver.
He brings these certificates to the US Federal Reserve Bank
and meets with people there and hands them over to

(20:27):
them and is sort of like, we just want to,
you know, confirm that these are legitimate. Seems like a
step that should have been taken a few steps ago,
but okay, well yeah, and you know, we want you
to use your resources to confirm these are legitimate.

Speaker 1 (20:43):
And here's the thing. One of the certificates that was
supposedly created by the Federal Reserve Bank is listed to
Saddam Hussein. So he hands us over. I mean, he
has this meeting at the Federal Reserve and they're like,
we'll take a look at them. And so then you know,
Tommy Lee Buckley and his people leave. What he ends

(21:06):
up writing about and how he tells the story is
that this like gets them in trouble and that someone
from the Federal Reserve calls him back and says these
are real, but Saddam Hussein's assets are frozen in the US,
so unfortunately we can't redeem this for you.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
That's what he says. Happens, okay, and.

Speaker 1 (21:25):
Then he later says that you know, they're having lunch
and they're being followed by the Secret Service and they
get arrested. What is true about this story is that
they were arrested, and they were probably followed because they
brought fake certificates, you know, fake US money into a
bank and tried to cash them, and so they were

(21:47):
followed and they were arrested and taken to Dallas County jail,
and Buckley spent a week in jail.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
He can't send any faxes. What are the people going
to think?

Speaker 1 (21:56):
I know, Well, fortunately this is like you know, before
the internet, so they're only getting monthly newsletters. True, so
mister Daminick is not in Dallas, he's not with them
for this whole thing, but he is in Austin and
he's apprehended and arrested. And what authorities quickly realize is
that this all traces back to mister Daminick, that he's

(22:17):
like the one who started this, and so everyone else
is able to get out of jail. Mister Daminick is
in prison for seventy days and he has charges against
him for being like the mastermind of all of this.
But Tommy Lee Buckley is undeterred. He goes to Austin
and he visits mister Daminick in prison like five or
six times, and according to him, mister Daminick is insistent, no, no,

(22:39):
the certificates are real, like they just don't want us
to have them, like they're real. And does he believe
this or not?

Speaker 2 (22:47):
Man, I don't know, like you were just arrested. Yeah,
And somehow the Sadam Hussein of it all like that
doesn't that doesn't get alarm go off.

Speaker 1 (22:59):
Right, and it only adds to the narrative that the
US government doesn't want you to know the truth, right,
And so this only like fans the fire for him.
So he starts calling it Project Treasury Gate. That's when
this happens, and he decides he's going to sue the
government for not redeeming these certificates, and he looks for

(23:20):
a lawyer, takes some time to find a lawyer will
take this case, as you can imagine. Yeah, And the
other thing he does is he writes a two hundred
and fifty page book and makes a videotape of him
talking about Treasury Gate and spinning his like story, and
he starts selling that for one hundred dollars and people
are buying it. And one of the things he says

(23:42):
in it is that he was he survived an assassination attempt.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
Oh so at the lunch where he was arrested and followed,
is that where the assassination attempt was supposed to be?
I think, so, yeah, wow, but pretty good marketing, you know, scheme.
You know.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
You were like, does he believe that? I don't know,
you know. As I was looking into this, I wondered like,
is he just a victim of the scam? Like did
he meet mister Daminick and he was like totally convinced
that this was real? Yeah? Or is he scamming people?

(24:19):
Hard to say, yeah, So I wondered like, maybe he
just really believes this, yeah. But then I kept reading
and it just seems like impossible because when mister Daminick
was arrested, they confiscated many of the certificates and they
actually had an expert analyzed them to see if they

(24:39):
were real. A physical and microscopic examination was performed. They
were compared against United States Secret Service genuine specimen files
like real certificates of deposit, as well as those of
the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and they were determined
to be not genuine monetary certificates issued by the US government.

(25:01):
And it also said these documents were produced by a
combination of poor quality offset printing, stamp pads and press
or rub on letters and numbers. Oh no, that's a
bad day for Tommy. Yeah, and he was there. He
was at the court hearing, so he heard this being said.
He heard this is not real.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
Okay, So at this point it's like whether or not
he believed it in the beginning. He's continuing to collect
money from people, and now he knows it's not real.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
Yeah, this doesn't make it into the newsletter update. No,
I imagine it wouldn't. And he continues to spend this
story and collect money for like sixteen more years from people,
and the certificates are wild. They talk about them, you know,
Saddam Hussein. And there's also one in Fidel Castro's name,

(25:49):
the former president of Uganda is one. But the prosecuting
attorney points out that there are spelling errors, like people's
names are spelled wrong. Oh no, there's one for seventy
six trillion dollars payable to Gandhi dated nineteen fifty eight,
even though Gandhi died in nineteen forty eight.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Oh my gosh. Okay, So damn Nick who's at the
center of all of this. He's at this trial.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
I don't know if he was at Tommy Lee Buckley's star.
I don't think so. I think he like fled the US.
He was pretty much out of this whole scheme once
he got arrested in Austin and they were like these
aren't real we've caught you. He's like gone, he's no longer.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
Part of it. He's yeah, okay, got it.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
He was the emphasis of this. But then once he leaves,
Tommy Lee Buckley just like runs with this narrative and
he's already created this whole following. He has a brand, okay,
and he's got a newsletter to keep up with he's
got a newsletter, he's got monthly money coming in.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
Does Phillis think of this?

Speaker 1 (26:52):
Phyllis is a nurse, but eventually she quits her job
because they're making so much money and she's helping him
package the news and sent them out. I don't know,
does she know it's a scam? I would have a
lot of questions. Yeah, so they're doing really well off this.
It's not just like they got some five hundred dollars
pledges back in the nineteen eighties and they're riding the

(27:16):
wave like this is really continuing to grow on a
global scale. I don't know where all his subscribers come from,
probably mostly the US, maybe some Canada, maybe elsewhere. Yeah,
how did Nick stad hear about it? Do you know
he heard about it on the radio? I'm pretty sure.
So at a certain point it stops becoming highly confidential
and Tommy Lee Buckley starts sort of advertising this is

(27:37):
what he's doing. You know, he had made that videotape
and written that sort of manifesto and is selling it
for one hundred dollars, so he's making money off that.
He is interviewed on local radio shows and he's talking
about this scheme and the government is lying to us,
so he's getting people reaching out to him because of that.
And then every time that there is like getting arrested

(27:59):
and then plan to now sue the US government. That
brings in money too, because it's like it's expensive to
bring a lawsuit, but I think it is important.

Speaker 2 (28:07):
And at the end of it, you all get paid.

Speaker 1 (28:09):
You're going to get millions and millions of dollars. Yeah,
So what ends up happening is that he charges people
seventeen dollars a month to be active green Light members,
and if you stop paying the seventeen then you're inactive.
This means you'll still get some money because you've already
paid him, but you're not going to get as much money.
He doesn't really specify what that means. And you also

(28:31):
don't get as many newsletters. And what's seventeen dollars a
month for that kind of hope? You know, I mean
it is kind of a lot for like the nineties
and early two thousands. True, Yeah, maybe, like what's thirty
dollars a month?

Speaker 2 (28:43):
Maybe?

Speaker 1 (28:43):
Now I'm not really sure, right, Like I've canceled subscriptions
over less. Yeah, but yeah, you're right, it's like this dream.
Then you're in on something. Okay, So if you are
paying regularly, you're getting all of the newsletters an update,
and some of them are like he's like, I have
a big update coming. I've just gotten contact with an

(29:05):
important person and I'm about to send out a newsletter.
But some of it will be it will be sanitized
as the words, and so he's like blocking out some
of it, like you would like redacted, redacted.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
But he's writing it, so he could have just left
everything out to begin, or it'll be like I got
this letter from so and so I'm going to redact it.

Speaker 1 (29:22):
So he's creating this intrigue. So if you're not an
active member, you don't you don't get the newsletters. But
every once in a while he'll send out a newsletter
to everyone and sort of tease what they're missing. Okay,
it's like they don't have the reality shows that we
do right now, like this is exciting.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
Yeah, this is like a monthly sort of mystery. Totally.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
That's like updating you on some secret conspiracy in the
US government and you're getting updates and it's I mean,
they are paying for like entertainment in some ways. Right,
but except that it's he's telling them that this is
an investment.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yikes.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
So he does sue the US government. He files a
lawsuit in nineteen ninety three, includes one of the CDs
that's worth two hundred and seventy eight billion dollars, and
of course the lawsuits just completely dismissed. In nineteen ninety four,
a judge noted the note was fraudulent and that quote
any reasonable person who investigated would have known that. And

(30:18):
it seems like the judge is like pretty upset that
this lawsuit was ever brought, because the judge orders Buckley's
attorney to pay for the other side attorney fees, which
is ten thousand additional dollars.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
Oops.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
So this whole thing cost him forty thousand dollars and
all that money is coming out of the money that
the green Lighters are giving him their investment that he's
supposedly taking care of. Okay, So around two thousand and one,
it's estimated that he has two thousand, seven hundred and
thirty three members in one of his groups, and like
another thousand in his sort of inactive group that are

(30:55):
sometimes giving money. It's a pretty big operation to send
out to these newsletters. He also has started to tell
communications business called comm M Group, and it has capacity
for eight hundred voicemail system. It's like a voicemail system.
People pay twenty twenty five dollars a month to have
a voicemail box.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
Oh my gosh, imagine what you'd pay now not to.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
Yeah, I know, to never have to listen to a
voicemail ever again.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
Yeah, oh my god, that's a million dollar idea. It's
a subscription that we need to start seriously. And so
his wife is working for him. He has like a
full time employee. He's giving himself a salary, and he's
sort of still trying to sell these certificates ish, even

(31:42):
after a judge has said these are absolutely not real
and any reasonable person would know that.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
Yeah, in the beginning, he was like meeting with bankers,
he was going to the Federal Reserve. At this point,
the people that he's meeting are not reputable people, Like
he meets these brothers in Canada, who's where they can
redeem these certificates and he ends up paying them seventy
five thousand dollars but they can't. He also says that
he goes to Germany to meet someone and he ends

(32:10):
up feeling like his life is threatened, so he pays
that guy fifty thousand dollars and flees the country. And
it's sort of like, Okay, is he being scammed by
other scammers at this point?

Speaker 2 (32:21):
He seems like he's in this in between of scammer
and victim. Yeah, because just the fact that he is
paying other people that kind of money makes me question
like does he get it or is he just similarly
to those people who are at the trial still believing,
like is he just that sort of unwilling to let

(32:43):
go of the dream that all this money is coming. Yeah.
But in the meantime, I mean, I don't know how
many subscriptions did you see that he had or how
many members.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
I would estimate he had like three thousand.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
Because if he had three thousand members and they're paying
seventeen dollars a month, that's fifty one thousand dollars a month,
I mean at the time, and also probably and where
they live, Like that's a lot of I mean, that's
a lot of money period even right now, but like wow,
in two thousand and one in West Texas, that's a
ton of money. Yeah, a ton of Money's a ton

(33:17):
of money, now, don't get me wrong, But like then
that's like unbelievable. That's enough money to pay his salary,
to pay a full time employee, and to live like
a very nice life and save money, right, And so.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
Yeah, I don't know. Like when I hear about, okay,
he paid these brothers seventy five thousand dollars to try
to redeem these certificates, It's like, is that true? Is
that not true? I don't know if there's paperwork to
support that. Did he just write that in his newsletter?
Am I getting scammed? Because I was like thinking, yeah,
he probably did pay them, but I don't know, did
he Well, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I

(33:51):
think he might have. And the only reason I think
that is because they do have on record that at
one point he takes money out of one of his businesses,
the telecommunication business, as well as money that has been
given by the Green Lighters. He takes two hundred thousand
dollars and he invests it with this person named mister

(34:12):
and Weia. It's a real person. I looked him up.
He was the president of the Worldwide Equity Corporation and
apparently this guy is like promising him insane returns on
his investment, Like this is going to turn into multiple
millions of dollars red flag like a matter of like
a year, right, And so he gives him this money

(34:33):
and his money disappears and this guy disappears and he
loses it. He loses two hundred thousand dollars on this
investment thing. And when I look this up, this guy
was running a scam and he was caught by the
SEC and lost his job. He was running like a
huge scam.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
It's like, hasn't Tommy been down this road before?

Speaker 1 (34:56):
So Tommy is like, yeah, is he believing he was
taking money out and investing it and trying to make
more money off of this? So this was like he
was conned by this investor. But it also seems like
he was paying people to try to redeem these certificates.
And so is this a situation where he just had
convinced himself it was real to not feel guilty about

(35:19):
how he was just like conning all these people.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
M M. Yeah, I don't know. Wow, that is nuts.
And I mean I don't know how old Nick's father
was when he became a member, but I wonder if
a lot of the people who started sending him money
after he started advertising and it was no longer confidential,
if they were elderly, if he was taking advantage of

(35:42):
more vulnerable populations, obviously things were a lot different. Then
you couldn't get on in Google and find a whole
Reddit thread about someone if they were up to no good.
But I mean, month after month of the same thing
in different scenarios would be troublesome, for sure.

Speaker 1 (36:02):
Nick did say that his dad lived alone for a
long time, was very like lonely and sort of struggled
with depression, and also was living in Canada but was
born in the US, and that being part of this
green Light group sort of gave him this feeling of
connection and community and probably excitement every month when that
newsletter came to read, like what other intrigue is happening? Yeah,

(36:24):
and so in some ways, like, well, maybe it was
worth it for him to pay seventeen dollars a month.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
That's so true.

Speaker 1 (36:28):
It's like Facebook of the moment. Yeah, yeah, totally. So
as far as like how much money he is making
in trial, they look at his financials and in two
thousand and three he bought a BMW for forty six
thousand dollars. He and his wife bought a house in Aberdeen, Texas,
for four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. In two thousand

(36:49):
and four, he listed his assets as one point three million,
and then by two thousand and seven it's listed as
three point one million. He's like a member of multiple
country clubs, living a pretty fancy life in West Texas.
And another part that he always talks about is when
he gets this big payout, he's going to give most
of it to charity.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
Not to the people who have been hanging on every
word he has said for years and years and years.
That's what I wonder too.

Speaker 1 (37:16):
My gosh, Yeah, he's going to give at least a
trillion dollars to charity. Well that's so kind of him. Yeah,
But when they looked at his financials, interestingly enough, he
had hardly ever given any money to charity.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
That's shocking. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
By two thousand and seven, he still has the same story.
You know, he updates. This is amazing and I have
so much information to share with you. I know who
the good guys are, I know who the bad guys are.
And he's just like it's just around the corner, like
maybe this is the last update, because maybe you're going
to get paid next month. You know, the story has
evolved now. At some point, he says, he sends the
certificates to Europe with someone who's trusted to carry them,

(37:53):
and they're with the UN and there's this big international
plan at some point to cash them out and like
totally get rid of all us debt. It doesn't make
any sense, but his lore has become bigger and grander.
And part of this, I think is that by two
thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, he's now on
the internet okay, and he's now connecting with other people
who are also sort of interested in similar topics. He

(38:16):
starts reading a lot about the Illuminati, and his newsletters
sort of reflect this. He has all this code and
stuff that he starts putting in them. He refers to
this one person who's an insider kind of person, who
he calls White Rosetta Stone WRS for short. He writes
in one letter, WRS has introduced me to two very

(38:37):
very important but secretive individuals who are critical to our success.
But in court, when they ask him about this, he
admits that WRS is just this woman named Carol that
he met online and they like to chat about their theories.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
That's actually Carol is fascinating to me. Now does she
know that she's WRS newsletters like this? Was this like
a citing for Carol? Caroly, if you're listening, reach out, Yeah, Carol,
I want to talk to you. Wow.

Speaker 1 (39:05):
At some point this catches the attention of the FBI
and they start an investigation, and in twenty ten, he
is indicted by a grand jury on thirty nine counts.
He's charged with mail fraud, frauds, and swindles related to
his operation of a fraudulent investment scheme. And he's sixty
three years old at this point. From Justice Dutgov, between
two thousand and four and two thousand and eight, he
deposited approximately two point eight million consisting of monthly checks

(39:30):
and money orders into his account. So that's only four
of the twenty years, right. You know, he was paying
his wife's salary. He had about eighteen hundred members at
that time, they estimated, and that he misappropriated funds from
this investment and was living in a lavish lifestyle. So
in twenty eleven, he goes to trial, and the first
day he shows up and when he has to testisfy

(39:52):
and he's like really sick. He talks about how he
has had this accident the year before and he had
brain damage and so his memory is an good so
we might not remember details. And it's like maybe he did,
but it's hard to believe someone who's been lying and
scamming for so long.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
I would actually say I don't believe him at all.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yeah, he has a walker, he's doing the whole I'm
like this weak old man thing. But it doesn't end
up mattering. He is found guilty on twenty four counts
of mail fraud. The government is like seizing his assets
and I don't honestly know what happened, like how this happened,
but okay, so he was found guilty and then the

(40:32):
next day it just says he was supposed to show
up for a seizure of his assets, that there was
a meeting and he did not show up.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
Why wasn't he arrested when he found guilt? I don't know.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
But he had died by suicide. Oh that's awful. Yeah,
so he never ended up, you know, going to jail.
He wasn't even sentenced yet, although the sentencing that he
likely would have gotten would have been at least twenty
years for all of this and a hefty fine like.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
The rest of his life.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not one hundred percent sure, but
it seemed like his wife was going to leave him
as well, So it just sounded like he didn't have
anything left. And some money was recovered for the victims,
but I don't think it was very significant.

Speaker 2 (41:14):
And that's that. You know, what shocks me about that
story is that back when he takes these certificates into
the bank and they're like, these aren't real, and then
he's arrested. I'm surprised that so much time passed between
that point in his story and when the FBI catches

(41:35):
on all these years later and then he's, you know,
charged with fraud. Yeah, it seems like it wouldn't have
taken very much to stop him earlier. But I knew
no disrestract of that. But I'm sure they're very busy,
but like, right, but guy brings fraudulent certificates for a
trillion dollars into the bank. I know, maybe it's one

(41:56):
of those things where it's like this is so outrageous
we don't even need to concern ourselves or something.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
I don't know, but yeah, it's weird. And maybe they thought, well,
you got to slap on the hand. You will spend
a night or a week in jail, I think, and
so now you'll learn your lesson.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
But then he's like advertising it on the radio. He
learned nothing. Yeah, so a week in jail, Yeah, no problem. Yeah,
so I hope that answers next questions. Mm hmm. About
Tommy Lee Buckley, yeah, I imagine Nick never received a
payout never. Yeah, that's disappointing, but I would have done

(42:33):
the same thing if I was him, I would have
been like, I wonder what that was because also at
the time, you know, even when our parents are aging,
it's like you don't want to make them feel silly
for believing something totally and what can you say. It's
like if his dad was lonely and this was entertaining
for him, not like it was okay, but maybe he
got something out of it. Mm hmm. Yeah. So my

(42:56):
story is in a different world, but similar in that
money makes people go absolutely haywire. It really does. And
I would love the opportunity to show everyone that they're different,
but you're different. Yeah, give me money. Yeah, see how
responsible I am. Yeah. This story begins in nineteen ninety
nine and the small town of Grand Bay, Alabama, which

(43:19):
has a population of less than four thousand people, and
you know the surrounding land is Okay. I feel like
I looked up how to say this word because I
know that there's different ways of pronouncing it.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
Pecan orchards, pecan, pecan. I say pecan, but I think
probably in Alabama do they say peacan?

Speaker 2 (43:38):
Well I don't. I feel like it will come off
as I'm not trying to say it wrong. Pecan orchards
and fields of watermelon. So in March of ninety nine,
a woman named Tanda Dickerson is waiting tables at the
local waffle house and for her it's an ordinary day.
A regular diner comes in by the name of Edward Seaward,

(44:02):
and he stopped by pretty frequently to get coffee in
the morning. And in one report I saw he was
a long haul trucker and another one he owned a
seafood restaurant. Interesting couldn't pin it down, but apparently a
thing that Edward did sometimes is instead of a cash tip,
he would leave a lottery ticket, and so this lottery
ticket was one that he had purchased in Florida. That's

(44:24):
pretty cute.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
It's cute. Yeah, I mean probably better to give cash.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
Better to give cash, I think a lottery ticket in addition,
great yeah, yeah. And Tonta's a single mother at this point,
so she has recently left an abusive relationship that was
in nineteen ninety seven, so she's been on her own
for two years. She's working all the time to make
ends meet. She probably would have rather had the cash,
and in a way, I'm actually going to tie back

(44:49):
to that, but basically, there was a ten million dollar jackpot.
There were two winning tickets, and Tonda's tip was one
of them. Wow. Yes, so that's wild. It's wild. Can
you imagine? And I would be so excited, Oh my gosh,
I know, I don't know what i'd do first. But
so she goes home from the shift and wakes up,

(45:10):
you know, a multi multi millionaire and this amount of
money life changing for just about anybody. For Tanda, it's
no exception and she knows that, and she wants to
take instead of the lump sum, her plan is the
annual payments, so that she doesn't end up one of
those people who wins the lottery and goes broke or

(45:31):
has something terrible happen in her life. She wants to
be responsible about it. She wants to help her family.
But when she arrives at the lottery office in Tallahassee,
Florida to collect her winnings, she is denied. And that
is because four other weight staff at the waffle house
filed a claim that said through the courts in Alabama

(45:52):
that said, we had an agreement. Now if any one
of us won the lottery, we split it, and Tanda says, no,
we didn't, and so that did they know she won.
I don't know if she told them or if it
was just obvious, but she quit immediately. And I would
think in a little town, you gotta pretend like nothing
has changed, nothing has changed. Yeah, And I would just

(46:13):
imagine word traveled really fast, like if you tell one person,
they tell one person. I mean, whoa, It's over.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
So already by the time she tries to go collect
this lawsuit or aplaint has been filed, and so before
she even has a moment to breathe and like enjoy
this new life, she's in a legal battle, and so
Florida has to withhold this money until this is resolved.
Another person also files lawsuit which is Edward Seaward the

(46:42):
person who wants it, and he says that he was
owed a portion of it and she promised him a
new truck if she won, and that lawsuit was later dismissed.

Speaker 2 (46:51):
But like, that's unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
Yeah, immediately, these vultures are descending on this woman. If
you give someone a lottery ticket as a you gotta
just be okay that if they win, it's theirs.

Speaker 2 (47:04):
Yeah, I know. I mean, you have a single mother
here working to support her household alone, left an abusive relationship,
and you're not giving her cash, you're giving her a
lottery ticket. So like you got to stand by that, yeah. Wild.
So there was actually a jury trial in April, so
things moved really quickly in this case, and the jury

(47:26):
decided that Tanda did have this verbal agreement with her
colleagues and she was ordered to pay them. So this
is upsetting, but the fight's not over yet. They appeal
the decision, and the Alabama Supreme Court actually ends up
reversing the judgment against her in two thousand and one,

(47:46):
because I'll read the and we'll probably have to cut
this down. But the agreement between the parties was nothing
more than an attempt by each of the five lottery
ticket holders to increase his or her odds of winning
some portion of the Florida Lottery. Stated differently, the agreement,
according to the plaintiff's own evidence, was that Dickerson would
pay the plaintiffs a sum of money upon the happening

(48:08):
of an uncertain event over which the party had no control.
So basically, this whole supposed agreement was founded on a
gambling consideration, which, in Alabama, the Supreme Court rules, is
therefore void because you're all gambling. So we're not going
to honor this as a real agreement. You can't make

(48:29):
a legit agreement when you're gambling, Yeah, you can't. And
Tanda has remarried by this point, and she has her
new husband, James, And so.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
How long has passed since she won the Yeah, she.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
Got the ticket March of nineteen ninety nine, winning ticket
April of that year. She's already in court. And then
I believe she remarried pretty quickly, but I couldn't find
an exact date, But maybe she had already been dated
the first simon no idea, But anyway, Tanda is then
sued by the IRS, who says that she owned over
a million in taxes for not reporting the money as

(49:02):
a gift. So she has to hire a lawyer again
to fight the IRS. And she's saying her lawyer is saying, well, look,
she was tipped a lottery ticket that could have been
worthless and statistically would have been worthless, and she was
literally working for this money because waiters are paid in tips.
So Tanda is, by all accounts like a very responsible

(49:27):
lottery winner. She goes and gets another job. She decides
to take the annual payments instead of the lump sum.
She sets up a business account that she's able to
pay family from in certain percentages. And her ex husband
or ex partner, I'm not sure if they're married, the
abusive relationship that she left. This guy's name is Stacy Martin.

(49:48):
He finds out that she's one, and he is angry.
Of course he wants in on it, of course, yeah,
and so he knows he has no legal standing here.
We also know that he's abusive, and so what he
do In February of two thousand and two, he kidnaps Tonda,
and he waits outside her house and when she leaves,

(50:08):
he forces her into his car and begins driving her
to a rural area. And his plan is, and he
tells her this, to kill her and take the money.
How he planned to do that after killing her, I
have no idea. So Tanda, she already knows what this
person is capable of because she was in a relationship
with them. Yeah, horrible situation. Horrible. So she was ready

(50:31):
and she was carrying a gun. Oh wow. Yeah. And
so twenty minutes into this drive, I think it's Tanda's
phone that's going off. Somebody's phone is going off. And
she's able to convince him that she needs to answer
it because I think it's her phone, because if she doesn't,
people will start wondering where she is and that could
be a problem for him. So he's like, okay, fine,

(50:53):
answer it. Well, when she reaches for the phone, or
when he reaches for the phone, she grabs a gun
and he lunges at her and she fires and she
hits him in the chest. She then drives him to
the hospital. I mean this is someone that.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
He's driving the car. Yeah, she shoots him.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
Yeah, and then she somehow drives him to the hospital
to get emergency care for this gunshot wound. Wild and
she is not charged in relation to any of this
because it was self defense. But here's something that's really strange.
He wasn't charged either for kidnapping. I couldn't a single

(51:33):
charge on him that had been reported on or in
the court system. So if if I'm wrong, I would
love to correct that record. But like, I couldn't find
anything on that. That's so strange to me because it's like,
if you can rule that someone shot someone in self defense,
then surely you can rule that that person that the
shot was doing something that warranted that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:56):
I wonder if it was like she would have to
press charges and she didn't, but no idea. Yeah, that's
wild wild.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
And so at one point I had reached out to Tonda,
and she she never got back. I imagine she's just you know,
she's probably told this story a lot, but you know,
she's still working, she's living a quiet life. I mean,
I think by any stretch, she probably handled it as
gracefully as the one could have considering what happened to her. Yeah,

(52:24):
And I think it was for people that came after
the money that worked at the same diner. Maybe it
was five, but still to have all of those people
saying one thing and you going up there and saying
another must have been really scary.

Speaker 1 (52:38):
Yeah, and you think these people are your maybe friends,
your coworkers.

Speaker 2 (52:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:42):
So did they ever get any of that money before
it was reversed? No, they didn't, so Tanda got to
keep it. She ended up having to pay the IRS
I think around seven hundred thousand because of the way
she opened her business account or something. But I feel
like they probaly would found some way to tacky.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
Oh yeah, I'm going to say that's not on her.
So Tanda's story is obviously one of a kind because
that is insane and she came out alive. But it's
actually not that uncommon of a story for a lottery
winner to be like doomed. It's common enough that there's
several examples which I found, and one of them I'm

(53:23):
going to talk about little more in detail. But we
have a guy named Jack Whitaker in West Virginia who
won over three hundred million dollars and that so much money,
so much money, And this was in two thousand and two.
A powerball jackpot. He immediately hit with a series of lawsuits.
Close family members around him died, and four years later

(53:44):
he's broke and says that he wished he had just
torn up the ticket, Like that's how bad his life got.
I mean, that's just like a nightmare, nightmare. Three hundred
and fifteen million dollars.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
How you even go broke from that so quickly is
hard to even imagine. It's spectacular. Yeah, I have to imagine.

Speaker 2 (54:05):
It's just like, if you have that kind of wealth,
it probably feels very never ending. Then people come out
of the woodwork, and maybe you get in over your
head with taxes. I have no idea, but there was
a woman named Evelyn Adams who won the lottery in
New Jersey actually two years back to back, and I
think she wented total back to back in two separate years.

(54:27):
And this is in the nineteen eighties. It was around
five and a half or six million dollars and she
gambled it away. Tricky, Yeah, I mean, gambling can be
such a serious problem. A guy named Jeffrey danp Pierre
I think is how you say his last name in Illinois.
He was kidnapped and murdered by his sister in law

(54:48):
and her boyfriend less than ten years after winning twenty
million dollars, which happened in nineteen ninety six. Terrible and Okay.
So there's another story I want to talk about a
little bit, which is a man by the name of
Abraham Shakespeare. This is also a lot of story. There's
also a lot of story with just I mean, it's

(55:10):
tragic actually. So in two thousand and six he wins
the lottery. There's, similar to Tanda, an immediate dispute with
the person who bought the tickets with him. I guess,
if I'm understanding it correctly, his coworker buys two tickets,
but like, at his request, can you go in and
buy two tickets? Okay, here's a ticket. And so one

(55:30):
of the tickets ends up winning. Ah.

Speaker 1 (55:32):
Yeah, And then the coworker's like, wait, I want some
of that money exactly, and so again has to go
to court. The jury rules in Shakespeare's favor that he
did not steal from his coworker Michel, and so he
wins in two thousand and six, the court rules in
his favor two thousand and seven, and in two thousand
and eight he hears from a woman named Dedie Moore,

(55:52):
and she's like, I want to write a book about
your story.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
And Abraham was known to be generous and trusting, and
here comes and she gets her claws into him, and
she slowly sort of takes ownership of properties. Their relationship
is a bit murky as to how close they were getting,
and she starts buying a lot of things in his name,

(56:17):
putting things in her name the whole nine yards. Is
she writing a book? No, she's not writing a book. No,
I don't know if she ever actually wrote anything. But no,
that wasn't It was all just a fraud. Yeah. So
in two thousand and nine, Abraham Shakespeare goes missing and
it comes out that Dedi Moore she murdered him, and

(56:40):
she tried to get his friend in on it and
pay them a certain amount of money to say they
had recently seen him so that the missing person's case
would go away. And that person, I think, started cooperating
with the police when they realized how much trouble they
would be in for doing that, that they weren't accessory
to a murder yeah, of their own friend. And she

(57:02):
was found guilty of murder in twenty twelve, sentenced to
life in prison without parole, still wants to be paroled,
and I think tries to appeal. It's so sad.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
What was this gentleman's name, Abraham Shakespeare and lakenns Florida.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
Yeah, very cool name. So sad. It's so sad. So
if you win the lottery, don't tell anybody.

Speaker 1 (57:25):
You hear so many stories about it causing so much
pain and people losing money, and it just it doesn't
seem like a good luck thing. It seems like you
really have to dodge that. The bad luck is just
coming at you. Used up all your good luck to
win the lottery, and then all you have left is
bad luck.

Speaker 2 (57:44):
Truly, It's like the only way to get out of
that happy and alive is to just like lay low,
tell no one unless you absolutely have to, and make
sure you trust that person, and get a lawyer.

Speaker 1 (57:55):
Yeah, you have to get a lawyer immediately. Okay, So
I understand. I think if I were in tanda situation
and I had four coworkers who were like, we agreed,
I would sort of be like, no, we didn't. If
I were in the situation where I was buying a
lottery ticket, with my coworker or friend every day, and
we were like one or the other would go in
and buy them. I don't know, maybe part of me

(58:18):
be like I should give them some money.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
Yeah, And you know, I couldn't find exact examples, but
I know that Abraham was known to be pretty generous,
So I don't know that he didn't buy this person
any gifts, or if maybe it got so contentious right
away that he had to totally put the brakes on.
But one thing that his coworker said was that Shakespeare
stole the lottery tickets out of his wallet. I guess

(58:41):
I left that out, but it wasn't just like a, well,
I wouldn't have bought these, and then you know we
should be splitting it. I think it was like Abraham says,
let's go buy these, here's the money, he buys them,
he wins, yeah, and then Michael changes his story. Mm hmm. Yeah.
Abraham Shakespeare is famously quoted as having told his brother,
I'd have been better off broke. I thought these people

(59:03):
were my friends. I realized, oh they want is money.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
That's a sad part too. You hear about people winning
and then you have money, but then your friends or
your family kind of betray you and then you're lonely
and yeah, then you're a target for someone like Dedie
to come into your life and scam you.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
Yeah, murder. I mean it would be so strange, like
because it's not like if you get super rich, Okay,
now all my friends are super rich and we can
go do everything together. It's like, no, you're like gonna
have to figure that one out, yeah, or pay for
everything or pay for everything, which for some people maybe
they can handle it, other people I don't know. Yeah,
that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (59:41):
Yeah, So what do you think the right amount of
money to win in a lottery is to where I'd.

Speaker 2 (59:46):
Be fine to win this one billion dollar power one billion?
Oh yeah, no, I'd be fine. I'd I'd trust me,
I'd give some of it away, swear I swear okay
to me, Yeah to you. Hand on I'm salary. Well,
whether right amount be, I feel like I could handle
any amount, okay, universe, I could handle any.

Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
Whin like five hundred thousand dollars. It's not enough to
put you on the map for any kind of fraud
or scammers. It's just sort of like, could it be
a nice, great chunk of change. Yeah, or even a million.
Even a million, I take a million.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
I take it. I don't need a billion any Yeah. Well,
those those are interesting stories. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:30):
Good luck to everyone out there who wins the lottery. Seriously. Okay,
so recommendations. Do you have a recommendation today?

Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
I do have a recommendation. I just on the way
driving into the studio. This morning finished an eight part
series called The Lodge, which I'll just read the log line.
In a world obsessed with well being, would you put
your health in the hands of a cult? A cautionary
tale about the consequences of going alternative when wellness becomes
a matter of life and death. And it's fascinating. The

(01:01:01):
host and writer, his name is Phil Vine, does a
really great job. There's a cult leader. I guess she
wouldn't call herself a cult leader, probably not. Her name
is Iping Wang, and she is really into energy healing
and basically like, if you're sick, no matter what, you
can heal yourself by being more in tune with energy.

(01:01:22):
And we're all made of energy. It is fascinating how
much trust people put in her. Actually, there are multiple
deaths that take place some believe because of this alternative
healing that doesn't heal. I think the podcast is a
place to think about what is someone's own power over

(01:01:47):
their decision making when it comes to their health, because
we can say this person is incredibly influential and giving
really dangerous medical advice. Yeah, but if you are in
adul you don't have to take that advice. You can
go seek conventional treatment that could save your life and
is proven by science to have a better chance of that.

(01:02:10):
Or you could choose not to. You could choose not
to and that's you know, and it's her fault, you know, right.
So that's really an area that dives into. But I
thought it was a great series and there's lots of
really incredible interviews, and I would say check it out.

Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
Cool, the Lodge great, my recommendation. I've been listening to Blink.
It's been on the charts. It's really good. It's from
the Binge. It's the story of this guy Jcandle, and
he's interviewed a lot in the podcast. The host meets
him because he lives in her building and they end
up becoming friends and he tells her the story of

(01:02:50):
what's happened to him and she's like, how is this
not a true grand podcast? And so I actually haven't
quite finished it yet, but it's so inter stain. What
they kind of tell you right up the top is
that j Candle he contracted this super rare disease that
is very very fatal and you lose your sort of

(01:03:15):
muscle abilities. It happens super quickly, so like als, it's
not it's so much it's like more rare than that
that I can't remember the name of it. It comes
from inhaling really toxic things. That's one of the oh gosh,
one of the causes. And he was an addict. He's
very open and vulnerable about like what happened in his
life and how he started getting into drugs and his

(01:03:38):
like journey with addiction and it got really really bad
and he ended up contracting this disease that they were
basically like, you have six months to live maybe, oh,
and what's going to happen because he started like not
being able to use his hands and like things, and
they were like, you're going to eventually not be able
to do anything. You're gonna slip into a coma and
probably die. And so this does how old is he

(01:04:00):
at this? He's I think twenty nine. So this happens,
and he eventually loses all ability to move his bodies,
like completely paralyzed. It's not even like he can communicate
with his eyes. And they think and believe that he's
essentially brain dead.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
He's not.

Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
He's aware the entire time. He can hear everything. He
is completely aware of what's going on around him.

Speaker 2 (01:04:29):
It's like locked in syndrome ooh, nightmare. Oh.

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
And eventually like he's the only person I guess what
they say that has had this disease gotten to the
stage four and has actually like lived and recovered. But
he hears a lot of things whenever he's locked in,
and this is where the true crime comes in. So
he's sort of like this silent witness to some things.

(01:04:54):
And I don't know exactly, I haven't listened to the end,
but it's just really interesting. I think it's really well done.
Jay Candle the person who it's his story, and he's
interviewed in it, and he's just like he's such a
sweet person and he's so honest and vulnerable and very endearing,
and it's just I can't stop listening to it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
Oh my gosh, I'm gonna listen on my drive home today.
Yeah that's great. Yeah, love the bench. Well that's our
show today. Thanks for listening to you next time. If
you have a story for us, we would love to
hear it. Our email is The Knife at exactlyrightmedia dot com,
or you can follow us on Instagram at the Knife
Podcast or a Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:05:35):
This has been an Exactly Right production hosted and produced
by me Hannah Smith.

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
And me payshia E. Our producers are Tom Bryfogel and
Alexis Samarosi.

Speaker 1 (01:05:44):
This episode was mixed by Tom Bryfogel. Our associate producer
is Christina Chamberlain. Our theme music is by Birds in
the Airport Artwork five a andsa Lilac executive produced by
Karen Kilgareff, Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.