June 6, 2025 • 41 mins
This week we discuss disgraced former mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin, who for years (encompassing the disaster of Hurricane Katrina) funneled money through backdoor deals into his... rock business. How boring. The rocks... not today's episode... please still listen.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Wall Street veteran Bernard Madoff has been arrested and
charged with running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
Congress wants to know what caused the Enron meltdown, and
while the collective rage currently is focused on low
comp. Tyco CEO Dennis Koslowski was
convicted of looting hundreds ofmillions of dollars.
This is one of the biggest fraudcases ever.
(00:23):
Their president's a crook. Well, I'm not a crook.
Find out more on this week's episode of White Collars, Red
Hands. Beads, parades, Trumpets.
Voodoo gumbo. New Orleans has it all.
The city, known for its extravagant nightlife and rich
(00:45):
culture, seeped in history and crime just like every other
major city. New Orleans is no stranger to
crime. Look at those prisoners that
just escaped right? Although regular crime runs
rampant through the alleys of the Big Easy, many would not
suspect that white collar crime is also part of the cities
(01:07):
history. Today we look at former Mayor of
New Orleans Ray Nagin, and how his reign wiped out the hopes
and dreams of the stroke of a struggling city.
Learn more about it on this week's episode of White Collars,
Red Hands. Voodoo gumbo.
That one series of unsolved axe murders that happened in the
(01:27):
city along. I don't remember when it
happened, but it happened. Have you ever been to New
Orleans? Nope.
I think you'd like it. Yeah, I like whiskey.
Yeah. They they, they're, they're
known for drinks. Oh yeah, they are Bourbon
Street. They have a whole street named
after it. Hey, count me in.
You're gonna name a street afterone of my favorite things?
(01:49):
Bourbon Street smells crazy. What's What's next?
KFC Macaroni and Cheese St. All right.
The double downs guy. That has to be the whitest thing
I've said in a while. Like oh man, I would I I loved
KFC Mac and cheese so much I wish they named a street out of
it. Oh scrub, scrub my existence
from the Internet. I'm done.
We've all been hoping for that. And welcome back to another
episode of White Collar's Red Hands.
(02:10):
I'm Kashawn. And I'm Nina and today we are
going to be talking about Ray Nagin, the former mayor of New
Orleans. But we have some other business
to attend to. Last week, I don't know if you
heard the news, we have an update.
We have an update on an episode that we recorded actually just a
(02:30):
few weeks ago. It.
Was two weeks ago. Literally 2 weeks ago we have an
update on Todd and Julie Chrisley.
OK, Todd and Julie Chrisley, obviously, if you don't remember
or got went to jail for fraud. They were supposed to be in jail
for like 12 years and Donald Trump just pardoned them.
Not sure when they're going to be released, but they're very
(02:52):
excited about it. Their fan base is excited about
it. You know, what's crazy is that
they didn't donate any money to the Trump campaign.
So I think he just did this out of the the goodness and kindness
of his heart. He's just like, now that's a
good Christian family. He's like Todd Chrysling.
That's a good Christian. Times that evades taxes just
like Jesus Christ would have wanted.
(03:14):
I believe in Jesus and I don't pay taxes.
That's a throwback to our very first season.
If you've been here since the beginning, it.
Also said bumper stickers acrossthe entirety of the Deep South,
I'm sure. It's something along those
lines, something along those lines.
We're talking about New Orleans,LA.
So here on White Collar's Red Hands, we have talked about
(03:37):
crooked mayors before. We did an episode on Detroit's
former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, and today we're looking at the
former mayor of the Big Easy NewOrleans is.
That an actual nickname for New Orleans?
Yeah, the Big Easy. Never heard it.
Well, you've never been there. Fair enough.
So Clarence Ray Nagin, he was a businessman who was raised in
(04:00):
New Orleans. He had pretty humble beginnings,
it seems, from what I could see.He wasn't dirt poor, but he
also, you know, didn't live lavishly.
He had a working class family. He was really passionate about
education and he dug him. He wanted better for himself.
He wanted to be richer than his parents.
(04:21):
And that did happen for a periodof time.
He was well educated. He actually attended Tuskegee
University and then after graduation, he bounced around.
He went to LA for a while, was in Detroit for a little while,
but then he ended up coming homeand he became the VP and general
manager at Cox Communications inNew Orleans, which was a cable
(04:42):
company where he made $400,000 per year.
When was this around? At this point this was like the
90s, late 90s well. I mean, I'm just saying 400,
it's crazy that we're at a pointwhere like $400,000 for AVP or
like. Yeah, that's true.
(05:04):
You know, but in the 90s, that'sgreat.
Yeah, he, yeah, I'm not exactly 100% sure the exact date that he
worked there, but he became, well, we're about to say it, but
he became mayor in 2002. So this was prior to 2002.
So Megan really seemed to be living the dream.
I mean, he had a beautiful home,a family, a great career, but he
(05:26):
wanted something more. In 2002 he decided to throw his
hat in as a mayoral candidate for New Orleans and he ran on a
platform of anti corruption and a business and being business
minded. OK.
Those two things seem to be conflicted with each other, but
I'll keep my opinion of myself. Yeah, a little bit.
(05:49):
He really did, you know, say he wanted better for New Orleans.
A lot of people believed him. I think it helps that he grew up
there. And I don't I don't think he
would have ran a good campaign if he was running on Not Better
for New Orleans. Well, that's.
Never seen someone successfully be like I'm running for mayor
and I want to make this place a shit hole.
Well, yeah, the only time I've seen a candidate win who didn't
(06:12):
promise things to be better, it was fictional.
So it was in Yellowstone when John does.
No, no, no. We're not doing a Yellowstone
reference button. That one back up.
We're skipping right past it. My God.
He did. He ran on a platform.
He was like, progress stops here.
(06:33):
I like how I said we're not doing it.
And then you were like, I'm gonna keep, keep doing it.
I don't respect your boundaries.Oh, God.
So Megan ended up dominating in the elections, and he won, and
he came in. He was really sincere and he had
a lot of promise. And as a New Orleans native, he
really wanted to see the city thrive and he sought to make it
a better place. And it appeared as though he did
(06:56):
because in the 1st 11 weeks thathe was mayor, he put an
operation together to clean up the bribery in the city,
specifically with the city's taxi cab licensing and
inspection programs. There was clearly there was like
a lot of bribery going on, a lotof shady stuff going on within
the taxi cab licensing and stuff.
(07:19):
So he was like, I'm going to take this down.
And he did. He made 84 arrests in one day.
Well, not he himself, but the cops made 84 arrests.
So much cooler. If he was out there, it was
slapping the handcuffs on 84 different people.
I want a mayor who arrests his citizens.
Yeah, that's grass roots. Yeah.
You know, come on, give us. Give them what?
(07:39):
The people. Want like when Lori Lightfoot
was out on the lake telling people to go back home during
COVID, she's like, you can't be out here, go back home.
She's a very unintimidating person, so.
Yeah, I'm not afraid of her. Very small, although he had made
all those arrests. And another note of those, one
of those 84 arrests, one of the people was his cousin.
(08:02):
So he wanted to prove a point like no one was above the law.
I'm not paying playing favorites.
I'll even arrest my least favorite cousin.
However, although he made that big show and all those arrests,
no one was convicted. And even though there was no
payoff of this Operation Nagin'sapproval rating ended up
shooting up to 80%. So in perspective for putting
(08:26):
this in perspective, if you're afirst time listener, Kashawn and
I live in the city of Chicago, OK, our mayor is Brandon Johnson
and I was curious to see what his approval rating was.
And as of February of 2025, it sits at 14%, which is really,
(08:48):
really bad. That's really bad.
Couldn't name one thing he's done.
I I know nothing. I I didn't really think we hated
him quite that much, but yeah. We we hate all our mayors so to
be. Fair, that's true.
I don't think we've. The last one we liked was crazy.
So who daily? That's what I was thinking.
Like they like daily for that and he was in he was in for a
(09:09):
long time, but he was insane so.Yeah, that's Chicago.
Negan was passionate about bringing reform to the city and
the government, and at first he was pretty successful in doing
this. And the people were starting to
really trust their government, hence the 80% approval rate.
One way that Negan brought an update to the city was that he
(09:29):
was passionate about bringing new technology to City Hall.
He was quoted saying something along the lines of I'm used to
George Jetson and this place is The Flintstones because he was
working at this cable company, had a pretty good technology.
He came to City Hall. He realized that everything was
really outdated, that everythingneeded updated and he was like
(09:50):
no, no, no, no, no, we cannot run our city this way.
He's. Like, whoa, everyone's using a
DOS machine. This is insane.
Yeah. I don't even know what that is.
For the people who know, they'llknow.
What's a DOS? Don't worry, I I honestly it's
one of all you need to know is it's one of the earliest forms
of Windows. You didn't use a mouse.
Oh, what'd you use? Just a keyboard.
(10:10):
You navigated everything with a keyboard you had to type and
stuff. Didn't make anything happen.
Oh, no, thanks. So because he was so passionate
about technology and being up todate with technology, this
brought him to form the first Mayor's Department of
Technology, and he chose a localtech entrepreneur named Greg
Meffert as the Chief Technology Officer.
(10:32):
So when I was first learning about this, I felt conflicted.
I was like, well, I do think that having someone in tech as
the chief technology officer. Also a conflict of interest, but
yeah. Yeah, we'll see why you're.
Like the person that controls most of the stuff that you would
(10:54):
have to be buying. Probably not a good idea.
Yeah, probably not. And this was and, and ask
Deshawn said, probably not a good idea.
And it it wasn't an incredible amount of power to be handing
over to someone. And some would say that it was
probably the worst decision thatNegan made in his time as mayor.
And although Negan was successful at first, some
(11:16):
started to begin to question hisability to lead the city.
Negan's inexperienced in government was showing, and it
became apparent that he didn't know how to lead, run a city,
and build relationships. So right away he came in hot.
But the longer he was mayor, themore it showed that this guy
doesn't know what he's doing. But three years into his time in
(11:39):
office, the unimaginable happened.
On August 29th, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the city of New
Orleans. The category 5 hurricane left a
path of devastation. Now I will say it was not a
category 5 when it hit New Orleans.
(12:04):
I was seeing some differing answers.
It was between A2 and A3, which is crazy.
Well, actually do you know what the do you know the hurricane
ratings 5 is like worse than two, right?
Yes, yes, yes, yes. The higher the number, the the.
Worse, that's what I was thinking, But even as a Category
2, the winds were like 125 milesan hour.
(12:24):
It was very, very dangerous and really insane.
But there was a point when it was still in the ocean that it
was a Category 5. Now.
Before the hurricane hit the city, Mayor Nagin urged the
citizens of New Orleans to evacuate the city and those who
could not and those who could not.
He urged them to seek shelter inthe city's designated shelter
(12:47):
points. However, this was the first time
that the, I can't remember if itwas the whole state of New
Orleans to this or just the city, but they had an A
mandatory evacuation. Normally they just have a
suggestion evacuation, but they were like no, you have got to
leave. It's one of the worst storms in
in recent history so would make sense.
(13:09):
For good reason. Everybody should have evacuated.
Over 1,000,000 citizens left to New Orleans.
However, not everyone was able to evacuate, so New Orleans was
subjected to winds of over 100 mph and heavy rainfall.
The city of New Orleans, actually, if if you don't know
(13:30):
this, parts of the city sit below sea level and at the
highest point, the city is only 20 feet above sea level.
So it's, it's a very low city. And that that doesn't sound like
the correct term, but it's it's not.
Oh, I think Garth Brooks has friends there, actually.
Oh yeah, he has friends in low places.
(13:52):
Yeah, New Orleans does have a lot of levies to keep the water
back. However, they the storm could
not. The levees could not handle the
storm, they just couldn't. And it was so powerful that it
breached the levees and by August 31st, 2580% of the city
was flooded. Oh.
(14:13):
My God, Don McLean lied to us. He drove his Chevy all the way
out there and he's going to lie to us?
The levee was not dry. That's crazy.
That was not DRY. No.
The hurricane quickly caused a health emergency.
Those who were seeking shelter in the Superdome, which if
(14:34):
you're UN familiar, New Orleans has a huge stadium that is
called the Superdome. The Saints play there.
Yeah. So it so it's it's used to
disasters. Yeah, it's there are people
seeking shelter in the Superdomeand there are people seeking
shelter in a Convention Center, which combined those were
(14:56):
housing about 50,000 people. They had limited access to
freshwater, food was becoming scarce, and temperatures were
quickly climbing past 90°. If you've ever been to New
Orleans, you know that it is incredibly hot and muggy.
I've only been to the city in April and November and it was
hot in those months so I cannot even imagine how hot it was in
(15:19):
August, especially with a tropical storm.
Definitely hot enough to kill anyone from the UK.
On site 100%. The storm ultimately caused more
than $160 billion in damages andthe population of the city fell
by 29% between 2005 and 2011. Even to this day, the population
(15:40):
has not reached pre Katrina levels.
Now Hurricane Katrina in total caused about 1800 deaths, but
341 of those deaths were specifically in Louisiana.
Even 20 years later, the city isstill feeling the effects of
Hurricane Katrina. It is spooky when you go to New
(16:01):
Orleans because when after they had like pumped all the water
out and everything like that, obviously emergency crews had to
go through the homes and search for bodies and they would, they
would spray paint a symbol on all the houses that were checked
so that people knew that they had checked the houses.
(16:22):
It was like an X and then they had like dots.
If I'm remembering it correctly,it was like an X with dots.
And then there would be a numberon the like in the X on the
bottom. And there were houses that you
could like there was a lot with zeros, but then there were some
that like would have A1 or A2. And it was, it was definitely
(16:42):
like very eerie just seeing that.
And the first when I went there for the first time, it was 2014.
So it was like almost 10 years later in these, the spray paint
was still on the houses and you could see it.
(17:03):
But I am there, You know, there are a lot of people who received
a lot of criticism for how Hurricane Katrina was dealt
with. George W Bush received a lot of
criticism for how he dealt with the disaster.
I think this was when Kanye Westwent on TV and said George Bush.
(17:23):
Does not care about black people.
Yeah, yeah, that that infamous, wonderful quote.
Who knew that that would be one of the least craziest things?
Kanye. Who knew at the time?
You're like, oh wow, that was crazy.
I'm sure you couldn't do anything worse than them.
Cut to 2025, twenty years later,yeah, George W Bush was heavily
(17:45):
criticized for how it was handled.
Ray Nagin was heavily criticizedfor how it was handled.
Some people say that he turned down relief that was being
offered. I don't know if that's 100.
From what I could find, I could didn't see that that was 100%
true. But I really do think that in my
(18:07):
point of view, I'm sure other people would disagree with me.
I do think that the government handled Katrina to the best of
their ability. We had never experienced a
natural disaster like that, so it's pretty hard to plan for
something that catastrophic. But after that happened, it it
was clear that New Orleans needed a strong leader to band
(18:27):
together and rebuild after such devastating loss.
Rebuilding a city to that level would take years and cost
billions of dollars. So that happened in Megan's
third year in office and after Katrina, Megan vows to reunite
the city and rebuild. However, some believe that Megan
(18:49):
wasn't hands on enough prior to the disaster and they felt like
he couldn't properly lead afterwards.
And like I said, Megan made a lot of mistakes after Katrina.
One of the biggest ones was thathe approved a city rebuilding
plan that wanted to take severalof the flood prone areas and
turn them into green parkways. This doesn't necessarily sound
(19:11):
like a horrible idea, however these were historically African
American neighborhoods that weregoing to become washed away with
the floods only to be memories. The citizens of New Orleans when
they found out about this plan, they were absolutely outraged by
this and Nagin quickly backtracked on these plans
because he was running for re election.
(19:35):
When Nagin ran for the second time, he really tried to heavily
appeal to the African American community in New Orleans and he
really wanted their support. Now, I will say there's a huge
black population in New Orleans,and so it makes sense.
And Nagin is a black man himself.
So yeah, he's a black. He no, he's black.
(19:58):
So, you know, makes sense that he is seeking their vote.
And, you know, he was. He's a Democrat.
I think that and New Orleans is a pretty liberal city, so it
kind of seems like a no brainer that people would vote for him
even if they weren't necessarilysuper fond of him the first go
(20:18):
around. So he gave a lot of speeches, as
you know one does when they're. Politician gimmick speeches.
That's crazy. And on Martin Luther King Day,
he gave this speech. These are his words, not my
words. OK, I want that prefaced.
(20:41):
I didn't write this. Speech.
Yes, we get it. It's a speech you gave.
And he said it's time for us to come together.
It's time for us to rebuild a New Orleans, the one that should
be a chocolate New Orleans. And I don't care what people are
saying Uptown or wherever they are, this city will be chocolate
(21:02):
at the end of the day. Is he?
Is he fucking Willy Wonka? What do you mean?
What a weird way to put it. I know, why did you say it like
that? All right, everybody come with
me. No, no.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No.
Yeah. Wild that he gave that speech.
(21:23):
I don't know who approved it. That, that feels like something
he set off the cuff. I'm not going to.
Lie. You did kind of feel it.
That feels like it wasn't on theteleprompter.
But a lot of people were offended by the speech and and I
don't, you know, for him to say that like this is a city full of
rich history. This is a city that, you know,
(21:45):
is historically black, like it, it, we are not going to change
that. We are always going to honor our
culture. You know, fine, I there's
nothing wrong with that. That is a good thing.
It's a good thing. But I say it like that.
I don't, I don't know. I, I think the wording could
have been better. Just saying, not saying it's AI,
don't know if I would say it's achocolate city.
(22:08):
But anyways, he is well remembered for that speech.
A lot of people really remember that speech when they remember
him. He's remembered.
I don't know if he's remembered well, but.
Well, if you're from Well, OK, yeah.
Remembered. Not remembered.
Well, But all this is though this was a crazy speech, it did
empower a lot of the black community to go and vote for
him. And it worked.
(22:28):
And in May 2006, Megan won re election as mayor of the city of
New New Orleans. So now he has the joy of
rebuilding the city that was left in ruin after Katrina.
Rebuilding efforts were slow andpeople became really frustrated
with how long it was taking to rebuild the city.
(22:51):
It seemed like Negan wasn't really trying to get the city
back to where it was before Katrina hit.
And around this time, a journalist did an investigation.
And so there were some things that were starting to pop up.
They're fishy. And it's got some journalists
doing investigations. And one thing that they were
(23:11):
finding fishy was Nagin's partial ownership of a granite
company called Stone Age. Good name.
Though, yeah, I did think it waspretty, pretty clever.
It was owned by two of his sons,and he was spending more time at
that store than he was doing mayoral duties.
And after looking into this, it led to more and more questions.
(23:36):
Yeah, we all know Home Depot. They were looking to open a new
store in New Orleans. The company wanted to purchase
streets so that they could buildtheir store there, and the city
appraised the land for $850,000.The City Council was completely
on board with this idea as long as Home Depot hired a certain
(23:58):
percentage of employees from that neighborhood and paid them
at higher than average wage. OK, Home Depot wasn't super down
with this and Nagin actually contacted the CEO of Home Depot
and told him he would assist himin getting his store built.
But Nagin made it clear that theplan for Home Depot would.
(24:23):
Nagin made it clear that the plan for Home Depot to build was
going to happen, but not but without the negotiations of the
City Council. The Home Depot was going to be
built in an extremely poor community in the city and having
those guidelines would have boosted the citizens quality of
life. But and, and these were the
citizens that Nagin was claimingto fight for.
(24:45):
These are the people that he said I'm going to improve where
you live, I'm going to improve your quality of life.
But he approved Home Depot beingbuilt without these guidelines
that the City Council put in place, and he even sold the land
for below market value. He ended up selling the land for
$100,000. Then funny enough, Stone Age
(25:06):
landed a deal with Home Depot tobe the exclusive granite
countertop installer for their stores.
Nagin would then complain to Home Depot when he felt the
business wasn't making enough money.
When he did complain, he would send it on an official
letterhead from the mayor of NewOrleans, using his status to
(25:31):
sway the company. What a what a stupid side
business to be so involved in. Like, yes, I'm very involved in
rocks. Yeah.
Do something more fun to steal money, all right?
Don't don't funnel it into a rock business.
That's so. Boring.
That's you. That's you.
Rock on. I mean, whatever Stone Age did
about 170,000 in business with Home Depot before they ended the
(25:54):
contract due to poor performanceand customer complaints.
So Stone Age was not the only sketchy situation that was going
on. These sketchy contracts were
being overseen by Greg Meffert, the chief technology officer.
Remember him? I guess it comes back around.
I guess a computer is just a rock we taught to think so maybe
there's crossover between the technology officer and rocks.
(26:17):
That was poignant, Kashawn, thata computer is a rock.
We taught to think. We we at its basic form, we
throw electricity through a rock.
Yeah, no, you're right. And we taught it to think using
numbers. So Meffert and Niggan, they were
thick as thieves and even to thepoint where they lived next door
(26:37):
to each other. And after Katrina, Negan gave
Meffert the ability to hand out technology contracts with no
bidding, so he could just give acontract to whoever he wanted.
So Meffert starts awarding contracts.
One big truck contracted that heawarded was for security cameras
to his friend Mark St. Pierre.
And this Dale made Saint Pierre millions of dollars.
(26:59):
But behind closed doors, Saint Pierre was paying Meffert
hundreds and thousands of dollars for getting him the
contracts with City Hall. And once this scandal broke, the
US Attorney's office and the FBIbecame involved in the
investigation. Saint Pierre had been providing
a credit card dem effort to use,which he did often.
(27:21):
He spent over $133,000 on that credit card.
He used it on trips, in luxurious purchases, etcetera,
and Mefferts and the other people and in the government
would conduct meetings at strip clubs on a yacht owned by Saint
Pierre and once the meeting was over, strippers would come on
(27:42):
board and they would play poker and other nefarious activities.
Well, in 2006, Meffert leaves the mayor's office and starts
getting consulting fees from Saint Pierre.
He collected almost $650,000 in checks that Saint Pierre wrote
for him, and in total, Saint Pierre only the one guy gave
(28:04):
Meffert almost $900,000 in bribes.
So it's November 2009. Meffert and Saint Pierre are
charged with conspiracy, bribery, and money laundering.
The indictment had 63 counts in it, and it made people wonder
what was Ray Nagin's involvement.
(28:26):
It was said that Nagin went on vacations, got cell phones and
lawn care that was all paid for by Saint Pre Pierre.
But there was actually no proof.And when questioned about
outside vendors paying his for his vacations, Nagin insisted
that he didn't know that the vendors were paying for the
vacations, that the trips had just been set up by Medford.
(28:47):
I have no idea. There we go.
Throw him under the bus. Yeah, throw your friend under
the bus, you coward. Yeah, no, literally in 2010,
Nagin's reign as mayor comes to an end.
Remember that 80% approval rating he had?
It plummeted to 24%. Oh, this is still higher than
Brian. Johnson still Brandon.
Brandon, you don't even know whoyour mayor is.
(29:09):
I told you, I don't know one thing he's done.
It's been years. Once Negan is no longer mayor of
New Orleans, he and his family pack up and they move to Texas.
After arriving in Texas, he starts getting consulting fees
from the same company that he awarded contracts to as mayor.
While Negan thinks his past and New Orleans is behind him,
(29:31):
Meffert is telling the feds everything that went on in his
office. And it was noted that when Megan
went from making $400,000 a yearat the cable company to $130,000
a year as mayor, his family never changed their lifestyle.
So he had to supplement that income some way.
(29:54):
And remember Stone Age in 2008, Megan asked for $60,000 from a
man named Rodney Williams who was trying to get city projects
for his business. Nagin promised Williams that he
would take care of him at City Hall if he gave them the money.
It gave them money and Nagin wasgood on his promise.
Nagin gave Williams so many contracts that he made-up to
(30:17):
$1,000,000 per year. Another contractor that Nagin
took money from was a man named Frank Fridela.
Fridela wanted to purchase, so Ihad never heard of this before.
It was called a smokestack powerplant.
OK, I didn't know what it was, but it was abandoned and he
wanted to buy it and he wanted to make it into a mixed-use
(30:38):
development. And in order to buy the land,
Nagin negotiated that Fridela give him $100,000 and he
funneled that money through the Stone Age company to do so.
Now these weren't the only men that were doing shady deals with
Negan. There was another man named
Aaron Bennett that Negan would award contracts to for a bite of
(31:01):
the beignet instead of the sliceof the pie.
A bite of the beignet. See what I do there?
Is someone French? What?
New Orleans is French. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
My God, and it was noted that like there were like tons of
checks like for $12,500 they would just like write these
12,512 thousand 500 and there's just like deposit, deposit,
(31:21):
deposit, deposit, deposit with no real reason.
Which is over 10,000 though so Idon't know.
Yeah, which was weird because they did have to report that to
the IRS. Yeah, usually you would.
People would try to get it rightunder 10,000 know how?
To do that, but and Speaking of the IRS, it was found that Negan
had falsified multiple years of tax returns while serving as
(31:43):
mayor, and in January of 2013, Negan was charged with 21 counts
of corruption. Greg Meffert, Rodney Williams
and Frank Fidela all testified against him and Negan pled
innocence. He did.
(32:04):
He said he didn't do any of these things, that he was being
framed. He didn't know what he was
doing. I do think that a big reason why
Ray Niggan fell into so much of this crime was in the bribe,
like accepting the bribes and all that stuff.
I, I think that a lot of it had to do with Greg Muffert.
(32:25):
I don't think that. I don't personally don't believe
that Ray Niggan went into politics to become rich.
I think he. Was already rich.
He was already rich. He didn't need, he didn't need
to go into politics to make money, to steal, to bribe, to
lie about his taxes. He didn't need to do that.
(32:47):
I think he got in there. This is my pure opinion.
I think he got in there. Craig Meffert was doing it.
I think that he lacked enough ofa moral compass to say, you
know, no, I'm not going to do that.
I think he was like, all right, if you're doing it, I'm going to
do it, I mean. He probably got told everyone
does this, right? Everyone, everyone in politics
does this. It's just part of the game.
(33:08):
Yeah, and then he was. And then, you know, when he got
the extra money, he was like, you know, cool, I got the extra
money. You know, I think he, I think he
knew what he was doing. I don't think that he was
fooled. I think that he made bad choices
and he had to pay for this. Although he maintained his
(33:29):
innocence, on February 12th, 2014, Ray Nagin was found guilty
of 20 out of 21 counts, becomingthe first mayor of New Orleans
to be convicted on federal corruption charges.
Because of his cooperation in testifying against Negan, Greg
Meffert received a reduced sentence of 2 1/2 years in
(33:51):
prison, Rodney Williams and Frank Fridela got one year
sentences, and Mark St. Pierre got his 17 year sentence
reduced to five years. After cooperating, Ray Nagin was
sentenced to 10 years in prison.Like I said, he maintained his
innocence the entire time. He claimed that people were
(34:13):
after him and were smearing his name.
His lawyers. His lawyer claims that the
chocolate speech was the reason for the smear campaign.
I don't think that's true. I think that it was his own
choices that led him there. And on top of the 10 year prison
sentence, he was also ordered topay restitution of over
(34:35):
$500,000. Did any of those people get
their money back? Probably not.
Because of the 2020 pandemic, Nagin was released early and put
on house arrest. This was because of concerns
with COVID, and prisoners who had nonviolent crimes were put
on house arrest. He was then put on community
(34:57):
confinement for two years, whichis basically like a halfway
house kind of situation and he was on supervised probation,
probation starting in 2022. His supervised probation ended
on March 16th, 2024 and when he was released, he quoted the
great Martin Luther King junior by saying free at last, free at
(35:21):
last. Thank God Almighty, we are free
at last. Fucking I roll man.
Oh my God. Yeah, I think that's taking that
out of context just a bit. Just a bit.
Well, the floodgates opened and the money came rushing in,
leaving Ray Nagin hungry for more.
(35:43):
Nagin was plagued by his own greed, taking every opportunity
to make a shady business deal and line the pockets of his
friend. While his city struggled to
rebuild, Nagin had no intentionsof helping the citizens of New
Orleans. Instead, he used his power and
influence to become as rich as he possibly could.
Megan is one of the few people that we have covered on this
(36:04):
podcast who has served the time that they were given.
I don't think he learned his lesson, but I'm glad in this
case justice was served. I I was surprised he served his
whole sentence when I was doing the research.
Yeah, it's kind of scary how surprising that is.
But I mean, he served his whole sentence, but he served how much
of that? About half of it at.
(36:24):
Home and then on, you know, so like, not really.
Yeah, yeah. Like he did, but he also really
didn't. Yeah, he did.
But he didn't. Yeah, no.
But I'm surprised that once it hit 2020 that he just didn't get
released, that he just still hadto, you know, show up.
And, you know, although he deserved it, I do think that
(36:47):
race could have played a part inwhy he served his entire
sentence, because he was a blackman, if he had been.
Because then you're looking at Greg Meffert and Frank Fidela
and all the other people who were involved with him who got
much less sentences than he did.You know, they were all white
and they had less than half of the sentences sentence years
(37:10):
that he did. And he served his entire
sentence. And he was a black man.
So I think, I do think that thatprobably played a role in it as
well. Yeah, well, it also kind of
sucks because that's the that's what happens when you get caught
last. And when you get caught last and
then you don't admit to it. Yeah, you're also going to get
slapped like that because everyone else, they immediately
said, all right, I did it and I'll give up other people and
(37:30):
they're always going to get off easier.
Yeah, that's true. That's 100% true.
But he did deserve it. He served his time in a sense,
and I feel as though justice wasserved, at least in this one.
And if you liked listening to this episode and you want more
where that came from, you can follow us on social media.
We are on facebook.com/white collars red hands.
(37:51):
We are on X at White Collars pod.
We're on Instagram at White collars under score red hands.
We are on TikTok at, you guessedit, white collars red hands.
We also have a YouTube white collars red hands if you want
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You could always tell a friend word of mouth is the best way to
get podcast info out there. Or just to convince your friends
(38:13):
to do anything, you know, tie them down, force feed them, you
know, nasty stuff to get them tolisten.
I don't care. Just get them to listen to the
podcast, you know? Like the scene in the Grinch
where they're feeding them a bunch of pudding.
Yeah. If that's how you if that's how
you recommend podcast to your friends, then sure.
Let's do it. Another way that you can support
(38:34):
us is by leaving a rating we love.
You can do that on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify.
We love a five star review, but we will take an honest one as
well. Not that five star reviews
aren't honest. No, yeah.
I'm just saying like, you know, if you have a, you know,
constructive criticism, we'll take it.
(38:55):
They don't, Nina, don't ask for it.
They don't have constructive. Criticism.
You know what? Just give us five stars.
Thank you. I'll flash ya.
No, you don't have to do that. You could have stopped.
I can't stop, can't stop the whole stuff.
OK, another no, no, I don't think that's free.
Another way you can support us is by buying our merch.
You can click on the merch tab and it will take you over to
(39:17):
Haberdachery or Dachery. Dashery.
Dashery. Haberdashery what?
Haberdashery. Why did you why did you say
that? Because I forgot the name and I
knew. Just dashery.
OK, well, I couldn't remember, so I knew it was like a playoff
of that and I was like, I think I can't remember.
(39:37):
Anyway, go there and we've got our we've got our merch on
there. The.
Link is in the show description and on our website.
Yeah, bye. A shirt.
Buy a shirt. All right, Anything else I'm
missing? Oh, if you hear of a white
collar crime and you're like, oh, Nina and Kashan should
totally cover that, send it our way.
You can send, you can DM us on our socials or you can e-mail us
(39:57):
at whitecollegeredhands@gmail.com.
We've tried to do a fan submitted episode, everything
single season. And this season I think we did
too. So yeah, very cool.
Very. Fun, Yeah.
Oh and one last thing, if you are listening on Spotify and
you'd like to listen without ads, you can You can subscribe
to the podcast for $1.00 a month.
(40:17):
You get to listen completely ad free.
Yeah, Excuse me. Don't let anything interrupt my
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Pay it up. All right, I think that's it.
Thank you so much for listening.And we'll see you next time on
(40:38):
another episode of White Collars, Red Hands.
Wall Street veteran Bernard Madoff has been arrested and
charged with running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
Congress wants to know what caused the Enron meltdown, and
while the collective rage currently is focused on low
comp. Tyco CEO Dennis Koslowski was
convicted of looting hundreds ofmillions of dollars.
This is one of the biggest fraudcases ever.
(00:23):
Their president's a crook. Well, I'm not a crook.
Find out more on this week's episode of White Collars, Red
Hands. Beads, parades, Trumpets.
Voodoo gumbo. New Orleans has it all.
The city, known for its extravagant nightlife and rich
(00:45):
culture, seeped in history and crime just like every other
major city. New Orleans is no stranger to
crime. Look at those prisoners that
just escaped right? Although regular crime runs
rampant through the alleys of the Big Easy, many would not
suspect that white collar crime is also part of the cities
(01:07):
history. Today we look at former Mayor of
New Orleans Ray Nagin, and how his reign wiped out the hopes
and dreams of the stroke of a struggling city.
Learn more about it on this week's episode of White Collars,
Red Hands. Voodoo gumbo.
That one series of unsolved axe murders that happened in the
(01:27):
city along. I don't remember when it
happened, but it happened. Have you ever been to New
Orleans? Nope.
I think you'd like it. Yeah, I like whiskey.
Yeah. They they, they're, they're
known for drinks. Oh yeah, they are Bourbon
Street. They have a whole street named
after it. Hey, count me in.
You're gonna name a street afterone of my favorite things?
(01:49):
Bourbon Street smells crazy. What's What's next?
KFC Macaroni and Cheese St. All right.
The double downs guy. That has to be the whitest thing
I've said in a while. Like oh man, I would I I loved
KFC Mac and cheese so much I wish they named a street out of
it. Oh scrub, scrub my existence
from the Internet. I'm done.
We've all been hoping for that. And welcome back to another
episode of White Collar's Red Hands.
(02:10):
I'm Kashawn. And I'm Nina and today we are
going to be talking about Ray Nagin, the former mayor of New
Orleans. But we have some other business
to attend to. Last week, I don't know if you
heard the news, we have an update.
We have an update on an episode that we recorded actually just a
(02:30):
few weeks ago. It.
Was two weeks ago. Literally 2 weeks ago we have an
update on Todd and Julie Chrisley.
OK, Todd and Julie Chrisley, obviously, if you don't remember
or got went to jail for fraud. They were supposed to be in jail
for like 12 years and Donald Trump just pardoned them.
Not sure when they're going to be released, but they're very
(02:52):
excited about it. Their fan base is excited about
it. You know, what's crazy is that
they didn't donate any money to the Trump campaign.
So I think he just did this out of the the goodness and kindness
of his heart. He's just like, now that's a
good Christian family. He's like Todd Chrysling.
That's a good Christian. Times that evades taxes just
like Jesus Christ would have wanted.
(03:14):
I believe in Jesus and I don't pay taxes.
That's a throwback to our very first season.
If you've been here since the beginning, it.
Also said bumper stickers acrossthe entirety of the Deep South,
I'm sure. It's something along those
lines, something along those lines.
We're talking about New Orleans,LA.
So here on White Collar's Red Hands, we have talked about
(03:37):
crooked mayors before. We did an episode on Detroit's
former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, and today we're looking at the
former mayor of the Big Easy NewOrleans is.
That an actual nickname for New Orleans?
Yeah, the Big Easy. Never heard it.
Well, you've never been there. Fair enough.
So Clarence Ray Nagin, he was a businessman who was raised in
(04:00):
New Orleans. He had pretty humble beginnings,
it seems, from what I could see.He wasn't dirt poor, but he
also, you know, didn't live lavishly.
He had a working class family. He was really passionate about
education and he dug him. He wanted better for himself.
He wanted to be richer than his parents.
(04:21):
And that did happen for a periodof time.
He was well educated. He actually attended Tuskegee
University and then after graduation, he bounced around.
He went to LA for a while, was in Detroit for a little while,
but then he ended up coming homeand he became the VP and general
manager at Cox Communications inNew Orleans, which was a cable
(04:42):
company where he made $400,000 per year.
When was this around? At this point this was like the
90s, late 90s well. I mean, I'm just saying 400,
it's crazy that we're at a pointwhere like $400,000 for AVP or
like. Yeah, that's true.
(05:04):
You know, but in the 90s, that'sgreat.
Yeah, he, yeah, I'm not exactly 100% sure the exact date that he
worked there, but he became, well, we're about to say it, but
he became mayor in 2002. So this was prior to 2002.
So Megan really seemed to be living the dream.
I mean, he had a beautiful home,a family, a great career, but he
(05:26):
wanted something more. In 2002 he decided to throw his
hat in as a mayoral candidate for New Orleans and he ran on a
platform of anti corruption and a business and being business
minded. OK.
Those two things seem to be conflicted with each other, but
I'll keep my opinion of myself. Yeah, a little bit.
(05:49):
He really did, you know, say he wanted better for New Orleans.
A lot of people believed him. I think it helps that he grew up
there. And I don't I don't think he
would have ran a good campaign if he was running on Not Better
for New Orleans. Well, that's.
Never seen someone successfully be like I'm running for mayor
and I want to make this place a shit hole.
Well, yeah, the only time I've seen a candidate win who didn't
(06:12):
promise things to be better, it was fictional.
So it was in Yellowstone when John does.
No, no, no. We're not doing a Yellowstone
reference button. That one back up.
We're skipping right past it. My God.
He did. He ran on a platform.
He was like, progress stops here.
(06:33):
I like how I said we're not doing it.
And then you were like, I'm gonna keep, keep doing it.
I don't respect your boundaries.Oh, God.
So Megan ended up dominating in the elections, and he won, and
he came in. He was really sincere and he had
a lot of promise. And as a New Orleans native, he
really wanted to see the city thrive and he sought to make it
a better place. And it appeared as though he did
(06:56):
because in the 1st 11 weeks thathe was mayor, he put an
operation together to clean up the bribery in the city,
specifically with the city's taxi cab licensing and
inspection programs. There was clearly there was like
a lot of bribery going on, a lotof shady stuff going on within
the taxi cab licensing and stuff.
(07:19):
So he was like, I'm going to take this down.
And he did. He made 84 arrests in one day.
Well, not he himself, but the cops made 84 arrests.
So much cooler. If he was out there, it was
slapping the handcuffs on 84 different people.
I want a mayor who arrests his citizens.
Yeah, that's grass roots. Yeah.
You know, come on, give us. Give them what?
(07:39):
The people. Want like when Lori Lightfoot
was out on the lake telling people to go back home during
COVID, she's like, you can't be out here, go back home.
She's a very unintimidating person, so.
Yeah, I'm not afraid of her. Very small, although he had made
all those arrests. And another note of those, one
of those 84 arrests, one of the people was his cousin.
(08:02):
So he wanted to prove a point like no one was above the law.
I'm not paying playing favorites.
I'll even arrest my least favorite cousin.
However, although he made that big show and all those arrests,
no one was convicted. And even though there was no
payoff of this Operation Nagin'sapproval rating ended up
shooting up to 80%. So in perspective for putting
(08:26):
this in perspective, if you're afirst time listener, Kashawn and
I live in the city of Chicago, OK, our mayor is Brandon Johnson
and I was curious to see what his approval rating was.
And as of February of 2025, it sits at 14%, which is really,
(08:48):
really bad. That's really bad.
Couldn't name one thing he's done.
I I know nothing. I I didn't really think we hated
him quite that much, but yeah. We we hate all our mayors so to
be. Fair, that's true.
I don't think we've. The last one we liked was crazy.
So who daily? That's what I was thinking.
Like they like daily for that and he was in he was in for a
(09:09):
long time, but he was insane so.Yeah, that's Chicago.
Negan was passionate about bringing reform to the city and
the government, and at first he was pretty successful in doing
this. And the people were starting to
really trust their government, hence the 80% approval rate.
One way that Negan brought an update to the city was that he
(09:29):
was passionate about bringing new technology to City Hall.
He was quoted saying something along the lines of I'm used to
George Jetson and this place is The Flintstones because he was
working at this cable company, had a pretty good technology.
He came to City Hall. He realized that everything was
really outdated, that everythingneeded updated and he was like
(09:50):
no, no, no, no, no, we cannot run our city this way.
He's. Like, whoa, everyone's using a
DOS machine. This is insane.
Yeah. I don't even know what that is.
For the people who know, they'llknow.
What's a DOS? Don't worry, I I honestly it's
one of all you need to know is it's one of the earliest forms
of Windows. You didn't use a mouse.
Oh, what'd you use? Just a keyboard.
(10:10):
You navigated everything with a keyboard you had to type and
stuff. Didn't make anything happen.
Oh, no, thanks. So because he was so passionate
about technology and being up todate with technology, this
brought him to form the first Mayor's Department of
Technology, and he chose a localtech entrepreneur named Greg
Meffert as the Chief Technology Officer.
(10:32):
So when I was first learning about this, I felt conflicted.
I was like, well, I do think that having someone in tech as
the chief technology officer. Also a conflict of interest, but
yeah. Yeah, we'll see why you're.
Like the person that controls most of the stuff that you would
(10:54):
have to be buying. Probably not a good idea.
Yeah, probably not. And this was and, and ask
Deshawn said, probably not a good idea.
And it it wasn't an incredible amount of power to be handing
over to someone. And some would say that it was
probably the worst decision thatNegan made in his time as mayor.
And although Negan was successful at first, some
(11:16):
started to begin to question hisability to lead the city.
Negan's inexperienced in government was showing, and it
became apparent that he didn't know how to lead, run a city,
and build relationships. So right away he came in hot.
But the longer he was mayor, themore it showed that this guy
doesn't know what he's doing. But three years into his time in
(11:39):
office, the unimaginable happened.
On August 29th, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the city of New
Orleans. The category 5 hurricane left a
path of devastation. Now I will say it was not a
category 5 when it hit New Orleans.
(12:04):
I was seeing some differing answers.
It was between A2 and A3, which is crazy.
Well, actually do you know what the do you know the hurricane
ratings 5 is like worse than two, right?
Yes, yes, yes, yes. The higher the number, the the.
Worse, that's what I was thinking, But even as a Category
2, the winds were like 125 milesan hour.
(12:24):
It was very, very dangerous and really insane.
But there was a point when it was still in the ocean that it
was a Category 5. Now.
Before the hurricane hit the city, Mayor Nagin urged the
citizens of New Orleans to evacuate the city and those who
could not and those who could not.
He urged them to seek shelter inthe city's designated shelter
(12:47):
points. However, this was the first time
that the, I can't remember if itwas the whole state of New
Orleans to this or just the city, but they had an A
mandatory evacuation. Normally they just have a
suggestion evacuation, but they were like no, you have got to
leave. It's one of the worst storms in
in recent history so would make sense.
(13:09):
For good reason. Everybody should have evacuated.
Over 1,000,000 citizens left to New Orleans.
However, not everyone was able to evacuate, so New Orleans was
subjected to winds of over 100 mph and heavy rainfall.
The city of New Orleans, actually, if if you don't know
(13:30):
this, parts of the city sit below sea level and at the
highest point, the city is only 20 feet above sea level.
So it's, it's a very low city. And that that doesn't sound like
the correct term, but it's it's not.
Oh, I think Garth Brooks has friends there, actually.
Oh yeah, he has friends in low places.
(13:52):
Yeah, New Orleans does have a lot of levies to keep the water
back. However, they the storm could
not. The levees could not handle the
storm, they just couldn't. And it was so powerful that it
breached the levees and by August 31st, 2580% of the city
was flooded. Oh.
(14:13):
My God, Don McLean lied to us. He drove his Chevy all the way
out there and he's going to lie to us?
The levee was not dry. That's crazy.
That was not DRY. No.
The hurricane quickly caused a health emergency.
Those who were seeking shelter in the Superdome, which if
(14:34):
you're UN familiar, New Orleans has a huge stadium that is
called the Superdome. The Saints play there.
Yeah. So it so it's it's used to
disasters. Yeah, it's there are people
seeking shelter in the Superdomeand there are people seeking
shelter in a Convention Center, which combined those were
(14:56):
housing about 50,000 people. They had limited access to
freshwater, food was becoming scarce, and temperatures were
quickly climbing past 90°. If you've ever been to New
Orleans, you know that it is incredibly hot and muggy.
I've only been to the city in April and November and it was
hot in those months so I cannot even imagine how hot it was in
(15:19):
August, especially with a tropical storm.
Definitely hot enough to kill anyone from the UK.
On site 100%. The storm ultimately caused more
than $160 billion in damages andthe population of the city fell
by 29% between 2005 and 2011. Even to this day, the population
(15:40):
has not reached pre Katrina levels.
Now Hurricane Katrina in total caused about 1800 deaths, but
341 of those deaths were specifically in Louisiana.
Even 20 years later, the city isstill feeling the effects of
Hurricane Katrina. It is spooky when you go to New
(16:01):
Orleans because when after they had like pumped all the water
out and everything like that, obviously emergency crews had to
go through the homes and search for bodies and they would, they
would spray paint a symbol on all the houses that were checked
so that people knew that they had checked the houses.
(16:22):
It was like an X and then they had like dots.
If I'm remembering it correctly,it was like an X with dots.
And then there would be a numberon the like in the X on the
bottom. And there were houses that you
could like there was a lot with zeros, but then there were some
that like would have A1 or A2. And it was, it was definitely
(16:42):
like very eerie just seeing that.
And the first when I went there for the first time, it was 2014.
So it was like almost 10 years later in these, the spray paint
was still on the houses and you could see it.
(17:03):
But I am there, You know, there are a lot of people who received
a lot of criticism for how Hurricane Katrina was dealt
with. George W Bush received a lot of
criticism for how he dealt with the disaster.
I think this was when Kanye Westwent on TV and said George Bush.
(17:23):
Does not care about black people.
Yeah, yeah, that that infamous, wonderful quote.
Who knew that that would be one of the least craziest things?
Kanye. Who knew at the time?
You're like, oh wow, that was crazy.
I'm sure you couldn't do anything worse than them.
Cut to 2025, twenty years later,yeah, George W Bush was heavily
(17:45):
criticized for how it was handled.
Ray Nagin was heavily criticizedfor how it was handled.
Some people say that he turned down relief that was being
offered. I don't know if that's 100.
From what I could find, I could didn't see that that was 100%
true. But I really do think that in my
(18:07):
point of view, I'm sure other people would disagree with me.
I do think that the government handled Katrina to the best of
their ability. We had never experienced a
natural disaster like that, so it's pretty hard to plan for
something that catastrophic. But after that happened, it it
was clear that New Orleans needed a strong leader to band
(18:27):
together and rebuild after such devastating loss.
Rebuilding a city to that level would take years and cost
billions of dollars. So that happened in Megan's
third year in office and after Katrina, Megan vows to reunite
the city and rebuild. However, some believe that Megan
(18:49):
wasn't hands on enough prior to the disaster and they felt like
he couldn't properly lead afterwards.
And like I said, Megan made a lot of mistakes after Katrina.
One of the biggest ones was thathe approved a city rebuilding
plan that wanted to take severalof the flood prone areas and
turn them into green parkways. This doesn't necessarily sound
(19:11):
like a horrible idea, however these were historically African
American neighborhoods that weregoing to become washed away with
the floods only to be memories. The citizens of New Orleans when
they found out about this plan, they were absolutely outraged by
this and Nagin quickly backtracked on these plans
because he was running for re election.
(19:35):
When Nagin ran for the second time, he really tried to heavily
appeal to the African American community in New Orleans and he
really wanted their support. Now, I will say there's a huge
black population in New Orleans,and so it makes sense.
And Nagin is a black man himself.
So yeah, he's a black. He no, he's black.
(19:58):
So, you know, makes sense that he is seeking their vote.
And, you know, he was. He's a Democrat.
I think that and New Orleans is a pretty liberal city, so it
kind of seems like a no brainer that people would vote for him
even if they weren't necessarilysuper fond of him the first go
(20:18):
around. So he gave a lot of speeches, as
you know one does when they're. Politician gimmick speeches.
That's crazy. And on Martin Luther King Day,
he gave this speech. These are his words, not my
words. OK, I want that prefaced.
(20:41):
I didn't write this. Speech.
Yes, we get it. It's a speech you gave.
And he said it's time for us to come together.
It's time for us to rebuild a New Orleans, the one that should
be a chocolate New Orleans. And I don't care what people are
saying Uptown or wherever they are, this city will be chocolate
(21:02):
at the end of the day. Is he?
Is he fucking Willy Wonka? What do you mean?
What a weird way to put it. I know, why did you say it like
that? All right, everybody come with
me. No, no.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No.
Yeah. Wild that he gave that speech.
(21:23):
I don't know who approved it. That, that feels like something
he set off the cuff. I'm not going to.
Lie. You did kind of feel it.
That feels like it wasn't on theteleprompter.
But a lot of people were offended by the speech and and I
don't, you know, for him to say that like this is a city full of
rich history. This is a city that, you know,
(21:45):
is historically black, like it, it, we are not going to change
that. We are always going to honor our
culture. You know, fine, I there's
nothing wrong with that. That is a good thing.
It's a good thing. But I say it like that.
I don't, I don't know. I, I think the wording could
have been better. Just saying, not saying it's AI,
don't know if I would say it's achocolate city.
(22:08):
But anyways, he is well remembered for that speech.
A lot of people really remember that speech when they remember
him. He's remembered.
I don't know if he's remembered well, but.
Well, if you're from Well, OK, yeah.
Remembered. Not remembered.
Well, But all this is though this was a crazy speech, it did
empower a lot of the black community to go and vote for
him. And it worked.
(22:28):
And in May 2006, Megan won re election as mayor of the city of
New New Orleans. So now he has the joy of
rebuilding the city that was left in ruin after Katrina.
Rebuilding efforts were slow andpeople became really frustrated
with how long it was taking to rebuild the city.
(22:51):
It seemed like Negan wasn't really trying to get the city
back to where it was before Katrina hit.
And around this time, a journalist did an investigation.
And so there were some things that were starting to pop up.
They're fishy. And it's got some journalists
doing investigations. And one thing that they were
(23:11):
finding fishy was Nagin's partial ownership of a granite
company called Stone Age. Good name.
Though, yeah, I did think it waspretty, pretty clever.
It was owned by two of his sons,and he was spending more time at
that store than he was doing mayoral duties.
And after looking into this, it led to more and more questions.
(23:36):
Yeah, we all know Home Depot. They were looking to open a new
store in New Orleans. The company wanted to purchase
streets so that they could buildtheir store there, and the city
appraised the land for $850,000.The City Council was completely
on board with this idea as long as Home Depot hired a certain
(23:58):
percentage of employees from that neighborhood and paid them
at higher than average wage. OK, Home Depot wasn't super down
with this and Nagin actually contacted the CEO of Home Depot
and told him he would assist himin getting his store built.
But Nagin made it clear that theplan for Home Depot would.
(24:23):
Nagin made it clear that the plan for Home Depot to build was
going to happen, but not but without the negotiations of the
City Council. The Home Depot was going to be
built in an extremely poor community in the city and having
those guidelines would have boosted the citizens quality of
life. But and, and these were the
citizens that Nagin was claimingto fight for.
(24:45):
These are the people that he said I'm going to improve where
you live, I'm going to improve your quality of life.
But he approved Home Depot beingbuilt without these guidelines
that the City Council put in place, and he even sold the land
for below market value. He ended up selling the land for
$100,000. Then funny enough, Stone Age
(25:06):
landed a deal with Home Depot tobe the exclusive granite
countertop installer for their stores.
Nagin would then complain to Home Depot when he felt the
business wasn't making enough money.
When he did complain, he would send it on an official
letterhead from the mayor of NewOrleans, using his status to
(25:31):
sway the company. What a what a stupid side
business to be so involved in. Like, yes, I'm very involved in
rocks. Yeah.
Do something more fun to steal money, all right?
Don't don't funnel it into a rock business.
That's so. Boring.
That's you. That's you.
Rock on. I mean, whatever Stone Age did
about 170,000 in business with Home Depot before they ended the
(25:54):
contract due to poor performanceand customer complaints.
So Stone Age was not the only sketchy situation that was going
on. These sketchy contracts were
being overseen by Greg Meffert, the chief technology officer.
Remember him? I guess it comes back around.
I guess a computer is just a rock we taught to think so maybe
there's crossover between the technology officer and rocks.
(26:17):
That was poignant, Kashawn, thata computer is a rock.
We taught to think. We we at its basic form, we
throw electricity through a rock.
Yeah, no, you're right. And we taught it to think using
numbers. So Meffert and Niggan, they were
thick as thieves and even to thepoint where they lived next door
(26:37):
to each other. And after Katrina, Negan gave
Meffert the ability to hand out technology contracts with no
bidding, so he could just give acontract to whoever he wanted.
So Meffert starts awarding contracts.
One big truck contracted that heawarded was for security cameras
to his friend Mark St. Pierre.
And this Dale made Saint Pierre millions of dollars.
(26:59):
But behind closed doors, Saint Pierre was paying Meffert
hundreds and thousands of dollars for getting him the
contracts with City Hall. And once this scandal broke, the
US Attorney's office and the FBIbecame involved in the
investigation. Saint Pierre had been providing
a credit card dem effort to use,which he did often.
(27:21):
He spent over $133,000 on that credit card.
He used it on trips, in luxurious purchases, etcetera,
and Mefferts and the other people and in the government
would conduct meetings at strip clubs on a yacht owned by Saint
Pierre and once the meeting was over, strippers would come on
(27:42):
board and they would play poker and other nefarious activities.
Well, in 2006, Meffert leaves the mayor's office and starts
getting consulting fees from Saint Pierre.
He collected almost $650,000 in checks that Saint Pierre wrote
for him, and in total, Saint Pierre only the one guy gave
(28:04):
Meffert almost $900,000 in bribes.
So it's November 2009. Meffert and Saint Pierre are
charged with conspiracy, bribery, and money laundering.
The indictment had 63 counts in it, and it made people wonder
what was Ray Nagin's involvement.
(28:26):
It was said that Nagin went on vacations, got cell phones and
lawn care that was all paid for by Saint Pre Pierre.
But there was actually no proof.And when questioned about
outside vendors paying his for his vacations, Nagin insisted
that he didn't know that the vendors were paying for the
vacations, that the trips had just been set up by Medford.
(28:47):
I have no idea. There we go.
Throw him under the bus. Yeah, throw your friend under
the bus, you coward. Yeah, no, literally in 2010,
Nagin's reign as mayor comes to an end.
Remember that 80% approval rating he had?
It plummeted to 24%. Oh, this is still higher than
Brian. Johnson still Brandon.
Brandon, you don't even know whoyour mayor is.
(29:09):
I told you, I don't know one thing he's done.
It's been years. Once Negan is no longer mayor of
New Orleans, he and his family pack up and they move to Texas.
After arriving in Texas, he starts getting consulting fees
from the same company that he awarded contracts to as mayor.
While Negan thinks his past and New Orleans is behind him,
(29:31):
Meffert is telling the feds everything that went on in his
office. And it was noted that when Megan
went from making $400,000 a yearat the cable company to $130,000
a year as mayor, his family never changed their lifestyle.
So he had to supplement that income some way.
(29:54):
And remember Stone Age in 2008, Megan asked for $60,000 from a
man named Rodney Williams who was trying to get city projects
for his business. Nagin promised Williams that he
would take care of him at City Hall if he gave them the money.
It gave them money and Nagin wasgood on his promise.
Nagin gave Williams so many contracts that he made-up to
(30:17):
$1,000,000 per year. Another contractor that Nagin
took money from was a man named Frank Fridela.
Fridela wanted to purchase, so Ihad never heard of this before.
It was called a smokestack powerplant.
OK, I didn't know what it was, but it was abandoned and he
wanted to buy it and he wanted to make it into a mixed-use
(30:38):
development. And in order to buy the land,
Nagin negotiated that Fridela give him $100,000 and he
funneled that money through the Stone Age company to do so.
Now these weren't the only men that were doing shady deals with
Negan. There was another man named
Aaron Bennett that Negan would award contracts to for a bite of
(31:01):
the beignet instead of the sliceof the pie.
A bite of the beignet. See what I do there?
Is someone French? What?
New Orleans is French. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
My God, and it was noted that like there were like tons of
checks like for $12,500 they would just like write these
12,512 thousand 500 and there's just like deposit, deposit,
(31:21):
deposit, deposit, deposit with no real reason.
Which is over 10,000 though so Idon't know.
Yeah, which was weird because they did have to report that to
the IRS. Yeah, usually you would.
People would try to get it rightunder 10,000 know how?
To do that, but and Speaking of the IRS, it was found that Negan
had falsified multiple years of tax returns while serving as
(31:43):
mayor, and in January of 2013, Negan was charged with 21 counts
of corruption. Greg Meffert, Rodney Williams
and Frank Fidela all testified against him and Negan pled
innocence. He did.
(32:04):
He said he didn't do any of these things, that he was being
framed. He didn't know what he was
doing. I do think that a big reason why
Ray Niggan fell into so much of this crime was in the bribe,
like accepting the bribes and all that stuff.
I, I think that a lot of it had to do with Greg Muffert.
(32:25):
I don't think that. I don't personally don't believe
that Ray Niggan went into politics to become rich.
I think he. Was already rich.
He was already rich. He didn't need, he didn't need
to go into politics to make money, to steal, to bribe, to
lie about his taxes. He didn't need to do that.
(32:47):
I think he got in there. This is my pure opinion.
I think he got in there. Craig Meffert was doing it.
I think that he lacked enough ofa moral compass to say, you
know, no, I'm not going to do that.
I think he was like, all right, if you're doing it, I'm going to
do it, I mean. He probably got told everyone
does this, right? Everyone, everyone in politics
does this. It's just part of the game.
(33:08):
Yeah, and then he was. And then, you know, when he got
the extra money, he was like, you know, cool, I got the extra
money. You know, I think he, I think he
knew what he was doing. I don't think that he was
fooled. I think that he made bad choices
and he had to pay for this. Although he maintained his
(33:29):
innocence, on February 12th, 2014, Ray Nagin was found guilty
of 20 out of 21 counts, becomingthe first mayor of New Orleans
to be convicted on federal corruption charges.
Because of his cooperation in testifying against Negan, Greg
Meffert received a reduced sentence of 2 1/2 years in
(33:51):
prison, Rodney Williams and Frank Fridela got one year
sentences, and Mark St. Pierre got his 17 year sentence
reduced to five years. After cooperating, Ray Nagin was
sentenced to 10 years in prison.Like I said, he maintained his
innocence the entire time. He claimed that people were
(34:13):
after him and were smearing his name.
His lawyers. His lawyer claims that the
chocolate speech was the reason for the smear campaign.
I don't think that's true. I think that it was his own
choices that led him there. And on top of the 10 year prison
sentence, he was also ordered topay restitution of over
(34:35):
$500,000. Did any of those people get
their money back? Probably not.
Because of the 2020 pandemic, Nagin was released early and put
on house arrest. This was because of concerns
with COVID, and prisoners who had nonviolent crimes were put
on house arrest. He was then put on community
(34:57):
confinement for two years, whichis basically like a halfway
house kind of situation and he was on supervised probation,
probation starting in 2022. His supervised probation ended
on March 16th, 2024 and when he was released, he quoted the
great Martin Luther King junior by saying free at last, free at
(35:21):
last. Thank God Almighty, we are free
at last. Fucking I roll man.
Oh my God. Yeah, I think that's taking that
out of context just a bit. Just a bit.
Well, the floodgates opened and the money came rushing in,
leaving Ray Nagin hungry for more.
(35:43):
Nagin was plagued by his own greed, taking every opportunity
to make a shady business deal and line the pockets of his
friend. While his city struggled to
rebuild, Nagin had no intentionsof helping the citizens of New
Orleans. Instead, he used his power and
influence to become as rich as he possibly could.
Megan is one of the few people that we have covered on this
(36:04):
podcast who has served the time that they were given.
I don't think he learned his lesson, but I'm glad in this
case justice was served. I I was surprised he served his
whole sentence when I was doing the research.
Yeah, it's kind of scary how surprising that is.
But I mean, he served his whole sentence, but he served how much
of that? About half of it at.
(36:24):
Home and then on, you know, so like, not really.
Yeah, yeah. Like he did, but he also really
didn't. Yeah, he did.
But he didn't. Yeah, no.
But I'm surprised that once it hit 2020 that he just didn't get
released, that he just still hadto, you know, show up.
And, you know, although he deserved it, I do think that
(36:47):
race could have played a part inwhy he served his entire
sentence, because he was a blackman, if he had been.
Because then you're looking at Greg Meffert and Frank Fidela
and all the other people who were involved with him who got
much less sentences than he did.You know, they were all white
and they had less than half of the sentences sentence years
(37:10):
that he did. And he served his entire
sentence. And he was a black man.
So I think, I do think that thatprobably played a role in it as
well. Yeah, well, it also kind of
sucks because that's the that's what happens when you get caught
last. And when you get caught last and
then you don't admit to it. Yeah, you're also going to get
slapped like that because everyone else, they immediately
said, all right, I did it and I'll give up other people and
(37:30):
they're always going to get off easier.
Yeah, that's true. That's 100% true.
But he did deserve it. He served his time in a sense,
and I feel as though justice wasserved, at least in this one.
And if you liked listening to this episode and you want more
where that came from, you can follow us on social media.
We are on facebook.com/white collars red hands.
(37:51):
We are on X at White Collars pod.
We're on Instagram at White collars under score red hands.
We are on TikTok at, you guessedit, white collars red hands.
We also have a YouTube white collars red hands if you want
another way to support us for free.
You could always tell a friend word of mouth is the best way to
get podcast info out there. Or just to convince your friends
(38:13):
to do anything, you know, tie them down, force feed them, you
know, nasty stuff to get them tolisten.
I don't care. Just get them to listen to the
podcast, you know? Like the scene in the Grinch
where they're feeding them a bunch of pudding.
Yeah. If that's how you if that's how
you recommend podcast to your friends, then sure.
Let's do it. Another way that you can support
(38:34):
us is by leaving a rating we love.
You can do that on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify.
We love a five star review, but we will take an honest one as
well. Not that five star reviews
aren't honest. No, yeah.
I'm just saying like, you know, if you have a, you know,
constructive criticism, we'll take it.
(38:55):
They don't, Nina, don't ask for it.
They don't have constructive. Criticism.
You know what? Just give us five stars.
Thank you. I'll flash ya.
No, you don't have to do that. You could have stopped.
I can't stop, can't stop the whole stuff.
OK, another no, no, I don't think that's free.
Another way you can support us is by buying our merch.
You can click on the merch tab and it will take you over to
(39:17):
Haberdachery or Dachery. Dashery.
Dashery. Haberdashery what?
Haberdashery. Why did you why did you say
that? Because I forgot the name and I
knew. Just dashery.
OK, well, I couldn't remember, so I knew it was like a playoff
of that and I was like, I think I can't remember.
(39:37):
Anyway, go there and we've got our we've got our merch on
there. The.
Link is in the show description and on our website.
Yeah, bye. A shirt.
Buy a shirt. All right, Anything else I'm
missing? Oh, if you hear of a white
collar crime and you're like, oh, Nina and Kashan should
totally cover that, send it our way.
You can send, you can DM us on our socials or you can e-mail us
(39:57):
at whitecollegeredhands@gmail.com.
We've tried to do a fan submitted episode, everything
single season. And this season I think we did
too. So yeah, very cool.
Very. Fun, Yeah.
Oh and one last thing, if you are listening on Spotify and
you'd like to listen without ads, you can You can subscribe
to the podcast for $1.00 a month.
(40:17):
You get to listen completely ad free.
Yeah, Excuse me. Don't let anything interrupt my
voice. We don't, we don't control the
ads that we put on here. So if they play something stupid
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A dollar, a dollar, please. Pay it up.
Pay it up. All right, I think that's it.
Thank you so much for listening.And we'll see you next time on
(40:38):
another episode of White Collars, Red Hands.
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